[mikedilger]

I disagree that the prior comment "subtly shifts the blame" because the blame as to where the fake news lies has never been widely agreed upon. Refer to "Manufacturing Consent" by Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky. Damn near all sources of news are biased and have political agendas including the mainstream.

If you see independent journalists as pushing an "alternative" view, then you have a reasonable argument: take your facts from the most credible source. But that's not what is happening. Independent journalists are reporting on stories that the mainstream news isn't touching. And they are often doing it with long-form video evidence which is not easy to fake, especially as it is published right after said events happen. Certainly independent journalists are biased and opinionated, many believing in crazy conspiracy theories, but I've never found their opinions or theories to be contageous, and the video evidence is still very valuable.

A good example of news wthout bias (which is so hard to find nowadays) is Steve Lookner's Agenda Free TV on YouTube. There is simply nothing political about it, and it stands in contrast to everything else. And as others have already pointed out, watching news from both sides of the political spectrum (as difficult as that is) is probably the best way to get at the truth.

Finally, while I think James O'Keefe has very questionable investigative methods, there was no scam story - he was using fake information to draw out a journalist so as to extract information from the journalist. There was no evidence he was intending to publish that fake information as a story and he flatly denies that accusation, and WaPo did a follow up correcting the record (good on them).