This is a straight-up exposé of "journalists" and nothing more. They print "experts say" and "studies show" stories when they don't or can't even do the most rudimentary verification.
So yes, trust IS a beautiful thing, and he's demonstrated that any trust you still have in "trusted sources" (looking at you, fact-checkers) is misplaced.
Now we know it in a much more tangible way that affected us (perhaps you yourself fell for it, I at least hears it in my friends' circle) and that made us act.
If this helped you I'm glad. I haven't seen this call to action you're describing but if you want to discuss what actions we can take, that sounds productive & I'm interested.
I'd like to suggest that your attitude towards poverty may be something to examine; your remarks about it were strange. Consider for instance that when you say to a stranger on the internet, "poverty kinda sucks but it doesn't effect you," it's entirely possible that that stranger is currently experiencing it (this is not the case for me, just a thought experiment).