The affinity for Tucker Carlson (as well as the other things) is from the sidebar. Apparently their familiarity with Western media is enough to know he is pro-Russian, but not enough to realize that expressing on a leftist forum that they like him, will make them glow a little bit.
The original issue was that they posted a story from Mint Press News, and I dropped them a friendly note that it was Russian propaganda, more or less assuming they had included it innocently (since there was nothing wrong at all that I can see with the particular story, or in fact with any of the stories in that community.)
Things escalated. Fun quotes by the mod from the ensuing conversation:
It's actually not from "New Knowledge," it's from a US Senate report, but I doubt that will make this person believe it any more.
The real disinformation was inside us all this time. Of course, I was banned. Reason for the ban?
Clearly, their disinformation policy is lock tight.
I found out by looking Mint Press up on Wikipedia, I can't remember whether there was something that made me suspicious or if it was just checking up on sources randomly. I think I read something weird that made me want to look it up.
Most news sites are not Russian propaganda. Al Jazeera is good, a lot of Western sources are good, random people on Substack are often good. If they don't come out of the blue with some kind of incongruous view on the Ukraine war then probably they are fine.
https://rss.ponder.cat/communities has a good selection. New York Times and The Atlantic have some weird stuff (including but certainly not limited to how they view Israel), and for the Drudge Report I have to have a massive blacklist of bad sources that I don't host when Drudge reposts them. Other than those caveats, all those seem pretty good to me.