Truth is not Democratic. Consensus has nothing to do with the situation (although I appreciate the sentiment.)
History and News are shaped first and foremost by the public's wishes. This is how lore and heroes are made.
News produce what the public wants to see. I worked for a major media company in NY for a while. Every month we contacted surveys in regards to what people wanted to see and the publisher was creating news to satisfy the market. This is also what Hollywood does with movies. This is what every major company does. You research the market and then you market upon those wishes.
Fakes news are the product of the free market much like democracy, religion and everything we see around us. Humanity's tragedy is that it feeds itself self fulfilling narratives. If people wanted to see hopeful, true and positive news they would shape the market to do so. Instead what we see is lies, pessimism and doom because this is exactly what the average human craves.
because the average human finds it more entertaining, and it is
It's a good point, that news currently operates on a supply / demand model. Funny enough, this is exactly what state sponsored news was always supposed to protect against, having compromise on truth because private media must to give people what they want in order to sell papers and turn a profit. Not only that but as a business you are obliged to take any and every step to increase profitability, so if you can get away with sensationalism you will as it's more exciting. The government is supposed to be outside the market and thus not bound by such Darwinian struggle. Kind of like God is supposed to be I guess, like Hobbes theorised.
It obviously works out that state media is worse, and we all know why. It becomes propaganda, perhaps always was and will be, because it is not in their interest to promote challenges their authority or the legitimacy of their rule.
In any case, no one really wants a free market without rules, they just don't want the rules to be abstract, opaque and unfair. Truth is a rule aspect, not a commodity. Fake news is the product of a system where the rules are not concerned with truth. It doesn't mean this must necessarily be so.
Because another thing which the average human craves is fairness.