And how would you be able to publicly verify the competing alternate sources and the smoking gun? It's no different than the situation with old media, except there's more noise and disinformation, and everything is easier to fake.
replyUnless you personally are physically there with whatever necessary field expertise exists to run experiments or interrogate witnesses, you wind up having to trust somebody either way.
I mean the fact that the effect of all of this "alternative" media has been the complete dissolution of any kind of objective reality in favor of conspiracy theories and pseudoscience, rather than holding power to account, should demonstrate that it isn't better.
Being able to see the evidince presented by the alternatives, the degree to which they're grasping at straws, the scope of their criticism, etc. you can get a handle on the general degree of legitimacy of the original reporting.
replyWhen some source says something and backs it up with numbers and everyone on the other side attacks the conclusion but not the numbers that says something about the numbers.