what places should I started reading to know what is really going on?
You want to stay away from clearly partisan news sources -- and no,
CNN is not in that category, despite what certain rabidly-right-wing people may have to say. Any "news" organization that is essentially state-run TV should be avoided. Yes, MSNBC
does lean left, but because (unless Faux) they do try to separate their news programs from their opinion programs, when it comes to reporting on what is actually going on, with facts and proper citations, they are a good source of news and information. Not a perfect source -- no one is perfect -- but a good one. Especially when it comes to easily verifiable things that happened right in front of all of us, like whether or not
it rained in Washington DC on January 20, 2017 (
it did) or
the size of the crowd at a particular location on that day, or things which were
captured on tape.The
negative effects of a
continuous stream of
propaganda on the citizenry of a representative democratic republic
are well known. So you want to stay away from sources like Faux News, One America News (OAN), Sinclair, etc. and not only because they are so right-leaning that they are essentially "state-run TV" at this point. If one has a slant, one should be upfront about it, so that their viewership will know from the get-go to be aware of their biases and filter out accordingly. Those "news" organizations don't even try to hide the fact that
they are not trying to be neutral, that
they are directly helping to drive policy of the current regime, that they are essentially
broadcasting to an audience of one, and that they are
no longer a credible source of "news" (if indeed
they ever were). Which means they are doing a disservice to the entire country. And why there are so few journalists left there.
News sources that try their best to maintain a neutral stance towards reporting the news include National Public Radio (NPR), the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), the Associated Press (AP), Reuters, and (surprisingly, given the name) The Christian Science Monitor. Non-American news sources such as DeutscheWelle, France24, and the British Broadcasting Corporation (the BBC) are better in many ways when it comes to covering American news than a lot of the American news organizations. Yes, the BBC is not perfect either, but at least they try to be neutral.
They for sure have faults of their own. And unlike what the current occupant of the Oval (who is on record as
lying more than 16,000 times at this point, and rising) has to say: no, the three major networks (ABC, CBS, NBC) are not "fake news". See:
projection, and
gaslighting.In short, you want to stick to sources as close to the top-middle section of the
Media Bias Chart 5.1 as you can, and if you do partake of "news" being spread from those sources towards either tail of the chart, proceed with caution. Example: you know things are bad when
the Voice of America (VOA), which was established by the US government during the Cold War to counter Russia propaganda (and which until 2013 was forbidden to broadcast directly to American citizens under Section 501 of the
Smith–Mundt Act), is more neutral and fact-based than Faux News is.