The political bias and spin of modern news and events has made me more aware of my own biases and left me wondering how historians cut through it discover the true nature and cause of past events. Bias in news, official documents, and person journals must have always existed to some extent. Was the sinking of the ship that started the war an attack, a false flag event, or an accident? Side A will feel justified in attacking Side B, and everything Side A writes would reflex that. Side B will feel Side A's Attack was unprovoked, and everything Side B writes would reflex that. So how do historians determine what really happened? I'm sorry, I can't think of any specific events that aren't current or recent, so an example of how this was solved with a real past event would be wonderful. I'd love to learn how this is done.
This, honestly, is one of the weirder things about history as a subject, mainly because we do it just a little bit differently than the people out there in STEM. See, those people have it easy. They get to deal with things-that-are-not-humans. 1+1=2 except in very very rare edge cases. Two hydrogen and one oxygen makes water. c is 299,792,458 metres per second. That sort of thing. But in this department, we don't.
History deals with humans. History is created by humans, written by humans, written for humans, studied by humans, interpreted by humans, read by humans.
The inherent problem here is that the human is a stupid, selfish, blinkered creature with entirely too many prejudices, preconceptions, and biases, and a very sharply limited point of view. Bias is baked in. Leave your thoughts of 'objectivity' at the door. No such thing in this business.
Fortunately, there is such a thing as the historical method, the same way as there is a scientific method. Here are some previous threads for you to consider:
Ran out of tags here, so see next post.
/u/mhbeals has previously answered How does History and Historians deal with bias?
/u/Asinus_Docet has previously answered How do historians evaluate the truth value of a claim?