Found this while browsing You Tube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNshmEEZefE

The BBC showed this episode of its 'Thirty Minute Shorts' series, in 1968. Starring Donald Pleasence and Nigel Davenport, in a chillingly plausible tale of how mainstream news is ' faked' by a ' small group at the top' . As Donald Pleasence says, "News is the most highly developed form of fiction. The most difficult' .

While it's an fictional example, I have little doubt real 'fake' news works in a similar way, and it makes me wonder how bad it got before the internet started really taking off. This is why censorship is so important to them.