Well I just pointed to knowing liars and people who rely on knowing liars. Honestly I think most people are just doing their best to tell their incomplete knowl

Well I just pointed to knowing liars and people who rely on knowing liars. Honestly I think most people are just doing their best to tell their incomplete knowledge accurately, and assessing people in that lens helps clarify a lot. Science media tends to laud an experiment that turns out to be non-replicatable, so it's good to keep that in mind when you read science media. Scientists are incentivized not to do boring experiments, so that's useful to keep in mind when reading science. But like, how did you know that science media tends to do X? Scientists are incentivized to do Y? How do you know that NYT and Fox are incentivized in the ways you're talking about? The reason why they're even notable is because someone else is looking at it and going "hey!! this is going on!!" and presumably this person isn't a known liar/acting on known lies. Maybe enough independent people are saying it that collusion is statistically unlikely. But you do have a knowledge base. It's as simple as knowing what your knowledge base is, in relative to the knowledge bases others are using.