There were times and places in history where truth was valued, respected, and rewarded.

You could not employ N writers even if you had the money, because there were not enough good writers. And they needed to care about remaining adjacent to reality, or their reputation would (rightfully) be ruined as a fraud. Things were slow enough that the average person could see that they were being bullshat. These were the golden ages of human progress.

It's not the world we live in today.

The writers didn't need to be "good" for this kind of work.