Example: https://www.rt.com/pop-culture/600410-germany-gelsenkirchen-renamed-taylor-swift/

Except for the final paragraph, it is very non-political, and easily verifiable to be true.

I want to be clear that I do not condone or support using these types of sources, since it funds non-democratic governments, but simply dismissing all of their stories as “fake news” without any further critical thinking or fact checking is not correct.

1. In what way is it not covered, according to you?

2. If the news story is, e.g., non-political, does not try to influence your opinion on something, and is based on first-party facts that can be independently verified and that are correctly represented, the source does not matter for the factuality of the news story, even if it is from a non-democratic source.

That’s covered under “Consider the source.”

The source having ties to a non-democratic government does not automatically invalidate the source, but it should make you scrutinize it more sceptically in relation to the other criteria.