If there's something newsy, we show recent stories because that's often helpful. If you want to older content, we have time range options. Check out before/after: https://twitter.com/searchliaison/status/1115706765088182272

Date range is great, but unfortunately it can fail when for instance old newspaper stories still have recent news in the sidebar. Google will include those recent updates as belonging to the date of the old story.

It can happen. We keep working on improving in these cases, and we do give newspapers guidance on things they should consider to help avoid it.