I'm not sure that's the biggest part of the problem, though maybe it's different in my bubble. In my experience, the MSM destroyed their own credibility by acting as stenographers for political and corporate power, and, in the process, spreading "fake news". And it wasn't the little independent partisan sources, it was literally the WaPo and the NYT that helped the Bush II regime lie us into the Iraq War (14 years ago today!)[0].

It's hard to gain back credibility when you've so comprehensively destroyed it in order to be close to power. And the NYT and WaPo have not even pretended to be interested in doing so.

[0]: http://www.eschatonblog.com/2017/03/only-fools-and-frenchmen...

Chronologically implausible. Trust in the MSM has been collapsing for decades; politicians only recently began telling people not to trust them. Politicians telling people not to trust the media is an effect of the fact that trust had already collapsed, not the cause. If people had trust and regard for the media, then politicians, another group that people have little trust and regard for, telling people not to trust them would have had no effect.

Personally, I can't help but notice that almost nobody seems to propose that if the mainstream news organizations want to fight "fake news", maybe they should make the effort to become more trustworthy. Not make an effort to appear more trustworthy, but to become more trustworthy. I think it says something profound about our era that this hardly even comes up.

Jon Stewart touched on this recently on an appearance on The Late Show.

>"This breakup with Donald Trump has given you, the media, an amazing opportunity for self-reflection and improvement, Instead of worrying about whether Trump is un-American, or if he thinks you're the enemy, or if he's being mean to you, or if he's going to let you go back into the briefings, do something for yourself. Self-improvement! Take up a hobby. I recommend journalism."[1]

[1]: https://youtu.be/cmdFne7LnuA?t=9m34s

But I think there could be some mechanisms in place, similar to how Youtube handles copyright claims - where upon reporting, or a request for a source from any Facebook user - the publication would get it's Reach capped, or the publication would be hidden, until further evidence is displayed.

Now, there are a lot of problems with this approach - first it's user based (which has it's pros and cons), second it may be target for malicious activity and anti-competitive pratices - but on the other hand if the source was displayed, it would somehow protect them (at least briefly), without having the Reach capped, but still flagged if the source is dubious.

Come to think of it, that might not be the worst thing in the world.

Something at a publisher level, where the publisher themselves is given a fake news rating, rather than individual stories, might work, but even that is full of difficult to solve issues.

Publishers always had reputation (good or bad) based on their work, which maybe could be displayed with a rating - the problem is when even those with good rep are wrong...

This is a practical suggestion, but not one I find reassuring. The Youtube copyright system works fairly well from the perspective of big rights holders, but is relentlessly abused for both censorship and corporate overreach in taking down fair-use or even non-infringing content.

That's basically the outcome I expect from a fake-news-takedown system, too. It would almost inevitably end up working for whoever was willing to throw the most time and money at manipulating content.

Imho, at the least, Facebook should merge commenting from larger groups of users on a single political post, in such a way that a balanced view of pro and con arguments can be read. (This means that if one of my friends shares a post, I don't see just my friends' comments).

Similar to how some aren't looking for news, but affirmations of their political beliefs.