I think we're in a state of transition that will take a few decades to resolve itself.

In the past, it was difficult to get an idea published. Money and power are definitely not sufficient to show that someone's ideas should be listened to (in some cases, the converse is true), but they're at least weakly correlated to competence. Also, when the barrier to entry was higher, less was produced, so there was a lot more opportunity for coversight.

This lead to printed words and popular speech having an air of authority and truthfulness. I expect that this will be swiftly eroded, and replaced with more caution, as society adjusts.