I'm fairly certain that /r/worldnews is gamed by western intelligence and diplomatic agencies. The top stories and top comments on said stories are invariably towing the US State Department line.
Whether those people have been in turn influenced is a separate question.
That's a common tactic of propagadists: To paraylze people - make people feel powerless by convincing them that everything is a lie.
Everyone lies, but that doesn't mean there aren't honest people, sociopathic liars, and a big chasm between them. No publication is perfect, but there are plenty of very credible ones.
Everything really is propaganda, tho. Nearly.
It's also a basic tactic of propagandists to convince people that only approved narratives are good, and the forbidden ones are propaganda. To try normalize themselves a the self-anointed authority that decides which is which. Just like the liars, criminals and corrupt who say, "trust me, I'm honest. Some people lie a lot, but me, you can trust."
> sociopathic liars,
Like spies, conwomen/conmen and other professional liars?
> No publication is perfect, but there are plenty of very credible ones.[0]
"A bland, and in this case, meaningless statement." ;)
Safest bet is, as I said earlier: read widely!!!
The state department is not the same as the president. The previous president did not have a significant degree of control over the state department or any facet of the federal bureaucracy, in all reality.
I saw a wildly popular but politically embarrassing* article there get wiped from the front page for "just being commentary / a blog post with no evidence", when it was actually a Coundcloud link to the politician's actual words.
The story was wiped. It is no longer searchable by either Reddit or Google search. This is a post consisting of direct evidence with zero commentary, of the utmost public interest, with 20 thousand upvotes or so. Just memory-holed completely with no appeal.
* The Irish Health Minister at the time, Simon Harris, was saying that "we're on Covid-19, so there's been 18 other coronaviruses" .... In fucking MAY of last year. THe Health Minister. And this was AFTER those talking heads in America were reamed for the same mistake.