Growing up in suburban Illinois, we had a local paper. It was nothing special but at least had a commitment (in theory) to report things accurately. In a world where most people get their news from social media, people are driven by their incentives/dopamine conditioning toward a lot of behaviors that promote neither truth, nor engagement with opposing views.
What I find interesting, and absent from the conversation, is the social class dimension of this. The rich have always paid for reliable information, whether through newspaper subscriptions, magazines, or other high-quality private newsletters, some of them absurdly expensive (hundreds/thousands of dollars/year). As I get older, I find myself much, much more discerning about what I read. I've completely stopped using facebook (5-6 years ago), but now read The Economist, The SF Chronicle, Stratechery, and a handful of blogs from authors I trust. I don't know for sure, but I suspect "willingness to pay for good information" is a pretty strong correlate of wealth worldwide. I just have no idea whether it's causal, or a side effect of having disposable income, or what.