An obvious viable alternative is to avoid consuming the news in cases when you detect that the information has a high likelihood of being manipulative or not containing accurate information.
If you happen to be an expert in a certain topic, you’ll reliably detect this for news items of that topic.
The OP is meant to talk about extending that experience into a general prior belief that such mistakes also occur in areas of the news about which you are not an expert.
Even if you only have one potential modality for consuming news information (i.e. consumer media), you still have the option to try to mentally model the uncertainty within that modality, and either adjust your general skepticism of all news upward, or adjust your consumption of news downward. Either of which could be policies that cause you to become more informed by consuming / believing the news less, depending on your personal parameters for the optimization policy.
If you happen to be an expert in a certain topic, you’ll reliably detect this for news items of that topic.
The OP is meant to talk about extending that experience into a general prior belief that such mistakes also occur in areas of the news about which you are not an expert.
Even if you only have one potential modality for consuming news information (i.e. consumer media), you still have the option to try to mentally model the uncertainty within that modality, and either adjust your general skepticism of all news upward, or adjust your consumption of news downward. Either of which could be policies that cause you to become more informed by consuming / believing the news less, depending on your personal parameters for the optimization policy.