Two good rules of thumb - and this goes for established media outlets - when reading an article.
A. Follow the links that writers include in their articles.
Example: Well the article above. But this is how bad it is: Currently the WP's most popular article is titled 'Americans keep looking away from the election’s most alarming story' which includes the line "Trump reveled in information gained from...“fake news” stories that evidence suggests (link) were generated by Russian intelligence operation". Well, if you click that link there is zero evidence, just an article from 'geektime.com' (who?) asking 'Could Russia be behind US election-based fake news on Facebook?'.
This is incredibly disingenuous.
B. Read the comments.
Example: Just go to the comments on any article on The Economist or The Guardian and you'll almost always find high quality addenda that either refute or add context to the article being commented on. Perhaps it's the limited number of media outlets in Europe, or just the nature of our media, but there's a high level of healthy dissent below-the-line that I don't see on The NYT, WP etc.
This assumes, of course, that people care about the truth. Yet critical thinking may be futile against a firehose of information and this trait of human psychologically: many people value how they feel over the truth and so will be biased towards 'news' that fulfills that role.
It's not fearless critical reporting they're after, but rather a bubble of moral affirmation.