Quite a few news sites are now adhered to the
Trust Project. This is an initiative that aims to establish a reputation system for news. It looked quite interesting, so I read a bit more. Basically the users of this system are (guess ... ) Google, Bing, etc. So this "project" aims to control what is considered true and what is not and then make sure that the official truth is the only truth?
I found further confirmation on their FAQ: <quote>
I’m a freelancer? Can I get a Trust Mark? Not right now. The Trust Indicators are meant to enable people to quickly assess the trustworthiness of a story and are produced by publishers on their sites. If you’re a regular contributor, you may want to ask your clients to create an author page for you as part of the Author/Producer Information Trust Indicator</quote>
How would you build a decentralized system that could objectively measure news veracity without leading to paid content production and linking, while treating the small and big alike?