I feel like you're too close to it. Seeing trees instead of the forest. Not in general, but in regards to human nature, in regards to their "politics." Or more precisely, their values. There is a common understanding that people are infinitely malleable; that they are whatever they are taught to be. Yet we are also structured, and hierarchical. Not just in society but internally in our own ideas. We are malleable, but not infinitely. We are structures, molded in layers, and the deeper or older the layer the more it "sets," like old putty. Values come from pretty much inaccessible layers with very little chance of being reshaped, and those values interpret the data our freshest layers receive. This is how two people, with different values, can listen to the same thing yet hear completely different things. This is my personal understanding of human nature at least. People aren't programmed by their media. They are programmed by their experiences, and media panders to those experiences to make a buck.
I feel compelled to point out that this still just another evasive non-answer. It doesn't make sense to say you simply trust "the opposite" of what the media is peddling, because a list of incorrect information doesn't consequently give you correct information. It just gives you a list of which information is incorrect.
If this
were an effective approach to discern correct information, then scientists could bring difficult questions to preschoolers - who would reliably give them an incorrect answer - in order to derive the correct answer from it. Looking at a broken clock (trusting that the clock is broken, and that it probably isn't one of those two seconds each day when the clock is accidentally correct) will only tell you what time it
isn't, not what time it
is.
You wrote "the entire media, and most of the people on the left" want to "keep everything locked down forever until there is a vaccine."
Reopening in stages is the only way to go. Only nut jobs want to reopen everything or keep everything locked down forever until there is a vaccine. This includes right wing loons, the entire media, and most people on the left.
There's two things going on here. One is that, almost immediately after
pointing out how annoying incorrect generalizations about Republicans are (and pointing out how 'untrustworthy' the media is for probably giving that impression), you made incorrect generalizations of your own about "the entire media and most people on the left". I was trying to highlight that. If you're going to point out how annoying it is to be on the business end of that, consider not also doing it yourself.
Secondly - let's suppose you
did somehow work out that the entire media and most people on the left want to keep everything locked down forever until there is a vaccine from some 'opposite' narrative that the media reported. I mean, I'd love to hear exactly what that specific narrative is - for that assertion to be the invariable conclusion as opposite. But more importantly: if that's the conclusion that you came to, then clearly "trusting the opposite" doesn't reliably "work itself out" to give accurate, correct information. Because it's an incorrect generalization. That's why I bounced your facetious "very trustworthy" qualifier about source back at you.
But I'm splitting hairs here. The main point is you're still just being evasive about what your typical source is because it isn't possible to consistently derive reliably correct information from a source of reliably incorrect information.
