It ruined the safe guard of using the time tested tool of fact checking and having credible sources of information. And opened the flood gates to bad actors acting on irrational actors.
The internet is not some magical haven for information and knowledge. In its current form, it's comparable to information anarchy. It's not tenable.
>It ruined the safe guard of using the time tested tool of fact checking and having credible sources of information
The same fact-checking that got Nixon and buried McGovern, or elected Raegan twice, or George Bush of CIA and Iran-Contra fame, or the war mongering Clinton and Bush Jr., or the more-of-the-same Obama?
The same fact-checking system that got Nixon impeached, that revealed the Iran contra controversy, and the one that lead to one of the largest protests against a war in American history (the Iraq war protests).
You took events that transpired and then placed the blame on the system that allowed us to correct for these events in the first place (or at least attempt to). I'm sorry your criteria for a functioning and healthy media system is one that A) Never makes mistakes B) Can preemptively stop government officials from doing bad things.
I'd be interested to see you expound on the statements you made.
At the time the media was the only way people could hear about those things, just imagine the number of smaller leaks and investigations that came to nothing because they were not reported.
The system didn't correct anything. Not one of those presidents went to jail, not one of those who followed them learned anything, and none of the issues were stopped because of it, their had either already happened or are still an ongoing issue.
While you are correct, one could also make the (likewise correct) argument that pre-Internet information was not necessarily always fact-checked and true, but simply the version approved by the authorities.
In any case, I think we need a return to some sort of expertise or trusted authority system. Hopefully the internet allows for this to be independent of the political and corporate establishment.
[For the most part] I think Wikipedia embodies the growing of what you mentioned earlier.
It is still affected by bad actors, but has improved substantially from what it was by a growing community of oversight. Not a perfect model, but an interesting one in my opinion.
"Fact-checking" is itself vulnerable to political bias. Outside of the truly ludicrous (i.e. things like "pizzagate", and all sorts of conspiracy theories in general), I don't think you can call people 'irrational actors' merely for seeking alternative sources of fact-checking and "non-fake" news media. Even the New York Times acknowledges that there is such a thing as an "intellectual dark web", which goes to prove that "information anarchy" is occasionally useful and worthwhile.
The internet is not some magical haven for information and knowledge. In its current form, it's comparable to information anarchy. It's not tenable.