>a temporary illness until media consumers wise up Not exactly. Media consumers do need to wise up. However expecting the consumers to bear the entire burden o

>a temporary illness until media consumers wise up Not exactly. Media consumers do need to wise up. However expecting the consumers to bear the entire burden of verification is naive. Consumers want someone to do the verification for them (at least partially) because it's tedious and time consuming. That's why reputation paid off back then. That's why before the internet the mechanism of information propagation was built in a way to amplify proved, respectable media. The social media on the internet have created a mechanism that can amplify any information. Even worse than that - it amplifies poor quality information with sensationalist clickbaity headlines significantly better that good quality but not so sensationalist information. Add to the picture the proliferation of click-based advertisement and you will see why sensationalism nowadays pays off more than reputation.