It's a sign of something much worse, chilling effect, self censorship

It's pretty bad that newspapers can alter or delete articles from 2 decades ago, without any laws or regulations around revision history etc, though. Altering history because it becomes unappealing to the present is extremely dangerous. That opens the historic record up to complete revision and why internet archives should be viewed and funded like libraries and other historic archives. No present or future entity (public or private) should be able to change history as they see fit.

A legal technicality in no way invalidates the critical role that the media is assumed to play in informing the public in a democracy.