I'm not talking about vetting pictures. I'm talking about journalists who investigate issues THEMSELVES and uncover the truth. They take their OWN pictures and post them on their website and accounts putting their credibility as collateral. We trust them, not because it's a picture, but because of who took it.

This already happened with text, people learned "Don't believe everything you read!" And invented the press to figure out the truth. It used to be a core part of our society. But people were tricked into thinking pictures and video were somehow mediums of empirical truth, just because it's HARD to fake. But never impossible. Which is worse, actually. So we neglected the press and let it collapse into a shit show because we thought we could do it ourselves.