If we had a system like this that worked, we could at least leverage it to be able to quantify the coherence of a much larger set of inputs and with many controlled corpora at once.
It also fails when there are few streams to compare, as when a new story first breaks. Or when there is coordination of actors.
My suggestion is not that it is fail safe or perfect, only that is a useful application of an ontology which disputes the original author's thesis that they are overrated.
All of these things are hallmarks of fake news: it is claimed to be new (hence "news",) is not published very widely (you can't compare a aquariusrising.biz article on Green Space Aliens to a CNN article on the same, because there isn't a CNN article on that), and it's usually coordinated between copycat opportunists. Even worse, none of these things are distinguishable from a grassroots report unless you know the true news a-priori. This better not be a mechanism to ban everything that isn't on CNN.com.
To suggest a specific example, imagine a person living inside WWII-era Germany correlating a propaganda news article with every other news article they have read, all of which are also propaganda. Correlation-based news epistemology isn't even based on a prevailing social consensus, it's based on the consensus of broadcasters.