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The accuracy of human's ability to detect fake news can be correllated with cognitive ability. Typically we look at the quality of the writing, formality of the language, citations, past knowledge of author or outlet, past knowledge of named sources and other qualities old fashioned real journalists and editors are well aware of.

So instead of google rank purely by citation, create a Bayesian lie detector. Set the output to True and throw a math or physics textbook at a ML training network. Give it some weather and other verifiable predictions from the past which are verifiable.

Then set it to False and send it excepts from the Enquirer, Star, Onion.

Finally, send it text from trumptwitterarchive and whitehouse.gov and stand out of the way!

Captain Kirk: Everything Harry tells you is a lie. Remember that. Everything Harry tells you is a lie.
Harry Mudd: Listen to this carefully, Norman. I am lying.
Norman the android: You say you are lying, but if everything you say is a lie then you are telling the truth, but you cannot tell the truth because everything you say is a lie. You lie. You tell the truth. But you cannot for. Illogical! Illogical! Please explain. (Smoke comes out of Norman's head.)

Really getting tired of those supporting right wing causes lying out their asses.

Trust in the press in "most of the west" is not at the levels you suggest. Gallup and other independent agencies run polls regularly and have found the opposite:

http://www.gallup.com/poll/195...

http://www.journalism.org/2016...

https://www.americanpressinsti...

Only members of a single party severely distrust the media and only because they are commanded to distrust the media by their party. That doesn't mean the press is un-trustworthy or a liberal bias, just that the conservatives regularly attack the media for reporting on just about anything that disagrees with what they are saying and their followers agree with the distrust without any effort of critical thought or even benefit of the doubt. When a story that has absolutely no political slant and only presents facts can be labeled as "liberal", as has been the case more than a dozen times in the last two years, it's pretty obvious that the right are not fighting any form of political slant but reality itself.

It's a matter of a significant portion of the population putting their party before fact or country and are willing to lie to support their causes and nothing to do with their opponents conspiring against them.

I should also mention that a particular country in the news a lot as of late has regularly used it's news agencies and intelligence agencies to also spread distrust of the US media.

https://www.rt.com/usa/340124-...

People do care, but it is having an opposite effect because the american population is not trusting the media that much
If they want to stump the trump, they should all act like they got bought by him, but that would be too much un-PC.

a reporter worth his salt

I would also like to see a unicorn.

The problem is that journalistic quality is not really measured. Western societies just do not (really) reward good journalism. There may be some prizes and awards within the field that matter somewhat, but the largest part of it is an entirely different beast of 'attention', 'sensation', 'controversy', 'clicks', 'tweets', 'views', etc. These have become the metrics for success in the field (one could argue that similar metrics always were, btw) and in no way do they stimulate quality journalism.

1. Take a basic course on what good journalism is or hell, just look up some resources on it on the web, for instance: http://www.americanpressinstit...
2. Hold the definition(s) of good journalism against 10 different (quality) articles.
3. Cry.

Call me a cynical bastard, but from what I encounter, a maximum of only 5% of the 'quality' articles I read are half-decent when it comes to adhering to core principles of journalism. The basic principle of 'Audi alteram partem', i.e. informing the reader on the views from both sides is so often not followed at all or done in such a mangled, subjective and derisive way that the entire article is still completely one-sided.

I thoroughly believe that sometimes the state of those articles is due to malice, sometimes due to incompetence, but mostly because of the lack of reward for being and motivation to be a good journalist.

If these journalists really beleive in what they are doing, why not spend time in jail in the rare case where protecting a source is important?

What makes you think that these journalists don't exist? I have not heard of this person outside of Slashdot and I do read the newspapers.

Here's are couple such people that you are asking about:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic le/2005/06/27/AR2005062700489_pf.html
http://www.americanpressinstitute.org/pages/resour ces/2004/11/journalists_need_a_getoutofjai/

Is it you who decides what types of sources are and are not worth protecting? For example, I really don't like the shenanigans thatt the current White House is doing, but even with the first example, I don't think that a member of the press should be compelled into revealing the source of their information.

Of course, it's more convenient to only point fingers at those whose politics you disagree with.

Almost as convenient as making unfounded and incorrect claims to defend your favorite politician.

Read some discussion on the differences beween the Ashcroft and Reno DoJ and come back and tell me that the Bush administration smells as sweet as the Clinton administration.