> Currently, there is some kind of information you and I are both succumbing to coming from "legitimate" sources that you, me, and the authorities trust. The Iraq WMD fiasco was being reported by the New York Times.

It's not accuracy that makes a source legitimate. Legitimate sources will publish misinformation.

The differences between legitimate and illegitimate sources are that (1) legitimate sources make a considerable effort to not publish misinformation, (2) legitimate sources publish corrections and retractions when they find out that they have published misinformation, and (3) legitimate sources make sure to label opinion pieces as such.

Can you give me a list of few legitimate sources out of mainstream media?

I'm assuming US.

For newspapers Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and Washington Post would be some examples. Really, most on this list [1] are going to be fine.

For radio, NPR.

For TV, the nightly news broadcasts of PBS and the major broadcast networks (ABC, CBS).

I'd be cautious about the cable news networks, like CNN and FOX. Filling a 24/7 schedule with news is hard without getting mind numbingly repetitive, filling time with a lot of fluff, having a lot of opinion shows, or having other random stuff.

There is an interesting chart here [2] that has a plot of many news sources, with the horizontal axis being left/right bias, and the vertical axis being overall source reliability.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Pulitzer_Prize-winnin...

[2] https://www.adfontesmedia.com/interactive-media-bias-chart/?...