Bias does not necessarily follow from "paid for by the... government", "run by mostly large conglomerate corps", and "need licenses for the public airwaves". Mo

Bias does not necessarily follow from "paid for by the... government", "run by mostly large conglomerate corps", and "need licenses for the public airwaves". Most everything good is paid for by someone or some group; journalists don't have the means to do their reporting for free. Ultimately you have to use your own judgement, but if your preferred news organizations have a history of hiring honest and reputable journalists and providing unbiased coverage (especially if it targets institutions of power) then I think heuristically you can leave them in your "trusted source" folder. In the worst case scenario, I suppose you can just follow your favorite journalists and rely on personal trust and reputation.