Earlier this year, I wrote about the problem of knowing which journalists or publications to trust in a sea of contradictory information.
After I had published the post, I realised that there was a throwaway line about “proper journalism processes” that could do with some expansion. I said:
… a place to start might be local, and small. If there’s a small community publication or radio station in your area, start there. Listen to their reports, read their articles. Does what they say seem fair and reasonable to you, does it match with what you know to have happened in the place that you live? If you are lucky enough to find such a publication, pay attention to the wider sources that they may be using and quoting. Because if they have applied the proper journalism processes to their own work (with the end result that their journalism matches with your knowledge of the world), they will be applying those processes to all the sources they use.