Create/modify API call to make pre-Verawood history data?

We updated PublishLogRecord to capture user intent (the direct field). Over time, we'll probably add more things, like distinguishing pure renames. There will be times like this when we can't backfill this information. For instance, there are situations where clicking "publish" at any of three different levels would yield identical looking PublishLogRecords. In this case, we have the code handle both cases.

Right now, code in https://github.com/openedx/openedx-platform/pull/38178 is generating "old" data to test against by manually importing PublishLogRecord and using it to set direct=None. But this breaks abstraction barriers. It would be useful for our APIs to allow the creation of old data. This could be with an optional flag to publish, e.g. set_direct=True, or some test utilities that can strip that data off after the fact.

Start by reviewing PublishLogRecord and the test setup in openedx/openedx-platform pull request 38178, focusing on how direct=None is currently created by importing the model. Define a public API or test utility that can produce equivalent pre-history data without bypassing the abstraction. Done means the existing tests can use that API and still cover records lacking the newer intent data.