I think you’re missing what people are saying. They’re saying it’s not about exerting outward influence, but about the editorial bent of the newspaper. What to chase, what not to publish, who to piss off, who not to piss off, what to spend resources on or not. No one can show you an example of this kind of influence in a lemmy comment section. You’d need a research grant and a year’s worth of a team’s dedicated investigation into word choice with inside sources telling them stories that were chased that never got published for some flimsy reason, etc. These things aren’t so neat and concise as to fit into a meme.