But what do you do now that conspiracy theories are generated and popularized faster than you can possibly debunk? You kind of have to accept that you can't look at them all, and in that case do you live in a state of not knowing, even when there's an obvious assumption about a lot of them?
This is what journalism is supposed to do. You're right, as an individual I don't have the time or resources to spend 100 hours researching 10 different theories (for 1000 hours). But, 10 different journalists can each spend 100 hours researching something and provide me with boil-down reporting which might take me all of 100 minutes to consume.
Journalism has completely failed and the majority of so-called journalists no longer do actual journalism (instead doing op-eds or opinion editorials). The problem with op-eds is there is no expectation of objectivity, they are filled with bias and quite often material omissions. In the U.S. specifically, the nightly news and newspapers used to be majority journalism and minority op-eds, say 80/20 or 90/10. That has completely flipped and journalism accounts for a very small minority of what passes as "news" (now majority op-eds). If you don't believe me, go read some newspapers from the late 19th century or early 20th century and compare the quality of reporting with what we have today.
The mainstream news outlets, and even many of the alternative ones, have abdicated their responsibility to inform the public. The natural and inevitable consequence of this are two-fold:
1) There is a generational gap, as is the case currently, where the level of propaganda and misinformation is off the charts with seemingly few voices pushing back against it.
2) There is an incredible vacuum which will eventually be filled entirely by citizen journalists and alternative media sources.
