How does negative press affect Google search results long-term?

An old WSJ or NYT article ranks indefinitely for a name query unless something credible displaces it. Google has no built-in mechanism that demotes negative coverage over time, and AI engines treat decade-old high-authority sources as continuing inputs to their narrative. The displacement work has to be sustained: enough authoritative competing content to outrank the legacy article, entity strengthening so the brand is recognized fully across the engines, and where the article contains specific errors, correction requests through the publication’s editorial process. None of this is fast. A three-year-old NYT piece typically takes six to twelve months of sustained work to demote materially, and the work has to continue afterward to prevent resurfacing. Pretending otherwise is what gets clients into pay-per-page contracts that fail.