It ain't easy, my brotha, I can tell you that much. And I have the advantage of living alone with a lot of time on my hands, which I invest long hours every day into examining sources and trying to make sense of various situations around the world which attract my interest. I can also tell you that, just on the overall topic of Russian history and how it fits in with this war in Ukraine, I have rejected far more venues and outlets than I have continued to peruse, and continue turning unreliable sources away with each passing day.
My main approach is to examine any written text or spoken audio content for its biases and predispositions, first of all. Not that these are necessarily any discredit to a given source, but if one is not aware of them one is easily lured into outright acceptance or rejection of what they have to say, and it just isn't anywhere near that simple. ALL sources are biased to some extent, and ALL audiences are addressed to some degree based on their known predispositions.
But again, this is not necessarily a bad thing either: by becoming familiar with and literate in the various biases and predispositions one encounters, and then (most crucially) comparing and contrasting those with the same elements observed in other sources, the result can be a kind of stereoscopic effect, meaning that by examining a single occurrence or trending narrative from numerous angles, one can begin to outwit the false impression that any one of them is sufficiently informative, just within its own preselected two-dimensional frame.
Also by sustaining a working familiarity with 'logical fallacies', of which there are hundreds and which we all use on a habitual and continual basis in order to try and outwit reality into conforming to our own preferences, one can as well begin to recognize, at least potentially, why a given false dichotomy or confirmation bias (for instance) is in evidence from one source, while other fallacies are used to hold other accounts of the same events together.
But probably the most reliable devices I use are very similar to those used by criminal investigators to narrow down potential lists of suspects: motive, method and opportunity might be established more solidly than actual collusion or culpability, and while one might never know the full factual basis of any given story, at least to measure the narratives used to deliver them in terms of who benefits can help to narrow them down to whether one narrative might be more plausible than another.
I'll tell you one thing for sure though, the worst mistake to make is to take ANY source or ANY singular account on face value. Again referring to the benchmarks used in criminal investigation and prosecution, one may never establish anything 'beyond a reasonable doubt', but it's a mathematical certainty that the more evidence one examines, the more likely it is that one might approach what its preponderance suggests.
And then, just like everybody else, I just decide what to believe, what to reject out of hand, and what to remain skeptical about, then get up the next day and start the process all over again..
It ain't easy, my brotha, I can tell you that much. And I have the advantage of living alone with a lot of time on my hands, which I invest long hours every day into examining sources and trying to make sense of various situations around the world which attract my interest. I can also tell you that, just on the overall topic of Russian history and how it fits in with this war in Ukraine, I have rejected far more venues and outlets than I have continued to peruse, and continue turning unreliable sources away with each passing day.
My main approach is to examine any written text or spoken audio content for its biases and predispositions, first of all. Not that these are necessarily any discredit to a given source, but if one is not aware of them one is easily lured into outright acceptance or rejection of what they have to say, and it just isn't anywhere near that simple. ALL sources are biased to some extent, and ALL audiences are addressed to some degree based on their known predispositions.
But again, this is not necessarily a bad thing either: by becoming familiar with and literate in the various biases and predispositions one encounters, and then (most crucially) comparing and contrasting those with the same elements observed in other sources, the result can be a kind of stereoscopic effect, meaning that by examining a single occurrence or trending narrative from numerous angles, one can begin to outwit the false impression that any one of them is sufficiently informative, just within its own preselected two-dimensional frame.
Also by sustaining a working familiarity with 'logical fallacies', of which there are hundreds and which we all use on a habitual and continual basis in order to try and outwit reality into conforming to our own preferences, one can as well begin to recognize, at least potentially, why a given false dichotomy or confirmation bias (for instance) is in evidence from one source, while other fallacies are used to hold other accounts of the same events together.
But probably the most reliable devices I use are very similar to those used by criminal investigators to narrow down potential lists of suspects: motive, method and opportunity might be established more solidly than actual collusion or culpability, and while one might never know the full factual basis of any given story, at least to measure the narratives used to deliver them in terms of who benefits can help to narrow them down to whether one narrative might be more plausible than another.
I'll tell you one thing for sure though, the worst mistake to make is to take ANY source or ANY singular account on face value. Again referring to the benchmarks used in criminal investigation and prosecution, one may never establish anything 'beyond a reasonable doubt', but it's a mathematical certainty that the more evidence one examines, the more likely it is that one might approach what its preponderance suggests.
And then, just like everybody else, I just decide what to believe, what to reject out of hand, and what to remain skeptical about, then get up the next day and start the process all over again..
Confused enough yet?