HN and stack exchange are the only forums I read frequently. Reddit has much lower average quality.
The way news sites / digg / reddit / twitter / you name it seem to be designed is many headlines compete for attention and each is trying to catch your eye and deliver a take home message in the title. I truly think the intent is to deliver a message and hope the reader doesn't dive in to learn about it. That feeds a gratification loop, even before you throw propaganda and shilling in.
Certainly this forum isn't immune either and I notice it in topics relevant to my field but outside tech (which is not my area). "Lowering sodium intake doesn’t help heart patients" from the other day comes to mind with its biting take on a question that is clinically irrelevant for most people unless they are considering tighter sodium control but hey, the title leaves a nice impression if you skim and feeds into some crazy opinions if you already have them.
I've resubscribed to some paper magazines to be able to enjoy them over a cup of coffee to over come this and use a service to send large articles to my kindle. I keep meaning to find a way to integrate it with wallabag.
Long-forms like the Economist's take a few steps back from the day-to-day news and try to give you an overview of a topic. That's what I'm interested in. You have to make the difference between the author's opinion and the facts because most of the Economist's pieces are actually op-eds, but that's better than reading re-hashed PR releases all day long.
Maybe try Le Monde Diplomatique. They're more critical towards globalization and free exchange, but even if you don't agree with them, their articles always dig deep and leave you knowing the subject. They even have English translations for some articles. Recommended by a history teacher some years ago and I haven't been disappointed.
Mediapart is also interesting for French politics. They discovered quite a lot of scandals that made headlines everywhere afterwards: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mediapart#Landmark_investigati...