An important case for me personally would be evaluating Bellingcat—I can understand how cynical people believe they are just CIA psyops, or that they could easily be misled by media purposefully planted in the places they look for information—etc. It is a new kind of media/investigation institution and it has many surprising strengths, but most probably also many unexpected weaknesses.
As others pointed out it is very difficult to have a formal theory in these circumstances—but I still believe that we can have heuristics about evaluating sources. Something like https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/bounded-distrust?s=r
An important case for me personally would be evaluating Bellingcat—I can understand how cynical people believe they are just CIA psyops, or that they could easily be misled by media purposefully planted in the places they look for information—etc. It is a new kind of media/investigation institution and it has many surprising strengths, but most probably also many unexpected weaknesses.