for a good counterbalance to those just finding out the nyt is a state dept mouthpiece at best, read about real journalists and why there seem to be so few of them, read Pegasus by laurent richard. Spoiler alert, real journalists who expose powerful peoples' wrongdoings simply get killed.
Glen Greenwald is alive and kicking.
Reminds me of a related principle:
“How do you know if a conspiracy theorist is really on to something?”
“Check the missing persons list.”
One of the journalists was Jason Koebler who later cofounded 404media. That is imho pretty legit outlet which uncovered many pretty damning stories about tech.