I've been sticking to reading https://text.npr.org/ and my local PBS/NPR-affiliate's local news coverage. Yes, both are biased and lean towards the liberal end of the news spectrum, but neither seems to push modern news shock and awe tactics nearly as evidently and I feel like I'm aware enough of what's going on locally and in the world to have decent conversations in social settings.
One nice thing about not fully comprehending what's going on in the news is that in social situations you can ask others lots of questions about current events and the people you're talking to will feel very proud that they can explain things to someone else. It's a good ice breaker, at least until it gets to be all political...
I’ve never understood why we need to make these caveats. “Objective” or “just the facts” news has never existed. It’s impossible.
I’m not knocking you, I just think it’s silly you should even feel pressure to publicly acknowledge something so patently obvious, yet we both know that if you didn’t the chance is high that the first comment you’d get is a complaint about your “biased” media outlets. As if any other kind exists lol
If you don't say this, someone somewhere on the internet will accuse you of thinking your news source is perfectly unbiased, even if you never said such a thing. It's a useful caveat just to try and defuse that kind of low signal argumentation.
Understanding that unbiased reporting is a farce requires some understanding of media literacy and in my experience most people do not have that literacy nor a desire to learn about it. So the caveat is unfortunately necessary.
One nice thing about not fully comprehending what's going on in the news is that in social situations you can ask others lots of questions about current events and the people you're talking to will feel very proud that they can explain things to someone else. It's a good ice breaker, at least until it gets to be all political...