>Someone should probably mention that calling the source biased is just circumstantial ad hominem, which is even lower on the pyramid than responding to tone.

Yeah, that gets thrown around a lot by people who like to parrot logical fallacies to sound smarter than they are. In reality credibility matters. A lot. Especially for journalists.

You're trusting this person to report the facts accurately. You're trusting them to report fully and not omit relevant details. You're trusting this person to commit to an investigation which is as impartial as possible.

All of those require trust, and trust is built by credibility, which is built by demonstrating that you do your job well.

So no, of course it doesn't mean that everything else in the article is incorrect. Of course, I never said that (straw man on your part? Thought you may enjoy that.) It _does_ mean that I will take anything I read afterwards with a grain of salt.

I see it as a tradeoff. If someone wears their bias on their sleeve, you know where they're coming from. If not, you have no way of knowing whether you're reading someone who is judiciously adhering to a process that minimizes bias, or whether they are deliberately concealing their bias, or whether they are so deluded that they imagine themselves to have no bias whatsoever, which would be absurd.

Regardless, you're still advocating for a low form of argument.

Well, the article got pulled, so I guess it was a pretty solid warning sign after all:

"Editor’s Note: This story was an opinion piece asserting there was evidence that hackers changed votes in the 2016 election. However, a number of statements in the piece are disputed by experts. As a result, we have pulled it down for editorial review, and will update it once that review is completed."

The editors are operating a full three levels higher (than “responding to tone”) in the hierarchy of disagreement. They’re setting a good example. (Although a bit later than ideal.)