There are fundamental things that most people do not understand about "news". The first thing is that not all of what you see on television news, or in a newspaper, is "news". Most media sources' content is roughly divided between "news" and "opinion". The "news" is what we might colloquially think of as "just the fact ma'am" - a strict, no frills recounting of what happened. The opinion side of a media outlet would include what "what happened" means, it would include an interpretation of events and speculation regarding the consequences of what happened. It's easy to point to a newspaper's editorial that you vehemently disagree with and extend your negative opinion to the news section, your confidence in the paper's accuracy undermined by your opinions being in opposition. You can think that the New York Times is full of it for stating that Trump was unfit to be president back in 2016, sure that the were unequivocally wrong about his qualifications while their reporting about his borderline illegal business dealings was beyond reproach and 100% accurate. Despite this widespread distrust in the media traditional newspaper and television media's news (and I include conservative-leaning outlets like Fox in this group) is fairly accurate. What drives the lack of confidence in that accurate reporting is the overwhelming emphasis that is put on the opinion side of the business. Viewers of (for example) CNN or Fox News spend more of their viewing time listening to "hosts" who are doing nothing but giving their opinion, and in some cases, not giving their actual opinion but repeating back what they think their viewers want to hear.
Another misunderstood fundamental is bias. Everybody has biases. Everybody is biased to some extent. https://www.allsides.com/media-bias/media-bias-chart But the question is, how does that bias affect the news, the "what's happening" side of the media? An obvious sign of bias is the facts that a media outlet chooses to publish. A newspaper with a liberal bias may choose to run stories about White police officers shooting unarmed Black men and not examples of White officers acting with restraint and politeness when dealing with Black citizens while a conservative newspaper might emphasize the reverse. In general you would expect the stories that are published to support that newspaper's overall biases. To determine whether a medium's bias swamps its journalistic integrity you have to look at what else is being reported. To extend my example, it's really not "news" for a police officer to be acting with professionalism, politeness and respect - that's their job. But does the newspaper also provide context? Are their stories about the statistics related to police shootings? Are we provided with enough information to form an opinion about whether what they're reporting are isolated incidents or evidence of a systemic problem? The answer to that will tell you whether your news source can be trusted to provide you with accurate information.
What about fact checkers? The attack, mostly from former President Trump and his supporters, on mainstream media, characterizing it as Fake News, eventually extended to the legions of fact checkers. Fact checkers are a very narrow slice of "presenters of facts" who focus on the veracity (or lack of it) in public statements by politicians (or at least mainly politicians). Like mainstream media, and really, everybody, they have their own biases that sometimes guides who and what they check for factuality. Those who support politicians whose inaccuracies have been called out by fact checkers will reflexively refuse to believe the facts that fact checkers check, apparently for no other reason than that they disagree with them. What I have observed with most fact checkers is that they don't merely claim that a targeted politicians is wrong about something, they provide evidence to back it up. For example, Trump repeatedly claimed in his speeches that he "got Veterans'' Choice". Fact Checker Daniel Dale just as repeatedly pointed out that that the Veterans'' Choice bill had been proposed by the late Senator John McCain and signed into law by President Barack Obama in 2012, 4 years before Trump was elected. He presented evidence that could be easily cross checked for accuracy. Trump also regularly claimed to have completed building "The Wall" (most of it) - fact checkers often posted links to government websites (during Trump's presidency) that showed a small number of miles of new barriers had been constructed. Most fact checkers are not simply saying "nuh-uh" but are presenting a checkable documentary trail that can easily be verified.
Some things are a matter of opinion. The best way to deal with the effects of climate change is; whether there is climate change isn't. That we had a worldwide pandemic starting in 2020 is not a matter of opinion - the best way to minimize death and illness is. What we are lacking (in my opinion!) is not a lack of facts in the media, but a lack of understanding by the electorate of the difference between fact and opinion.
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