This thread is to share tips and advice on how to glean truth from moderately biased sources, and to detect seriously biased sources that should be viewed very critically. The working assumption is that no source is perfectly unbiased.
Here are some generic pointers I have found personally useful:
If the source — or its sponsors — gain politically, financially, ideologically, personally or emotionally by making you believe in what they report, they are to be read very critically. No matter how professional or smart their arguments and ‘facts’ seem on the surface. One must first independently establish their lack of bias and absence of interfering private interests before naively believing in them and quoting them flippantly to others. Most people unfortunately don’t make such an independent and intelligent assessment — also known as ‘source criticism’.
Sometimes we even hold onto highly biased sources because they justify our own personal beliefs and theories ... Read even more
