I read this article and I think this is the entire point. You can't trust corporate media's coverage of would-be wunderkind "entrepreneurs."

Between access journalism, hero worship, a narrative formula that's known to sell, and laziness, journalists are all too glad to not only look the other way, but actively curate a reality distortion field on behalf of bad actors.

It's not just that they didn't see through SBF, it's that it never would occur to them to even look. That's simply not what they are optimised to do when they cover this class of person.