Google does lots of things I like, but I see close to zero evidence that they have developed the competency to act as an arbiter on any of veracity, reliability, or trustworthiness of news articles (or even less-timely information on the web.)
Relevance and my likelihood to be interested, yes. But those other things...no.
And that's even aside from the question of whether Google using its dominant search position to inject editorial commentary on search results is a good thing or, in the long term, a bigger threat than the one it would be addressing.
But given the position they hold I think they need to develop this skill.
It’s very clear that ‘throw an algorithm up without thinking of abuse/negative consequences and fix it later’ works terribly.
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/civikowl/clbbiejji...
For example, Google could say "68% of experts appointed by the New York Times approve of the content of this page".
Individuals could then choose which group(s) of experts they want to become part of the ranking for their personal news feed.