I think your analogy perfectly captures why we must criticize it.

Both Fauci and the Times made an elementary mistake/miscalculations that reflects terribly on trust people place with them.

The media then lambasts anyone who uses this to sow scepticism about these institutions, calling them conspiracy theorists instead.(which is true for certain cohorts, but wielded as a blanket statement)

My trust in various academic institutions has gone down by orders of magnitude since the UCL/NE Journal and many of the other covid fiascos. The statistical and scientific rigor employed by experts and epidemiologist seems to be massively lacking.

Similarly, a series of missteps by the NYT has led me to (a much larger degree than the previous analogy) lose trust in its reporting. Sadly, there do not seem to be any alternative sources outside of either reading the papers directly or finding specific individuals I place high amount of trust in.

Both are all too time consuming for someone with a full time job.