No, it’s not. The answer is never — unless that person has been charged with and convicted of a crime.
To do otherwise would expose the reporter to enormous potential civil liability. Defamation is a thing.
Prosecutors charge people with crimes, not reporters.
Libel suits happen frequently. All the major papers are quite versed in dealing with them. They rarely lose these cases.
I did A quick google search and can’t even find a libel case the NYT has lost in the last 30+ years. There was one case in 2003 where media outlets reported incorrectly that the times lost a libel case. In fact, they won the case, even though the jury agreed that the facts reported were false, because the plaintiff failed to prove malice (see https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2003/05/24/n...).
If it's true, there is no defamation. If it was stated as opinion, there is no defamation.
Major papers rarely lose libel cases because they do the obvious thing and avoid publishing libel.