I remember in particular a piece Malcolm Gladwell wrote on football and head injuries. ( https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/10/19/offensive-play )

I am willing to believe that football causes head injuries for other reasons. I am generally against this. So I let a few people know about the piece. I'd also give them a warning: Malcolm Gladwell generally doesn't know what he's talking about, and it's a bad idea to pay attention to what he says. That said, this is an interesting piece by Malcolm Gladwell.

I know this is the wrong thing to do. You can use Malcolm Gladwell's piece to make arguments against football because every argument is more persuasive when Malcolm Gladwell makes it. That's his only skill, but it is very highly developed. The problem is that that's a terrible reason to believe an argument. The Malcolm-Gladwell-sounds-convincing argument can prove anything at all, as long as Malcolm Gladwell wants it to. The correct thing to do as the person being argued at is to completely dismiss whatever he says, because it will sound convincing regardless of whether it's true.

We have to make do with what we've got, which is easy access to original sources and independently verifiable information thanks to the internet and electronics.

Newspapers nowadays are great pointers for topics to look into independently, but one piece of bad information is damaging enough to offset a hundred accurate facts. So considering the quality of modern journalism, it's better to just focus on the source material and ignore what the middle man has to say.

There is still people I trust to provide accurate information, because I trust in both their integrity and expertise in their fields, but there is certainly no news organization that I trust to that degree as a whole.