Another thing you should note is even though The New York Times is "the newspaper of record" there are tons of things they get consistently wrong, and seldom ever retract an iota as far as I've seen.

You also have in the news industry what is acceptable fact. There are facts, which if any one party find them negative to anyone reported, simply won't be reported. This is why the ideologies of China (blocking or discrediting news) fit so well with the US right now - we're already basically doing this.