The sort of quick rule I have for measuring credibility is "how much of a story is it when a reporter or outlet gets something meaningfully wrong?" For the NYT, it's a rather important story, like the Iraq WMDs you mentioned. Which, needless to say, was over 20 years ago.

We'll see what the truth ends up being with time.

¿Por qué no los dos? Access Journalism easily explains both phenomena. Journalists know where their bread is buttered - members of the "deep network of sources" may occasionally call in favors, or drop breadcrumbs leading journalists to a specific, preselected destinations.

A recent HN thread led me down the rabbit-hole that included an observation by some (British) monarchy insider that they'd intentionally leak a story to the press, and the article would include the usual "We have reached out to the royal family for comment" spiel, and yet the entire article is the comment by the royal family. On the other side of the Atlantic, it wasn't too long ago that JD Vance was outed as the unnamed source on a story that the Trump admin subsequently attempted to sue for.