The problem when it comes to media bias is that people often use heuristic shortcuts that aren't very accurate. Obviously we're all familiar with the people who complain when the media says anything that they don't personally like or agree with and write it off as bias to avoid changing their minds. But there's also a very common and perhaps more insidious form of audience bias that I refer to as "balance" or "neutrality" bias. They assume that anytime there is a disagreement between different media sources, that all takes are equally biased and that the truth is somewhere in the middle or some aggregate between the sources. It's a bias because it makes an a priori assumption about the accuracy of the reports without actually assessing them individually on their own merits.
The opposite of biased reporting is objective reporting. Objective reporting is simply doing one's best to gather pertinent facts and report the truth about them regardless of one's personal interest in the topic. That means reporting the un-spun findings whether or not the facts match your expectations, will make you or cost you money, or lead to conflict with those whom your report cover or affects. But balanced or neutral reporting doesn't do this. It says that one must either present both sides as equal and not state that either side is right or wrong in a particular story or not have too many stories that are critical of one side versus another. But objective reporting doesn't care about that and simply reports as factually as possible regardless of who would agrees / disagrees or likes / dislikes it. But that's very difficult to do with a profit motive involved.
It's also difficult because when you have opposing sides who disagree with one another, the disagreement
should be limited to values or opinions about the importance of facts rather than the facts themselves. For instance, given the facts of the matter, side A thinks we should do X and side B thinks we should do Y. But in reality, people often reject facts that they don't feel will forward their position. For example, if side A likes driving instead of using active transportation or public transit, they may outright deny the environmental benefits and fiscal efficiencies of the latter and simply say that driving is actually better for the environment and is more cost-effective. But if the media were to report on this disagreement and affirm the actual facts, side A would then call the media biased and claim that they were parroting talking points for side B. Then they'd call the media fake news or some such. And that's a big problem because then if the media actually does make a factual error or is in some way biased against side B in the future, when side B calls them out for it the audience is tempted to just say, "Well every side whines when the media says anything they don't like. So they're both just equal and opposite sides of the same thing." When of course the correct thing to do would be to look at the specific details of each situation and determine which side is correct.
So the strategy of using a variety of news sources as a way to protect oneself from media bias doesn't on its own work because if you don't have strong critical thinking and analytical skills you aren't going to know which if any reporting is actually correct. And even worse, you can adopt a sort of postmodernist cynicism which assumes that there's no such thing as correct and that the only thing that exists is different perspectives. Biases are sometimes very subtle making them hard for anyone to detect. Someone without strong analytical abilities isn't likely to even recognize the subtle differences between sources. Especially since the audience often has stronger biases than even heavily biased media sources. So for most people, unless they're consuming blatant mis-information, they can achieve more by addressing their own biases rather than externalizing the problem by worrying about the media.
What's worse is that people who believe in the whole "balance" fallacy can be deceived when companies apply it strategically. A company that wants to appear objective may criticize its "side" for something that it doesn't consider particularly important in order to give itself cover for their ideological slant on topics that actually are important to them. For instance, organization with a corporatist stance may report critically on a right-learning political party's regressive social policies to prove that they aren't beholden to the right. Yet at the same time they're very biased against labour and use anti-worker framing when covering union-related stories. But because they've proven their neutrality, people assume any anti-left stances are justified and are less likely to accuse them of having a right leaning or corporatist bias. In reality, as a profit-seeking corporation they just have a vested interest in opposing unions while they don't care about social issues.
The takeaway is that there's simply no substitute for strong critical thinking and analytical skills. Someone with these skills can analyze and point out biases and omissions in the reporting of a story without seeing any other media reporting. Yet someone without those skills is likely to still succumb to media biases. They may even use their experience with multiple sources as fuel for false conclusions. If they used to just watch source A which is generally correct and then start watching source B which says very different (and less correct) things, they're likely to incorporate some of source B since they think greater "balance" means greater objectivity. I remember one
landmark study from the US that showed how people who only consume media from a blatantly biased source are actually less informed than people who consume no news at all. So if blatantly biased news sources actually increase one's ignorance, it's hard to imagine how including such a source in one's media diet could cause a net increase in knowledge beyond what the other sources offer.
Not that there can't be any value in exposure to alternate perspectives. It can reduce polarization by help one understand other views and empathize with those who hold them. But that's information about what other media consumers think about news stories rather than the news stories themselves. It's still useful information about the world, but people who are truly open to understanding and empathizing with other views aren't usually the ones in need of such lessons.
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