I'd love a browser extension that shows me a crowd-sourced batting average for the author of any article I'm reading online. Something that tells me "Oh, you're reading an article written by journalist Joe Schmoe? Joe has previously written 400 breathless articles about scientists discovering space aliens"
I know I know, technical solution to a social problem. And curating these crowdsourced article tags and statistics would probably be an intractable nightmare. It probably can't hurt much to try though. I think the fundamental problem is there are too many journalists for many individual journalists to develop a reputation in the minds of readers. I read several hundred, maybe a few thousand articles a year, but I could only tell you the names of a handful of journalists at best. There must be some way for technology to help bridge this gap.
This behavior needs to be called out and there needs to be accountability. However, there is none. Even when the stories are completely fabricated, as happened at USA Today recently.
What the public wants and what tricks people into giving you attention are different things. Journalists today go for the latter, which is why we have all of these "alternative" news sources now.