Here are some quick thoughts:

Ask, who’s making the original claim and who much do they stand to gain and lose from lying about it if it were false and compare that to how much they stand to gain and lose from not covering it, if it were true. There’s pressure to lie, but there’s also pressure to report on real events. Think about material gain, but also about reputation, hype, clicks and career options. Think short term and long term.

For example, economic news offer lots of opportunity to gain from lies short term, but if an economic journal loses it’s reputation, it might lose more long-term, as investors lose trust.

If you want to compare multiple sources, make sure they have different incentive structures, or you won’t get truly different perspectives. For example compare news from imperialist and anti-imperialist countries.

To check if a story is plausible, it helps to have an historic materialist understanding of who the actors in the story are, what their history is and which classes material interests they share in.

Ideally, you shouldn’t come away from a confirmed story with the notion: “Wow it’s true, they really did that crazy thing! How dramatic and sensational!”. Rather, in confirming the story, you will have developed a deeper understanding of the underlying social forces driving individual actors decisions. So instead you’d be more like:“Now I understand why this thing that first seemed very surprising to me was bound to happen sooner or later.”