I don't use them and never have.

When you live in a country and next to a country where everyone gets taxed for radio and TV in order to finance proper journalism, you might as well use those sources to get your news, because they filter out the facts from all the nonsense that's making its rounds on the internet. Since those broadcasters (ORF in Austria; ARD and ZDF in Germany) also have their own internet platforms, all bases are covered.

Beyond that, there are plenty of websites that still value journalistic integrity.

Do you even know that social media track your activity and deliberately provide you with "news" that you should like based on your preferences? If your thread creation history on VGC is anything to go by, probably not. You should really think about that and seriously ask yourself if you've been fed with actual news or garbage.

How? How is that possible? Surely you use them? I can't imagine being out of the loop, it's the quickest way to get news.

Truer content I've never seen. 

@OT. I've read that looking at tits can extend a mans lifespan and improve health. I'ma read up on this more, not sure how they could have studied this phenomena. 

Yes, that's what I claim. When a story is in the making, they make sure to use words like 'allegedly' and 'supposedly' to create a clear distinction between facts and assumptions.

The standards for journalism in Germany and Austria are probably higher than in most other industrialized nations, because the two countries came from a history of nazi propaganda, so there was a lot more incentive to regulate the official national broadcasters in a way that prevents a repeat of media control.

An important thing to note here is that last weekend a very high-ranking Austrian politician was revealed to have talked about gaining media control in Austria, namely the state-owned ORF and the biggest newspaper Kronen Zeitung. This, among other things, led to his resignation from all political functions on the following day, an end of the government coalition his political party had and the announcement of new elections in September.

The USA handle things differently. Even if someone felt that the broadcasters here are going too easy on certain politicians or parties, the very same channels host a multitude of satirical programs where really every politician who does stupid things gets panned. Comedians themselves have their own political views, so even there one and the same topic is made fun of from different angles. It would be pretty pathetic government control if the news were manipulated, but comedians are allowed to run loose at the same time.

I think you are misunderstanding. In the USA the big broadcasters are clearly affiliated with a political party. That's not the case over here, and if a political party tried to change that, there would be an uproar.

So the actual point is that state-owned broadcasters are independent and not a tool of any political party.