The point of the article is to discourage 'non-approved' news sources because they must all be fake like this bus thing was. Its propaganda to try and keep the NYT relevant despite their lies and deception such as promoting the war in Iraq.
When I saw the bus thing I questioned how the guy knew the buses were full of protestors, and then stopped caring because it was just some guy on twitter. The MSM want you to blindly accept their narrative and lose the ability to tell fact from fiction.