How was the narrative controlled by the powerful before the internet became a part of everyday life? Specifically, how was the narrative controlled in the US in the decades before 1993?

I'm asking for recommendations of books written by historians, journalists and other serious people. (Understanding the situation decades ago is probably a lot easier than understanding the current situation -- partly because the powerful will take pains to hide their controlling actions from the public.)

In the US I get the general sense that politicians and holders of government offices have never been able to exert a lot of control of the narrative with the result that journalists and the prestigious universities have so much influence that they are best thought of as essentially part of the government.

That suggests that the efforts of the establishment to rein in the big social media companies will prove largely ineffective with the result that Facebook and Google will probably join the New York Times and Harvard as parts of the de facto governing structure of the US.

EDITED: changed "rein" to "rein in".