Sorry for the slow reply-- been traveling for work.

It's not really a skill that is taught (sadly, IMHO) in a classroom, at least in my field (and I was a politics minor to boot)-- more something you're just expected to have fallen out the womb knowing how to do, much like how a lot of fields assume you know statistics well.

Some broad tips from my perspective, which aren't all dogma and may well not be shared by some or most people:

1) Minimize the telephone game. Where practical, at least browse the primary source. You can get an awful lot of things online now. A lot of primary sources (for your immigration example, census data is handy, etc.) are readable by an educated layman.

2) No one is an expert on everything. Admit when a document is over your head and find another one, rather than trying to pick out sentences when you can't understand the context. If you're talking about a peer-reviewed article (journal, etc.), you can often find a review article in the same publication which is written for a broader audience. If you can't, maybe it hit the newspapers and you can find an AP or Reuters summary.

3) Assume the consensus of the Intarwebs is equivalent to hearing something from a reasonably smart non-expert friend of yours, unless the source is a person or organization you're already familiar with. Consensus does not equal truth. Wikipedia and samplings pulled via search engines aren't often flat-out-wrong... but they may be incomplete, biased, or in poor context. Don't bet the farm on them, though they can at least get you started.

3B) Assume blogs are equivalent to overhearing something in a bar. Maybe it puts an idea into your head to look up, but that's about it.

4) Titles and affiliations don't imply infallibility. I love the late Stephen Jay Gould's writings on evolution, and he was a Harvard professor with a billion professional awards, but his view of evolution is a fairly radical opinion in many ways. Some very official-looking think-tanks are shills for a certain agenda. That said, Random Harvard Prof is probably more reliable on average than Random Guy You Haven't Heard Of.

5) Cross-check if practical. Two independent sources are better than ten citations from one source, quality of sources equal.

Beyond that, you'll need to evaluate as you go. For general-purpose news, I've been happy with the BBC, New York Times, San Jose Mercury News, NPR, and Washington Post. (I find that the better print media is less susceptible to sensationalization and 'fluff' masquerading as news, relative to TV. CNN hurts my head these days. 'Oh no! Missing white girl!') For foreign affairs, it's often handy to also check at least one non-US newspaper (most are available in English), like Der Spiegel or Le Monde. For professional fields, I start with the professional organizations-- the AMA for medicine, AAAS for general science, etc. Try to avoid any radio or TV where people routinely yell at one another, except as entertainment if you like that.

I've gotten in the habit of keeping NPR on by default in my car. I don't miss commercial radio, and cut back and forth to CDs during pieces I don't care about.

Be flexible with the above. If your family or whoever thinks the NYT is a commie hippy rag, you'd probably be better off picking another paper that they don't hate, vs. trying to ram that one home. If they think all or most "mainstream" media is propaganda, you'll have an uphill battle no matter what you do.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com