I think it's ironic that the Internet was supposed to make news 'democratic' and free, but the fact is that driving the cost to zero also drives the quality and trustworthiness of the information to zero. We've seen that broadcast and cable news, which was always 'free' (i.e. advertiser supported) was of good quality as long as it was highly curated by the monopoly of the three US networks, but though it took a long time, that system has inevitably broken down, and value of broadcast news in total is a fraction of what it once was - can even be considered to be negative once you add in FOX.
The best hope for the future is getting people conditioned to paying for their online news sources the way they always paid for newspapers in the past. Once you pay for it, the standard you expect from that source will go up, and since you are paying for it, the independence of the source to provide the standard goes up also. I am put in mind of this by the fact that today Reuters announced they are putting up a $1/week paywall. I think they are a pretty good source, I will probably pay it.