How Can I Know What Media Outlets To Trust?

[Aaron p]

 

It feels like I have no idea who I can trust anymore in terms of being informed of actual public events like trump and whatnot. 

[Joshe]

In a word: Discernment. 

Media outlets have descended because their viewers demand certain narratives be upheld, or at least, not attacked, which makes it challenging for them to only bring you what is true. Priority #1 is to feed easy narratives to those who don’t know how or don’t want to question, and if they can fit the truth in there, then great, but truth isn’t their top priority.

You need to be up-to-speed on all forms of psychological trickery and deception, especially the kinds used by marketers, politicians, etc. 

When you watch Chenk from Young Turks, you need to be able to discern what he’s up to. Analyze commercials and understand how they’re working. What tactics are they using? What audience are they targeting. How big is the audience, etc. Tese types of inquiries build discernment. You have to practice making reads and wait for them to be confirmed or disconfirmed. Over time, discernment builds.

That said, you should be pretty safe in trusting what credible media outlets are left. AP, Reuters, NPR, Axios, and a few others. But always leave room for them to be mistaken on details, and get good at separating fact from opinion and don’t give opinions much weight. For example, today, the Trump regime said they’re considering suspending Habeus Corpus or whatever. That’s a fact I accept because I heard it straight from the horses mouth, but when it comes to fleshing out the implications of that fact, I will not rely much on punditry commentary. I do consume commentary but I don’t automatically buy it without applying my own critical thinking and exploration. 

I often use ChatGPT to get to the bottom of things. Today, I asked it was is Habeus Corpus, when in the past it has been suspended and why, and what the implications of its suspension are. After that inquiry, I don’t need commentary, unless there’s something I missed, which I can always inquire further into if I come across it. Point is, never just trust someone to tell you what’s true. 

Edited May 9 by Joshe

[Leo Gura]

Don't trust. Think.

Thinking solves all problems. Except the ones that can't be solved by thinking.

Edited May 9 by Leo Gura

[Hojo]

Watch everything come to your own conclusion. If you are left wing watch left wing content then watch right wing content and point out the inconsistencies. You will notice every right wing person is just making shit up. Left wing content is like university and right wing is like kindergarten.

Edited May 10 by Hojo

[Sugarcoat]

Most likely you won’t do anything about those Public events or they don’t affect you much… so what’s the need in knowing about them 

[Breathe]

Yeah, that's a tough question. I don't agree with Leo because you have to have facts to actually think about. Which means, you need reliable sources of facts. That said, some news sources are more trustworthy than others. Find some good journalists, historians, and economists. A lot of them are writing about current events on Bluesky and Substack and making appearances on YouTube.

Some I like are Sarah Kendzior, Heather Cox Richardson, Timothy Snyder, Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Olga Lautman, Chris Hedges, Richard Wolff. These are all relevant right now. They all knew this was coming.

[Twentyfirst]

I think you should already be predicting future trends 5 or 10 years before it happens so by the time it happens you already knew it would be so

[Aaron p]

I predict massive focus on aesthetic technology in the future. Nice looking video games, human looking ai robots, AI art, everything fake, everything plastic

[Yimpa]

[Breathe]

@Yimpa Lol

[SwiftQuill]

It's all fake news.

[Jodistrict]

On 5/9/2025 at 4:15 PM, Leo Gura said:

Don't trust. Think.

Thinking solves all problems. Except the ones that can't be solved by thinking.

But you need a source that gives you the true facts.  A biased source can slant a story so that there is only one conclusion you can come too.  Whereas if you had just one more fact (which was concealed from you) you would have come to the opposite conclusion.  So your thinking mind is useless without facts that honestly depict the situation (where honesty includes not concealing relevant facts).