The Santa Monica Observer received a trust score of just 12.5 out of 100 on media monitor NewsGuard's rating scale last year, being described as: "Another example of a publisher producing unreliable content under the guise of local news."But Waldman and other experts say the relative deficit of credible reporting -- about one in four US newspapers has disappeared since 2005, and another third are likely to be gone by 2025 -- makes it harder for voters to separate fact from fiction.Masquerading as neutralMore than 1,200 outlets that Kreiss of UNC described as "thinly veiled actors posing as neutral news websites" have cropped up in the past few years, according to researchers at Columbia University's Tow Center for Digital Journalism."These pseudo-newsrooms have taken advantage of Meta's low costs, hyper-targeting tools and porous policies related to political ad spending to target voters in battleground states while underplaying or entirely hiding their partisan-driven agendas and financing," NewsGuard said, referring to the owner of Facebook and Instagram.An estimated 10 percent get news from TikTok, according to a separate Pew report, and some six percent get news from "alternative" platforms such BitChute, Parler and Truth Social."