Broadly speaking, the press loves the nutters. They make a sensational story and draw eyeballs. This is fine, but then both-sidesing leads to the normalization

Broadly speaking, the press loves the nutters. They make a sensational story and draw eyeballs. This is fine, but then both-sidesing leads to the normalization of nuttery. Fact checking is hard work, and not adequately compensated. It's a public good problem, a failure of capitalist incentives to protect the public interest. Often the impulse is to use regulation to circumscribe such damages, but in the case of the press, doing so has unconscionable consequences as well. It will take a simple act of genius, restructuring the markets for public information (supply side), and/or a leap in public education and conscience (demand side) to address such a wicked problem.