Please help me understand why they still use "sources"

One thing I've never understood about this type of media is the way they misrepresent sources. Why do they misrepresent instead of making information up from scratch? It seems to me like it would be much less effort, and you could do a much "deeper analysis" because you don't have to avoid accidentally hitting facts.

Has their audience ever cared about sources? It's very hard to believe that they would, but maybe I'm being overly cynical. Certainly, the behaviour of people like Alex Jones seems to indicate that they believe their audience requires some tenuous grounding in fact, but I don't buy it.