Just want to say I regret the tone I used in my reply, which was not in the spirit of HN. You're correct that some level of skepticism is good. My actual view, if I leave out the hyperbole, is that in the current era, we've reached paranoid levels of it.
That's a fair point you're making here! Also "skepticism" that's used to justify believing whatever you want to believe, regardless of what the evidence says. That's a problem.
My reply is something a bit different: I believe news in general is junk food for your brain. The incentives involved in news publishing today tend to go against accuracy and truthfulness, and the things most described are usually the things that matter least - so news ultimately yields a negative value in terms of understanding the world around you. Better to pick a book instead.
I think few would argue that big news outlets are free of bias and sensationalism. The questions is to what degree?
There's a tendency, on the internet, to write off establishment people and groups completely, based on their all-time most egregious mistake (eg: The NYT is reduced to their toadying to Bush over WMD, election polling is meaningless because it failed to predict 2016, etc).
Most of these organizations aren't stellar, but, at this point, the public perception is so paranoid it makes Noam Chomsky sound as credulous as a boy scout.
