I agree that America has a massive cultural + media problem right now, but I'm skeptical that the problem is literal "lies," i.e. factually incorrect statements presented as facts. The real issue is in embellishments, misrepresentations, and generally mixing of fact and opinion.
The actual facts, i.e. verifiably accurate descriptions of events, would probably average less than 100 words per article. And yet every article is 800+ words. What are the other 700 words about? That, IMO, is the real issue with the content of media these days (ignoring the larger problem with the distribution of it, i.e. social media).
The other issue is lack of ability for the average reader to verify facts presented in the article. There is so much information on every topic, but we cannot be experts in every topic. So by nature, we must trust others to be experts and accurately interpret the facts. Not only does this inhibit us from verifying facts, it also makes it impossible to provably judge which facts are true, but embellished.
Before a false claim exists, there is a vacuum. It takes no energy to create false claim X. Anyone can post an article claiming X, with no real need to cite any authority. But for someone to then disprove X, it does require energy. They need to read the article, find motivation to disprove it, and finally write and publish a counter-article disproving the claim of X.
There will inevitably be a delay between the article claiming X and any article refuting it. Since there is a constant influx of new articles, there is a constant subset of articles that are provably false but have not been refuted. This comprises a certain percentage of news, which commands a percentage of daily eyeball time. In recent years, both these percentages have become way too high.
Interestingly, this seems like the same pattern of cat-and-mouse games that we see repeatedly in infosec. Perhaps there's something to be said for that analogy. False articles are like bugs in the global information system.
