What is the closest I can get to an unbiased news source as an American?

The misplaced expectation for objective coverage seems to be toxic. Too many flames erupt around it. Bias is too often coverage which contradicts a favored ideology.

Instead of expecting objectivity, it may be better to accept incentives and bias. Reason about the coverage from within this framework.

You can listen to what people say and the unbiased news is the meta-news that the person said that thing. For example you might see news like "Sam Altman told a panel of senators Tuesday that his greatest fear as his company develops artificial intelligence capabilities is that it causes major harmful disruption for people" then even if what he says is the most insincere biased deception, it's still probably true that he said it, and you can take that meta level as the news.

If you ignore the opinion pages, and the obvious untrustworthy rags that generally inject their take into the headline because they're not expecting you to read much further, are the "mainstream" media options actually that different when it comes to "news"?

I think the WSJ editorial staff are actively evil but generally the reporters aren't going to just make stuff up.

Any news source is 'biased' at least insofar as it chooses to report some things and not others. Rather than looking for a mythological 'objective' news source, just read different outlets and think critically (but not so critically that you turn in to a conspiracist whackjob).

So people there again promote the ground.news -site. I am not sure whether that fosters or hampers media literacy. Nor do I think that the real or alleged "bias" is where the focus should be. There is nothing wrong in mildly partisan media (insofar as these contribute to media pluralism).