To trust, or not to trust?

We are faced with enormous quantity of information being generated daily. We also need information to operate in day to day life. There are, however, two major problems:

1. We’re not capable of comprehending everything
2. Even if we were capable to grasp everything that is going on in the world at any given time, there is no way to deliver all the information to an individual

Now that I’ve firmly established humans are not supreme beings, it seems the best we can do is settle for less. That is, we get the best quality information we can, at the lowest cost for us – basically the least time spent acquiring the information. Therefore we need someone who is paid by us (usually indirectly, through advertisements or taxes) to process the information for us.
There is a strong critique of this approach, saying that technology, especially internet, has made it possible for us to access information on any relevant subject at any time and therefore there is no need to put ourselves in a position where others tell us what to read. If we have the capability to access all information directly, there is no need to have a distributor involved in the process.
Therefore, it only makes sense to use distributors to deliver the selected information to us, if there indeed is an added value in their service. The value of their service must be greater than our perceived loss of value, due to loss of freedom of influence on selecting the information we obtain. In essence, we have to trust the big brother to have a more efficient process of evaluating the sources and combining pieces of information together, to generate the big picture.
The process is primarily determined by the ownership and consequently funding of the distributor. There is no such thing as unbiased. State funding implies filtering according to the will of the state, or worse, the ruling party. Private ownership implies reporting aimed at generating income rather than good news, and the link between those two is rather fragile. Those rare enthusiast individuals with good intentions, doing it for free, are usually the worst of the lot, as they have very strong oppinions themselves on how world should be shaped. The best we can do is pick a filter on a free market that we choose is most appropriate according to our beliefs. Some people will choose the “wrong one,” preferring, say Fox news to BBC. However, it is the same right that allows them to choose the wrong filter that allows us to choose what we deem is the right one.
We can, of course, choose not to use one at all. Despite all my doubts, I fail to see the practicality of that. I prefer to read a couple of relatively unbiased websites, especially those based on wiki technology, and thereby get a clearer picture, than by going directly to the sources myself, as I have no information to evaluate their worth, neither the time to browse through all of them. Besides, I can always double check!