You have to see this through 90's lens: back then the media wasn't nearly as polarized, and the public had much greater trust in news networks, especially in CNN. "Fake news" was mostly relegated to the domain of conspiracy theories, and blatant promotions of political agendas as neutral news wouldn't fly back then (although, of course, the networks did have an agenda and did promote it, but they were... much more subtle and civil about the whole thing).