Part of the problem is the internet has taken a lot of the money out of local news. They don't check things because they don't have time. Where I live all the local papers, which were going bankrupt, were bought by a conglomerate and 90% of the staff was laid off. They're more like stenographers than reporters, and it's not their fault, either. They simply do not have the time to do anything buy bounce from one story to the next, getting the facts mostly right. Nothing that's the slightest bit complex or subtle gets the treatment it would have a decade ago.