If they are wrong, their reputation won't suffer that much. They can just say, "We based our story on the best information available to us as outsiders."

Which, to me at least, is a perfectly legitimate thing for a newspaper to do. Yes, they should check facts and vet sources, but their primary responsibility is to do the best they can and get the information out there for the public.

It's pretty clear that Boeing's leadership could have had better info than the NYT, yet they either didn't, or they ignored/hid what they knew.

When it comes to constructing narratives and interpreting the basic evidence, a newspaper is constrained only by the need to tell and sell a story, not by the need to choose a positive course of action in order to identify and solve the fundamental problems entailed. It's not about the basic facts, it's about what you do with them.

That certainly didn't play when Judith Miller [1] given the bull horn at the NYT allowed the Bush Administration to march us directly into a bullshit war. They are indirectly responsible for the deaths of millions.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Miller

That seems backwards, I would think they would depend on accuracy for its reputation.

Their record of accuracy has suffered quite a bit in the past few years.