journalism from the scourge of fake news.
Journalism isn't suffering from a scourge of fake news.
Journalism isn't suffering from a scourge of fake news.
You don't need to have an increase in fake news to have an increase in the perception of fake news. Another way to get an increase in the perception of fake news is to change the structural graph through which news propagates. The two most outspoken people I know of on the topic of the problem of fake news both happen to be twitter users (Elon Musk, Donald Trump).
So basically, I disagree with the claim that fake news doesn't exist, in a subtle way.
I got that bit, it's just not a thing I argued.
However, it's recently become politically controversial to acknowledge this fact, I think because Trump uses "fake news" to disqualify criticism of himself and his administration[1]. But let's not pretend that journalism is without faults or bias just because (on average) the virtues of the fourth estate outweigh their flaws.
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0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent
1. He's hardly the first person to have issues with his press coverage, but it seems like he's getting a bit more traction with his complaints. It helps that he has an observably hostile relationship with the press. But the term "fake news" was originally applied to right-wing blogspam/memes that showed up during the 2016 election, which were highly slanted, based on cherry-picked information if not outright lies.
Leaving that aside and to your actual point - one way to think about this is 'what major journalistic mishap could have been fixed/avoided by crowd annotation'. Judith Miller's reporting in the run up to the Iraq war? Wen Ho Lee's case? Jayson Blair? It doesn't seem obvious to me it would have made a whit of a difference in any of those nor many others.