I categorically disagree. Most journalists just quote someone they deem to be an expert on a topic. On topics that interest you, you're better served to do some research and find the experts for yourself.

I find this kind of comment exhausting. What you're seemingly asking people to do - go to the original source for every news story that you think is important - is impossible for anyone with any kind of normal life. That's why people read newspapers, so they can get a reasonable impression of what's going on in the world, and they would ideally pay for that newspaper so there are fewer problematic incentives. It's much more feasible to take a publication, in full cognisance of its leanings, and parse the stories appropriately. For example, I'm not as much of a free-market person as The Economist, but I pay for and read it because they're clear about what they stand for and think that they're factually accurate.

In the last decade how many news stories where actually important to you? Personally it was such a tiny fraction that doing a little research on each of them was fine.

A recent example of say the toilet paper shortage had weeks of misleading information put out. Prior to the reporter finally actually doing some research and breaking that story I have a HN post explaining what was going on. Why? Because doing more research than an average reporter is generally trivial. Their focus is entertainment and tight deadlines plus tiny staff equals junk.

You're characterising the entire news media as "entertainment and tight deadlines plus tiny staff equals junk". Of course there's trash out there, but the specific example I gave is The Economist. I don't know much about the NYT, which has been mentioned repeatedly here, but there are a reasonable number of news sources out there which are reputable enough not to be dismissed as casually as that.

I used to read The Economist, but I stopped after seeing them pull the same crap. Don’t get me wrong their not terrible, but you still can’t trust them to place accuracy over spin.

Honestly, I have reasonable trust in Reuters at this point, but I don’t know of a trustworthy news source focused on the general public.

Nobody has time to do that for every topic that is relevant to the life of a citizen. They need trusted sources of general news. The New York Times is a better approximation of that than most publications.

Journalists tend to quote people institutions deem to be an expert on a topic. "Do some research and find the experts for yourself" is also how people get sucked into a lot of charlatanism re: health, fringe economic ideas, climate change denialism, etc. etc. etc.

A basic litmus test is how a news source reports stock movements. It’s at X up/down Y points from yesterday is news. It’s down / up due to (some specific event) is almost always false and only injected to make things seem interesting or feed people’s biases. Another way of saying that is doing so is quite simply a lie.

NYT is no more in the business of credible news than the Wall Street Journal or Fox News. That’s simply not their business model. They all take unbiased Reuters coverage and add spin to appeal to their audience and distort the truth in the process.

Which is not to say they don’t happen to report things that actually happened, but the weather channel is a prime example where keeping people entertained is vastly more important than keeping them informed.