1. Everyone is born with the ability to trust, and to distrust. Many people suck at trusting others (i.e. they trust too much people who aren't trustworthy, and

1. Everyone is born with the ability to trust, and to distrust. Many people suck at trusting others (i.e. they trust too much people who aren't trustworthy, and trust too little people who are), that's how you get abusive spouses and unavailable spouses. Trusting some news outlets and distrusting others is no different from dis/trusting people. The problem of people trusting the wrong things has been a problem throughout history, and the solution has to be psychological. Mandatory therapy for every citizen? Won't happen. 2. Teaching kids to spot "fake news" at school is laughably impotent and "feel good". People believe fake stories because they're emotionally-invested in the subject (see PG's "keep your identity small" post). Anyone that thinks we can solve fake news through "critical thinking skills" is... fake news. The problem is emotional involvement. If you're emotionally involved in a story, you won't want to use critical thinking. 3. You can get people to change their opinions, e.g. from climate-denial to pro-science (through using their cognitive dissonance against them). That's how you got Sanders converting Trump supporters at a recent town hall[0]. You haven't made them more rational, you've just taken their emotions, which pointed one way, and made them point the other way. So, if you want to make people trust "the establishment" or the Democrats more, you don't need to fix points 1. and 2. (which require fixing people), you just need to learn about cognitive dissonance and persuasion. But that doesn't solve the core problem of not having an informed population. [0]: http://www.politicususa.com/2017/03/13/bernie-sanders-storms-deep-red-west-virginia-convinces-trump-voters-conned.html http://www.politicususa.com/2017/03/13/bernie-sanders-storms...