News peddlers’ top priority seems to have shifted from telling the news accurately to telling the news quickly. Verification, fact-checking, and in many cases even spell- and grammar-checking take a back seat to publishing as fast as possible.

There is even an industry-standard warning label that they put right at the beginning of the headline: “BREAKING” (always in all-caps). If you see this, you know that the article is poorly researched. It almost certainly has some facts wrong, and may be entirely fake news. But at least you got it fast.