I judge media outlets based on reputation, who owns the company, and the nature of the advertisers. I look for rhetoric, euphemisms/dysphemisms, added opinion, personality of news person/journalist (attention seeker? semi-celebrity? etc), sensationalism, and agenda.
The news is business and money is the motivator.
Another problem is the prevalence of anonymous sources, and also of single-source info - i.e., only one publication reports an incident, and it can't be confirmed by reading stories from other journalists citing their own sources.
And this is a big problem right now. It adds this false value tot he message, which cannot be verified. And while I understand the importance of anonymous sources, I do believe it has been abused lately. Especially when they say " A unnamed person with knowledge of...", etc. that is when a red flag should present itself.
Can we trust the journalist to reveal ALL the information given to them through anonymous sources?
Are the motives of the unnamed sources thoroughly questioned?
We are required to put trust in the mainstream media in order to make such anonymous sources have ANY validity. And I feel that trust has been squandered as of late. The true cost of this petty back and forth between Mr. and Mrs. Smith aka Trump vs. The Media.
We let the media get away with it. We have more and more tuned into information we WANT to hear, not what we NEED to hear, so we bear a part of the responsibility as well.
TLDR: NPR biches.