As much as I complain about "social media news", if it wasn't for people across the political spectrum sitting in their basements and investigating stuff like this, the truth would never come to light, the NYT wouldn't have made a half-assed correction, and they would still be Nikky Haley's curtains.
It really makes you wonder how much of the news from say 40 years ago, when it was only "the big three" on TV, and the major papers, was lies / manipulation. I mean, even if there were people tracking the stuff down, how would they get the truth out there? You'd pretty much have to write a magazine article or a book and hope that it got published months later, when everyone forgot about the lie, or had already had the lie repeated so much that they believed it, regardless of new evidence.
Having lies like this exposed hours after they are published makes up for a lot of the wacko stuff on the interwebz.
ETA: In fact of late, I've been wondering how much of the Watergate investigation was true and how much was made up, given Woodward's new book being torn to shreds regarding facts and anonymous sources.