People used to get info from each other or from a select few broadcast/paper news sources, the latter owned by powerful people of course. Except, back then the

People used to get info from each other or from a select few broadcast/paper news sources, the latter owned by powerful people of course. Except, back then the newspaper and TV stations and radio stations would fact-check one another. If one of them was lying, the others would call them out on it. That cost the people in power readers/viewers, and eventually money, so there was an incentive to tell the truth and develop a good reputation. Tech doesn't care about reputation because it "doesn't scale" or is "long tail" or some other excuse for laziness.