I suspect most people who look at international media and think it's better are using rose-tinted glasses.
Indian media is broadly worse if anything, latin american media is a trip if you have any understanding of the complicated political landscape, Aus is central to the Murdoch news dynasty, and East asian media has lots of famously partisan organizations. Maybe middle eastern media, explicitly funded for soft power political goals or African media, which span the gamut from bloodthirsty factional rags to leftover colonial institutions to tightly controlled extensions of the state apparatus?
They're differently biased, but you can't escape consuming media critically. "Averaging" by listening to a lot of different perspectives is 1) a lot of effort and 2) also something that can (and is) manipulated by making sure there's lots of "both sides" messaging present.
> I suspect most people who look at international media and think it's better are using rose-tinted glasses....They're differently biased, but you can't escape consuming media critically.
I went out of my way to head off this exact criticism, but I guess I didn't put it in blinking, bold, 30 point font.
Again: every national media outlet has bias (indeed, every media outlet has bias). My experience is that it's pretty easy to notice when you switch your sources regularly.
It doesn't take me any effort to do this, and even if I hear a hyper-partisan take, it doesn't melt my brain. I go "oh weird, so that's what the Indian government thinks" -- which is still vastly preferable to hearing what some reporter at NPR or CNN or whatever thinks about what India thinks.