It's also clear that there is a shed-load of cash to be made by peddling conspiracy and disaster to people. I can't claim to be any great expert on this, but James Ellroy's novels are full of very similar stuff being pumped out of radio stations and small printing presses in the 1950s and '60s. I think the universal web has opened up a new front for this stuff, with almost zero barriers of entry.
I've seen people comparing the impact of the web to the first appearance of the printing press: 1440(ish) printing press invented, within a century Catholic Europe ripped in two and the world turned upside down!