I wasn't aware that there was a perception that Google's results had any indication of the truth of the content it returned. I thought everyone just knew that anything on the web is just as likely to be false, spam, shills, or just bad marketing as it is to be an accurate worthwhile piece of content.
So while Google may have its flaws... I wouldn't go to them to solve this problem. I'd teach the people more critical thinking and encourage them to apply it to whatever they read.
Maybe there wasn't one. But Google has moved from a "top 10 results" strategy to a "we'll give you the best answer for your question" search strategy. They did this for one because that's what kind of service they'd ideally like to be for their users, but also because that's the only way voice search can work - by giving you just one answer.
The problem with this is that while before the #1 result on their search engine didn't actually have to be the best most relevant result that there is on the internet, but just one of the best answers, now it has to be the absolute best and most accurate result, because of this shift in strategy of only showing you one answer. They can't afford any mistake with this. And that's way harder to solve as a problem than the problems they had before with the top 10 results.
In this case, it apparently wasn't an answer, though. It was a box saying "popular on Twitter". That's not much of an endorsement.
It's a cliché to say that people should think more critically. In this case it's just a matter of knowing what "popular on Twitter" means when it comes to breaking news. It's not really about whether you trust Google and more about knowing that Twitter rumors are often inaccurate, however you run across them.
So while Google may have its flaws... I wouldn't go to them to solve this problem. I'd teach the people more critical thinking and encourage them to apply it to whatever they read.