Well on the WSJ side there was that whole Pewdiepie makes some Nazi jokes therefore is secretly whistle blowing to recruit 9-17 year olds into white supremacy/anti-antisemitism narrative they were running with. Ignoring the context of the jokes and doing nothing that shock comics haven't been doing for years. But the character assassination probably has more to do with the fact that person has a bigger audience than the WSJ, and more influence and that's where advertisers (their source of money) were going, so they started doing hit pieces on YT's biggest personas to scare advertisers out of spending their money there.

I feel like WSJ and NPR actually take time and research what their writing about.

Same here - long time, >15 years NYT subscriber, I stuck with them even while they were so obviously biased against my boy Bernie but finally it became too much. They just stopped reporting actual news one day and never looked back. They are publishing things that just aren’t true, and their silence is deafening on stories reported by their rivals. As you say, it’s not something I’m remotely interested in paying for.