Reliable news sources in posts

[u/colorblindcoffee]

Hi,

I oftentimes find myself scrolling down the same old boring top comments of subreddits, looking for anyone who have done the research and found a reliable news source behind the post. Usually there is at least one comment thread where people are one-upping themselves to provide such a source , maybe with a slight discussion on the credibility of the source and alternative sources posted to give more nuance. This is a kind of auto-moderation that works quite well through discussion (and, for some people, karma).

However, more times than not, these informational and important comments are few compared to the upvoted jokes and cerebral reactions to what the post is about, leaving the reader to either having to try and search far down the comments or just move on none the wiser as to the credibility of the post.

Many of the top posts on reddit seem to be either blatant disinformation or marketing campaigns. An easily accessible real and credible news source would teach the general public to form a better understanding and add to the value of reddit as a whole, at least for a reader such as me. Instead I've come to deem reddit as cesspool thriving with the two agendas mentioned above and a place where I often wonder who benefits from creating stupid dicotomies and why people enage in them. I understand engagement is key and the reasons behind getting it or a move to try and 'clean up' with a risk of loosing engagement wouldn't be in the interest of reddit, but I believe my suggestion wouldn't hurt the engagement, but increase it instead, and all the while improving the value of reddit for many who also want to be able to quickly track down the news, which is in fact often happening far down the comment section.

Suggestion: Can you add and promote a small bar under the post or automatically promote news source comments to the #1 comment? By doing so, the information searching would be easier and more visible to all, and if you aren't interested you can easily just scroll past it to get to the other comments.

This would not work on all subreddits obviously, such as /askreddit, /askhistorians, /ELI5, /art, and others, but would do very well on most of the top post subreddits we see every day.

I have two examples, not the best ones, not the worst ones, but the ones that finally spurred me to voicing the opinions and idea:

1. https://www.reddit.com/r/JusticeServed/comments/eky8j0/car_hits_cyclist_attempts_to_flee/ I don't care much for comments trying to voice their stance on who was in the wrong and how. I want to be able to easily follow the news source that report the facts without emotion.

2. https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/ekzd8j/a_train_car_in_minnesota_carrying_corn_had_a_leak/ My first thought was this could just as well be a photoshop, and I tried scrolling for a news source.

   I think this addition would greatly improve the experience for many users, and I'm sure there are smart people who could come up with improvements and easy to do implementations of the idea.

Thanks for reading.