I believe you'd be interested in the concept of Gell-Mann amnesia. Murray Gell-Mann, a physicist, noticed that he was able to shake his head at the idiotic reporting the science section and then, 5 minutes later, believe the reporting about far away places in the news section. How can he believe it's not all crap? The fact is that lots of us have the experience of being there and then reading about it in the Times. In every case I can remember, the Times was way off base. So all news to me is pretty unreliable.
I recently read someone saying, "actually, reporters should be stenographers, writing down the things powerful people say." Lots of reporters attacked him, because of the idea that bad reporting, merely acting like the stenographers of the powerful, is what causes wars like the Iraq war. But the guys point was subtle. Reporters should not try to interpret the words too much. If you don't want to write down what Trump says, find another beat.
The future is dangerous for reporters. They will be allowed in only when they can act as unpaid PR people. I bet they will trade their integrity for this kind of access once again. Better would be to avoid reporting things that they can't understand, and report truths from elsewhere. But then they wouldn't be going to the dinner parties and meeting the powerful people "on background" and riding around in the president's plane. How boring.
