There was a disjunction around the late 90s/early 2000s when the internet got big. That was around the time that the corporate news sources started losing control of the news to more citizen reporter types running podcasts or whatever gets big on social media. What gets called "the narrative" split from being the consensus of journalists to a cacophony of random people who don't form consensuses.

Before that change, a scandal in the papers also meant you had to have lost political favour with the people who owned the media companies, ie, were losing big political battles. You also had no hope of being re-elected through a hostile media because if they didn't carry a favourable message there was no way to communicate with voters. I'd argue people like Jeffery Epstein never really made it to trial or public attention because stories got buried.

Afterwards the better approach is to point and shout "Fake News". There are multiple channels that reach voters and it turns out that the corporate media are actually much more unreliable and unpopular than were previously suspected. A lot more dirty laundry is aired and the Streisand effect takes hold.

CA wasn't the change, it was just one of the first big scandals to happen in the new era.