They did a hit piece on someone who I worked with that was flat out untrue. Many people at work knew the details and agreed. That one experience made me view anything I see on TV with a healthy dose of scepticism.
They have to obtain information from some source. Almost always, that source of information can mislead the reporter/news writer easily because of the latter's lack of familiarity with the issue, the region or the culture. The reporter, on the other hand, works against time. Plus, s/he is, after all, human (susceptible to persuasion/personal biases and worse, is sometimes too lazy to do a fact-check and more importantly, to hear the voices from the other side).
As most things in life, the truth is always in somewhere the middle.
For example, in the Theranos segment that followed the Google segment on this week's 60 Minutes, the Theranos employee who first ratted them out stated that he used a fake name when he first contacted the government because he feared reprisal.
Presumably, reporters are supposed to seek adequate proof or confirmation of what they hear from "sources", and we are supposed to be able to trust that they did that job adequately or at least, they are reporting the news as they believe it, until confirmation is available in the form of an official investigation.
Could you elaborate on this? Show some nyt/whatever articles and explain what they got wrong? (What they omitted, etc.)