Oh, Pioneers!
The media wasn’t necessarily more “fair and balanced” in the good old days, but they were a lot more colorful in their descriptions.
A well-known emigrant to Mexico was described in an Arizona newspaper as:
… a mass of putrid pus and rotten goose pimples; a skunk with the face of a baboon, the character of a louse, the breath of a buzzard and the record of a perjurer and common drunkard…
Know who he was?
Answer here: Sandwalk: strolling with a skeptical biochemist
Quote via GQ.