The same media told me that they were eating each other after a New Orleans Hurricane and how dangerous and violent the tea parties are.
The entire “media” didn’t tell you that Tea Partiers were violent - or that they were eating each other after Katrina. (I never heard that one.) You could find different portrayals of those events depending on where you looked.
“The Tea Party is violent,” is a good example of a “factoid”. Mainly, that story when covered on my news lineup they have on my cable box) took the line of “Some say the Tea Party movement is encouraging violence. Let’s examine this,” and then have two talking heads from either side, talking about signs (because they had no actual incidents to cover.)
The “media” isn’t monolithic. If they were, they wouldn’t make any money - which is, ultimately, why most of the big players, especially on cable and broadcast, exist. There will always be alternative “stories” or explanations for an event. That’s the whole point of marketing -offer the consumer something different.
It’s only big things like a hurricane, an earthquake, or a bombing can be covered without opinion, because they obviously occurred. But after that, all the explanations portrayals of the causes and the following events can be different from outlet to outlet.
I prefer to triangulate - to find all the stories I can from the different angles, see what facts about the case at hand that each offer, and figure the truth is somewhere in there.
Ever served om a jury? It’s a lot like that. I won’t take anybody’s story right from the get-go. Every testimony leaves some important part out, or provides info from a different angle.