I do trust some news coming from China, but for russia it’s just too difficult to give them any credence given my own experience with news outlets that are just government mouthpieces.

Yet, it’s not a complete blackout state like North korea. Telegram has a lot of credible sources or so I’ve heard. They don’t shy away from Russian losses for eg.

Also my issue is with the authoritarian governments and their tightly held control over their media. Recently I’ve felt that western news sources have also very biased and I can’t take anything coming from that completely straight. I’ve even switched sources from legacy media outlets to individual reporters and small boutique media outlets. (YouTubers) They have less ties with the establishment and while they are still biased, they have far more of an objective overview of the situations at hand.

This is different from China and Russia because they control a lot of their social media as well.The great fire wall being infamous. Also the language barrier definitely makes it more difficult to find people organically.

So no, it isn’t about being liberal (which I am not).