Cynical reaction: With how over-worked and under-resourced most journalists are these days, we're lucky when they have sources who might maybe actually know something or other about the subject at hand.

Bigger picture: In the specific case of COVID, what might have helped most would be some really mature meta-journalism. A calm Walter Cronkite telling us that, for the most part, nobody was really sure of anything. Loads of "1mm wide, 1km deep" scientists were scrambling to do stuff outside of their usual niches, usually in a fraction of the time they'd normally need, and under all sorts of emotional and political pressures - which they had no experience whatever dealing with. The vast majority of 'em had zero experience whatever in communicating scientific results to the general public. And a small minority of 'em suddenly found that they loved the limelight - about the same way that some teenagers suddenly develop a taste for hard liquor - and would certainly not be sources of reasonable nor sober information.

...but with umpteen million people stuck at home during COVID, and consuming any & all available news about it - what incentive did the big (for-profit) media corporations have, to deliver any sort of sober, mature coverage?