You’ve raised a lot of points here and it’s kinda hard to tackle them all. I’ll try to keep my response terse. For one, the search trend for “fake news” means

You’ve raised a lot of points here and it’s kinda hard to tackle them all. I’ll try to keep my response terse. For one, the search trend for “fake news” means absolutely nothing to me. That term only entered the zeitgeist when it was popularised during the 2016 elections. I truly believe that even the organisations with the most integrity can be accused of blatant partisan bias. And as far as I can tell from my (albeit limited) investigations, it’s been that way since mass media was born. You don’t have to fabricate news. You can omit certain facts, or frame the story a certain way to drive the narrative you want. I agree the money expenditure during a campaign isn’t the ultimate measure of impact. Remember the Leave slogan on the side of the bus during Brexit? I doubt that cost much. Outright lies aren’t terribly expensive, most of the time. TL;DR - I strongly disagree with the idea that there isn’t a problem at all. People are curating their own echo chambers every day, and our existing establishments and platforms are encouraging them to do so.