Although the sentiments here are noble, they reflect a basic misunderstanding of the media. Yes, of course the purpose of any media outlet is to make money. It's a business first and foremost, even though it has a public service mission.

Newspapers do some things very well, like covering local politics, crime, courts and sports. Aviation? Not so much. Stories on big airline crashes would be covered by the big papers or the Associated Press, so our guys would only be sent out to cover a local crash, typically a general aviation crash. The cops reporter would cover a plane crash, as he would often cover a bad car wreck as part of his duties. These guys were experts with police matters: charges, bail, arraignments and such. Do they know a King Air from a Pilatus? A Warrior from a Skyhawk? VFR from IFR? Of course not, why would they? 99% of all the inaccurate info on comes from the cops who provide the initial information or from eye witnesses who are trying to explain what they think they saw.

Would it be great if the media got the story right the first time, every time? Sure! How would they go about doing it? Let's say there was a fatal accident at a marina. Imagine you're the reporter. Stories like this happen once in a blue moon. You get the call and arrive on site. You weren't there when the crash happened, obviously, so your only sources of information are the police, who also responded after the fact, and (for example) an old couple who were walking their dog when they heard the noise of the crash. I don't know anything more about boats than the average person. Neither do the cops. Neither do the witnesses. How would you know if you were given bad info? If the cop told you what kind of boat it was, how would you know if he was right? What level of knowledge would you expect a local reporter to have about maritime rules and procedures? You're on deadline, and you don't time to independent verify everything you've been told. So, you write your story and attribute the facts to your sources.

Considering the demands of the job, and the ridiculously low pay, they do a pretty good job on the things cover routinely. With everything else, they do what they can.