> now that people refuse to pay for news

People (the audience, that is) have historically refused to pay a significant share of the cost for news, what has changed is that advertisers have stopped paying as much for news (because the share of people's attention debited to news, and therefore which news outlets have to sell access to, has dropped.)

Paid circulation used to often be important not so much because of direct revenue but because advertisers looked to it as an important measure of reach.

That's true as well. The effect is the same either way, though -- news organizations aren't exactly swimming in money these days. They have trouble just paying journalists, much less support staff for those journalists like fact-checkers.

Maybe that's part of it, but there are plenty of examples of the media deliberately misleading their audience. "Can't afford fact checkers" doesn't really explain that.