Sims said:
Assume it is all propaganda, then read everyone's propaganda.
Many will confirm parts of the story they feel insignificant to a narrative and the confirmations of pieces are helpful. Ultimately you distil it down to one or two key issues and have to make an educated guess - with the caveat that "educated guess" should carry genuine humility, not just cynicism. Cynicism can become its own lazy shortcut, where contrarian takes feel more sophisticated than they actually are.
Trusted experts have historically just been people from whom you borrow your own confidence - not that they were ever experts, they just had the benefit of having already done the breakdown and synthesis of stories for you either by large, honest networks of resources are vetting eyewitnesses themselves.
Covid was the death knell for "expert opinions" with many coming to the realization it was just paid propaganda for many. Pretty much every news org today leads with the unvetted breaking news, true or not, just to get the viewers first. Might not be a fair take for all news to call it propaganda, but it is, at best, just laziness, speed pressure, and narrative bias rather than deliberate manipulation.
I used to be a paid valuation expert in civil disputes.
The only reason that you hire an expert is to lean on their credentials. If you are paying them money, you want to lean on those credentials as much as possible to get your money's worth. The answer you get is the most extreme position that is still credible. You can't say that a 2,000 sqft house in Katy is worth $2,000,000 or no one believes you. But if the real range of value is between $200,000 and $300,000, a paid expert on one side of a dispute is going to claim it is worth $325,000, and the expert on the other side of the dispute is going to say it is worth $175,000.
It doesn't matter what subject or what venue you are talking about, a paid expert is almost always going to operate in that way, if not worse. Some shills are happy to downright lie for the right price. But, even if they are giving an intellectually honest assessment, it will be as slanted one way or the other as much as possible to please the person paying their invoice.