How to Get Reliable News

Which news sources are reliable, why relying on one outlet skews what you believe, and how to build a balanced news diet.

Last reviewed: October 2026. Figures change; each one below names its source and date.

Most of us don't decide what's true by checking the evidence ourselves. We trust a few sources to do it for us. Which sources you pick shapes not just your opinions but what you think the facts are and what you think the other side believes. This page covers what research says about that, which sources are reliable, and how to build a news diet that doesn't leave you blindsided.

On this page: Trust in news · Why one outlet isn't enough · Reliable sources · Fact-checkers · A balanced news diet · Spotting a bad source

Trust in news is near record lows

• Only 33% of Americans trust the mass media "a great deal" or "a fair amount" (Gallup, September 2026). That's up from a record low of 28% in 2025, but far below the roughly seven in ten who did in the 1970s.
• The gap by party is huge: 50% of Democrats, 31% of independents and 22% of Republicans trust the media. Republican trust rebounded from just 8% in 2025.
• In Pew Research Center's 2025 study of 30 news sources, Democrats trusted most of them, while Republicans distrusted more of them than they trusted. Few sources were trusted by large shares of both parties. Fox News was trusted by 56% of Republicans and distrusted by 64% of Democrats; CNN was trusted by 58% of Democrats and distrusted by 58% of Republicans.
• Americans increasingly skip traditional outlets. In the Reuters Institute's 2025 survey, 54% got news from social media or video platforms in the past week, more than from TV (50%) or news websites (48%). More than one in five said they came across Joe Rogan discussing the news in a single week.

Why one outlet isn't enough

Even an outlet that never prints a false fact shapes your view through what it chooses to cover, how it frames it, and what it leaves out.

• The Fox-to-CNN experiment. In September 2020, political scientists David Broockman and Joshua Kalla paid a group of regular Fox News viewers, mostly Republicans, to watch CNN instead for about a month. Their knowledge of events and of the candidates' positions changed, as did some of their opinions, because CNN covered stories Fox didn't, and vice versa. Their party loyalty didn't change. The authors call this "partisan coverage filtering": each side's outlets highlight facts that help their side. Kalla noted CNN does it too.
• Heavy news watchers misjudge the other side more. In More in Common's Perception Gap study, people who followed the news most of the time were nearly three times as wrong about what the other party believes as people who rarely did. See political myths and facts for more.
• Feeds amplify it. Social media shows you more of what you already engage with, and outrage gets the most engagement. A feed can feel like "everyone" while showing you a narrow slice.

None of this means all outlets are equally reliable. It means any single outlet, however good, gives you an incomplete map.

Reliable sources

Start with primary sources when you can. Many claims can be checked at the source in minutes:

• Bills and votes: Congress.gov
• Budget costs: Congressional Budget Office
• Jobs, wages and prices: Bureau of Labor Statistics
• Population, income, health insurance: Census Bureau
• Court rulings: Supreme Court opinions
• Campaign money: FEC.gov
• Unedited hearings and speeches: C-SPAN

For news, the wire services are a good base. The Associated Press and Reuters write straight news that thousands of other outlets reprint, with relatively little opinion. Other outlets generally rated highly for factual reporting by media raters with different methods include the BBC, PBS News, NPR, The Wall Street Journal's news pages, The Economist and Bloomberg. Each is seen as leaning one way or another by some readers. Your local newspaper and TV station cover what national outlets don't.

For arguments, read the best of each side, not the worst. Opinion journalism is useful when you know it's opinion. Examples: The Atlantic, Vox and The Nation (left); National Review, The Dispatch and The Free Press (right); and Reason (libertarian).

Separate news from opinion. Most outlets run both. Look for labels such as "Opinion," "Analysis," "Commentary" or "Editorial," and remember that cable shows in prime time are mostly opinion.

Fact-checkers

• AP Fact Check and Reuters Fact Check
• FactCheck.org, run by the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg Public Policy Center
• PolitiFact, run by the Poynter Institute
• The International Fact-Checking Network sets standards for nonpartisanship and transparency that its members sign.

A fair caution: fact-checkers choose which claims to check, and conservatives often argue they scrutinize Republicans more. The best habit is to read the fact-check's reasoning and sources, not just the rating, and decide for yourself.

Media bias raters such as AllSides and Ad Fontes Media, and news aggregators such as Ground News, show how outlets across the spectrum cover the same story. Their ratings are judgment calls, not facts; use them to find other perspectives, not to settle arguments.

A balanced news diet

A simple routine that takes about 20 minutes a day:

1. One wire service (AP or Reuters) for the basic facts.
2. One outlet that leans your way and one that leans the other way, and notice what each covers that the other doesn't.
3. One local source for your city and state.
4. When a story makes you angry, check the primary source (the bill, the data, the full video) before sharing it.
5. Once a week, read the strongest argument against something you believe, written by someone who holds that view.

Spotting a bad source

• Do lateral reading. When you land on an unfamiliar site, open new tabs and search for who runs it before you read it. Stanford researchers found this is what professional fact-checkers do, and it is why they beat historians and students at spotting unreliable sites.
• No author, no date, no sources, or links that only lead to the same site.
• Headlines built to enrage, or claims that "the media won't tell you" something.
• Screenshots of quotes without a link, old photos or videos presented as new, and AI-generated images or audio. Search for the original, and check the date.
• No corrections policy. Reliable outlets publish corrections when they get things wrong.

See also the big policy debates, money in politics and billionaire taxes and how to read a poll.

Sources

• Gallup, trust in news media edges up from record low (September 2026) and 2025 record low.
• Pew Research Center, the political gap in Americans' news sources (June 2025).
• Reuters Institute, Digital News Report 2025 (Al Jazeera summary).
• Broockman and Kalla, the Fox-to-CNN experiment (Columbia Journalism Review; Fortune).
• More in Common, The Perception Gap (2019).
• Stanford History Education Group, lateral reading (Civic Online Reasoning).

Spotted an error or a newer figure? Write to us at [email protected] and we'll correct it.