I don't trust the main stream media at all. As part of my long term research on NLP + text mining, I got in the habit of using English language news article from around the world as a text corpus. As part of this process I noticed the disconnect to US coverage compared to foreign news sources. Realizing that everyone has their own agenda, this experience still makes me sceptical of our news.
That said, I am also very sceptical of what I read on the web. I follow several people's blogs and what they post on social media because over the years what they say usually turns out to be correct.
Mostly dealing with our military operations (e.g., civilian casualties), that we are savior of the free world, how life in other countries is so much worse than in the USA (large dose of American exceptionalism).
The USA is a great place, but there are also many other countries that are also great places.
Someone was talking about how, when you use existing systems to translate an poem written in arabic by a ten year old it comes out unintelligible, but the same process is flawless for descriptions of terrorist attacks.
That said, I am also very sceptical of what I read on the web. I follow several people's blogs and what they post on social media because over the years what they say usually turns out to be correct.