[quote=@mdk]
<Snipped quote by Vilageidiotx>

My rule of thumb is to avoid [b]all[/b] media options. Read the news that interests you, sure, but only read as far as the first citation -- then stop reading the shitty news and go read the source instead. Takes longer, but if you do anything else you're getting a watered-down lowest-common-denominator simplification, and you're not actually getting informed.

So like, when Reuters reports that Texas passed a law about abortion restrictions, you go through the Reuters article -- skipping as many words as humanly possible -- until you find the link to the law itself. Read the law. Then if you feel like it, come back to Reuters and see what some journalist with no law degree thinks it means, but remember that they probably did less research than you did already, so it's okay to ignore most of what they say.
[/quote]

That works for laws, and if there is a law you feel it is important to read then it is a good idea to go ahead and read it (though reading a law without a law degree would affect me as much as the journalist). 

But it's difficult to do the same thing with, say, something related to the civil war in Syria. I could go looking for eye witness accounts, but those will be just as biased as the accounts of journalists, so you end up having to trust imperfect sources.