Have you tried News is free and its API?
I haven't tried this one, but it seems to have a directSearch
operation, which seems to allow for filtering on dates (and tags)...
> directSearch(login, password, search, params) This method searches the news, depending on given parameters. The analog of newsisfree advanced search. application_key (string) - application key; login (string) - user login; password (string) - user password; search (string) - search string; params (string) - hash array of additional search parameters (very important to use 'params' array values order as shown below); as_language - language code (e.g. en,fr,it) numitems - number of items to search (max 100) source_id - source id as_sourcename - source name as_category - category id as_author - author name as_topics - topics as_date_from - from date (YYYY/MM/DD) as_date_to - to date (YYYY/MM/DD) as_pop_from - from popularity (0 as_exact - exact match as_synonym - use synonyms as_relevance - by relevance as_intitle - only in titles