I think your doubts are all extremely well-founded, but I don't think scoring publishers is a viable alternative. There are already a bunch of attempts to list

I think your doubts are all extremely well-founded, but I don't think scoring publishers is a viable alternative. There are already a bunch of attempts to list 'trustworthy' news sources, sometimes paired with attempts to offer a "balanced media diet" while avoiding inaccuracy. Unfortunately, publisher-level judgements are fundamentally too broad for story-level relevance. Accuracy varies wildly, and there's a significant difference between publisher-level quality (e.g. biased topic choice) and story-level quality (i.e. if I read it, is it factually correct?) Worse, publishers benefit from keeping it that way, by extending the aegis of a reputable name to content that's fast and cheap instead of diligent, or to inflammatory clickbait that monetizes better online. Fox is infamous, but their online site actually has a lot of good investigative reporting. Unfortunately, we can't just split Fox.com from television Fox News, because Fox.com also hosts old Glenn Beck videos and other comparable rubbish. The Huffington Post has hired some good reporters over the years, but their model of saving money with repackaged (or stolen) content effectively launders inaccurate stories from a host of other sites. The difference between their pedigreed staff writers and their news-roundup commentary is immense. Buzzfeed News moved to its own domain last summer, but before that it was a subdomain of Buzzfeed that produced a whole bunch of award-winning investigative stories from top reporters. Unfortunately, Buzzfeed also does news, and has a history of things like blackholing stories at advertiser request or committing serial plagiarism. The Washington Post website, like many other news sites, has a section for blog posts by non-regular contributors. A story in their PostEverything section doesn't warrant anything like the same faith their main content would, but its under their 'news' heading and isn't demarcated any differently than staff blogs. The list of similar practices is painfully long, to the point that I'm struggling to think of sources which don't have major quality discrepancies within their brand. The WSJ, NYT, and ProPublica come to mind; it's no accident that they all trade extremely heavily on their reputations. Television sources, with their numerous distinct shows, are of course disastrous for this - PBS is the only channel I can think of now that History and National Geographic have surrendered. I don't have a good answer here, but it looks to me like there are strong incentives for publishers not to offer a stable level of quality in their work.