You can deride the NYT, but none of what you said makes this pizzeria owner's plight any less real. It is a very real problem that the populace can be manipulated to the point of irrational misdirected hate like this.
It's things like these that sometimes make me question the democratic system. These people aren't fit to vote.
Presumably this is why the poster you responded to is questioning the democratic system, so you haven't really presented a counterargument here.
Regardless of this and to put focus on those that publish this nonsense, of course there should be real consequences and liabilities for the outlets of these insane stories.
Fake news is a problem but trusting corporate media is not a solution.
We're at the point where NYT could publish a video of someone confessing to murder with a weapon in their hand and someone would comment "typical corporate media shills".
Where are the stories about independent media getting a scoop? Publishing a story the corporate media ignore or would prefer to ignore? Exposing corporate media errors or misquoted sources?
Corporate media (usually) tells the truth, but only part of the truth, and in so doing they attempt to skew public opinion. In this case, they'd like to skew public opinion toward distrust of independent media.