[mrtomservo]

You've got the crux already:

> Stories are being weaponised by populists who thrive on fear and capitalists who benefit from monetising it. The best storytellers are winning attention and winning power and keeping their power by telling even better stories.

It is increasingly costly to reach an audience (especially one of the size that would be required to have a "shared ground") not only in the sense of cash money, but also the attention cost of convincing that audience that those "better stories" (perhaps more shocking, outraging, etc.) they've been told might not be actually true.

News is becoming yet another industry that rewards the first mover -- write that first shocking headline, and all the other outlets have to work 10 or 100 times as hard to correct it later.