> And as journalists have shown over the past couple of years
Hmm...have you heard of the Gell-Mann amnesia effect?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect
My first experience with journalistic "accuracy" was when I was a kid, Der Spiegel did an article on my dad. They mentioned his children (so my sister and myself) but got everything wrong. It's not that it was hard to find this out, they could have asked him, they could have asked us, they could have asked our mother, whatever. If they didn't want to bother to find out, they could have left that "information" out of the article. Instead they just chose to make something up. Who cares?
Once I started to have some knowledge of things in the world, I absolutely experienced the effect that every single time they wrote about something I had first hand knowledge of, they got it not just completely, but outright comically wrong.
But don't take my word for it, here's a recent example that became public knowledge:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claas_Relotius
The guy just made up stories, and I mean that literally. They were good stories, things that felt good, things that had a narrative that felt good. They were, in fact, pretty good fiction, and as fiction they would have been fine. But they were presented as reporting.
If you think is an isolated case, I have some Nevada oceanfront property I want to sell you. Or maybe a New York bridge?
So I am wary and skeptical of "reporting" in general. I am especially wary and skeptical of "reporting" that matches a popular narrative. And I am extremely skeptical of "reporting" that completely contradicts my personal experience and that of most if not all the people around me.
That obviously doesn't "prove" the reporting is wrong, but taking such reporting as primary or even sole evidence is at best naive.
YMMV.