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Yes, exactly. I can see you are somewhat of a kindred spirit in your approach to this.

As I said, I am generally not a consumer of Tucker Carlson’s product. I don’t watch it slavishly, and I have seen probably 5-10 full videos of him discussing various things including interviews. Most notably, I credit him with helping me change my opinion of Tulsi Gabbard, which was a very heavy lift for me. But I don’t watch television at all, and haven’t for nearly 25 years now, so...I don’t know him.

I even found his delivery occasionally irritating, but on the other hand, I also found it just as much entertaining.

We live in an age of an informational firehose. Information comes at us from all directions, and is composed of good information and bad information, true information and false information.

The honesty, accuracy, and intentions (good, bad, or indifferent) of people pointing that firehose at us can only be determined empirically.

We can’t accept anything at face value anymore, even from entities or people we may have previously found trustworthy and accurate.

It is a constant, ongoing process. It is like that saying ““Love doesn’t just sit there, like a stone, it has to be made, like bread; remade all the time, made new.”

And so it is with information.

I have a personal process that I follow with nearly every item of significant information I see online now. When I see a piece of information that may be meaningful in some way, I follow the same process nearly unconsciously now.

Step One: Is the overall premise plausible?
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If I see an article about a woman who got into a street fight with six Special Forces guys and kicked their asses, my first thought is: “Can it be true? Is it plausible?” I have a pretty good though not infallible sense for this as a filter with large holes that still lets a lot of things through for further investigation. For example, if I read that Bill Clinton had sex with a 12 year old girl, this is wholly going to pass this filter and continue to the next one. But if I hear Donald Trump wore a khaki shirt with a swastika armband at some secret event, I won’t. I don’t want to deliberately block things out that I should see, but...I only have limited time. This step is a form of Intellectual Triage.

Step Two: Are the details both plausible and coherent?
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That is, are the stated details compatible with each other? For example, if the information states that someone had an incident of some type in one location, yet there is proof they were at another location on that day, I reject the information with the caveat it may have been a mistake by the person relating it and can revisit it if information changes.

Step Three: Is the article overtly biased in its presentation?
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When I see an article that starts with sentences that contain things like “debunked allegations of election fraud” (as an example) right away, I am disinclined to accept anything at face value. (Note that this is the filter that made me decide to investigate this interview further, since the allegation of “holocaust denial” is plausible (but not in my mind, probable) and until I watch it, could possibly be coherent (I found it “coherent” with Cooper’s mind-set, although I disagree with many elements of it)

Step Four: What is the source?
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If something passes through all the filters and arrives here, I view the source. If it is any of the major networks (including Fox) or someplace like Vox, The New Republic, The Hill, or even Gateway Pundit (some, but not all of the criticism of that site is deserved) I may simply reject the information until additional information comes out. Given their track record, this is wholly deserved on their part. These sites have given good reason to distrust any information from them, since they openly lie at worst, or practice advocacy at best.

Step Five: What do Members of Free Republic say?
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One might think this is absolutely unnecessary, but I have been on Free Republic since 2004, and have accrued over 100,000 posts, which means I have read many, many more than that. I have also met dozens of Freepers in person, and have found that my impressions of them as people has been unfailingly accurate. I can, and have determined both the reliability and soundness of individual members of this forum. There are a few, right off the bat, that I reject the content of their postings, often due to Step Three in combination with Step Four above. If I see an opinion on Free Republic, I always look at the source of the information, that is, the poster. There are people who post and I don’t even bother reading it, and others, I take as highly reliable. And that is because they have history for me that demonstrates their sober reliability, in exactly the same way that many of the sources of information in Step Four above have shown their unreliability.

In all of this, I use Free Republic as a filter (as in Step Five). People do initially get things wrong on this site, but even unpopular information is eventually presented appropriately over time, because we still generally (though not always) are able to practice freedom of speech here. One thing I have discovered about Free Republic is, if you present an opinion, you had better think it through, because even if it is one that will popularly be viewed as acceptable, if there are holes in even that, we have enough honest people on here to smoke that out.

Free Republic can be a place of sharp opinions and sharp elbows. One has to think things through before presenting them, and be prepared to accept there are elements or premises that you may have erred on. And people aren’t always kind in their rebuttals. That is life here. I have been both giver and receiver of sharp opinions. And I have both offended and been offended.

But I try to use it always as a learning experience, to keep myself mentally agile, and to sharpen my communication skills. And that is why, after all these years I continue to give money on a monthly basis to this site. And I am grateful to Jim Robinson for making this possible. (Jim, I view you as a Patriot in this endeavor, so...thank you.)