Thank you.
We have to ask: How would Franklin view the failure of modern day newspapers to print the unvarnished truth and instead formulate leftist propaganda?
Most of the early American newspapers were owned and written by men who were highly partisan. When you're in D.C. I recommend that you visit the James Madison Library (across the street from the main, Jefferson Building) and go to the reading room with microfilms of all the surviving copies of colonial newspapers.
You'll be surprised to see that they much more resembled the supermarket tabloids of today, than either the Washington Post or the Washington Times.
John / Billybob