If you don't know jack about topic X, you'll end up trusting another newbie, or a charlatan.
Or, you can go around talking to lots of people, go search professors and professionals and ask them. Here you are, welcome to Journalism.
Oh and the same works for photographers (my 24yo son is one of them).
I’d rather at least take my chances at picking an actual expert.
You can see how bad journalism is when you read a popular article on something you do understand deeply. Now consider that it’s probably about that bad on every subject.
The problem is that you must understand something deeply to report on it well or describe it well. Only a programmer can be a good journalist on software. Only a former military person can do good war reporting. Etc. If you don’t know what you are talking about you can’t talk about it well.
Given the quality of discourse, and rocketing levels of misinformation on the internet—yes! It’s a lot worse!