At any rate, going back to the original non-bear related claims that you're picking a fight with, those outlets were in both cases reporting measurements and claims made by scientists.

Indeed, you could argue that they aren't reliable and the reality was different, but then you'd have to concede that in the past "consensus climate science" has been wrong across the board and thus that this is also a possibility today.

I think in reality the claims made about basic weather stats back then were probably true, or at least as true as they could get at the time. Climatology was too new and too small to have been politicized in the same way it is today. And newspapers had a different ethos around trying to present facts neutrally, they also were less politicized than today. But by all means, argue that the global consensus of scientists (both US and Soviet no less) was wrong.