True. Artistic license is not new to our time.

I'm never bothered merely by the use of artistic license. It's more how it is employed, especially if the end result is to distort critical events or themes in the subject for tendentious, ideological purposes. This too is not new to our time. What's new is the 'reach' of modern media, and the degree of disingenuous distortion that can be done convincingly with modern film techniques. So even though the tendency has always been there, today it's possible to do more 'damage' to the historical record because of the impact that modern media can have.