>Democracy needs to provide room for criticism, absolutely. But it also requires everybody to be operating from some kind of baseline consensus as to what's rea

>Democracy needs to provide room for criticism, absolutely. But it also requires everybody to be operating from some kind of baseline consensus as to what's real and what isn't, or at least some openness to having your mind changed by evidence. Let's suppose, hypothetically, that I find my way to an "alternative", non-mainstream site. This fictional site specifically claims that they found the student records of the brother of a prominent (fictional) Congressional representative, and also found the divorce certificate of that representative and her former husband. This fictional site claims to have found embarrassing information about the representative from cross-referencing those two legal documents. The Congressperson and the mainstream media immediately dismisses this as a crazy conspiracy theory[0]. My question, then, is: 1) If this fictional site is lying, how would I verify that if no other media organization will verify or disprove this information? 2) If this fictional site is telling the truth, what grounds would I have to believe this if all the mainstream sites are calling it a conspiracy theory? 3) If someone were to go on an major investigative journey to uncover something that goes against all major media biases, how would he be able to present his case without being immediately dismissed as a conspiracy theorist? 4) If someone- mainstream or alternative- were to go on the internet and simply tell lies, how would we be able to fact-check them if they were the only news organization covering that particular story? [0] ROT13: uggcf://cwzrqvn.pbz/qnivqfgrvaoret/bssvpvny-fpubby-erpbeqf-fhccbeg-pynvzf-gung-erc-vyuna-bzne-q-za-zneevrq-ure-oebgure/