Easy.

If you're an American, don't trust one bit of American news. This whole internet thing is global. You guys know that right?

Try reading news from England, or France, or Germany.

Because I guarentee you, ALL American news outlets WILL have biased and slanted reporting. Remember when we won Vietnam? No? Oh, that's right. We LOST Vietnam, but our media was quite insistant at the time we won, and it was a sure thing.

Oh, I just realized Canada is probably also a good source for news. Bonus points if you live close enough to the border to pick up their OTA tv signals.

I've lived in Britain for over a decade until Brexit.

I can guarantee you that the British Press, including the BBC, is one of the most propagandistic in Europe by a long margin and pretty close to the American Press (just go check how the BBC or the Guardian spin news about Iran and then check the NYT - they all use the exact same Manufacturing Consent techniques as often exposed in !ManufacturingConsent@lemmy.ml

It's not by chance that the British Press is literally the one least trusted by the locals in Europe.

From what I've heard the German press is also highly propagandistic and even Racist, especially Politico (which is owned by the same people as the Bild newspaper, a very right-wing tabloid).

Shit, even in my own country - Portugal - some of the press is doing exactly the same use of differently charged words depending on the side, unquestioning trust of sources on one side but not the other and selective reporting as the BBC (though some is impeccably unbiased).

Your best bet is to determine yourself how much a news source is by looking for things like use of differently charged words and passive versus active for different sides or clearly different implied trust for sources depending on the side (for example).

I think the "public" stopped mattering a while ago.

Remember when we won Vietnam?

I don't know anyone who thinks we won that one and I spent my childhood volunteering at the VfW while dad was hanging out there.