One thing to remember about the NYT and 100% of all "media outlets" is that they're not in the news business per se. They're in the ads business. The more people who watch, the more ads they sell. Of course, when people subscribe to their newspaper they do get revenue, but I'd wager that they get a lot more revenue from ads than they do subscriptions. Same with TV news or all the other news sources (radio, print, TV, websites).
The other thing that tempers me is that about 90% of the people running these shows are what I'd consider to be liberal democrats. And I'm not trying to denigrate their political viewpoints and choices, I'm simply stating the facts. I'm talking mostly about the national news media, people like Gayle King and any of the major news heads. Not only are the primary anchors hard to the left, most of the whole news team is as well. The only exception to this is somebody like Fox News or some of the other News organizations out there that cater to the right (OAN etc). So even if they are trying to report things as accurately as possible, they are still doing it from their ideological point of view. CNN and MSNBC, hard Left. Fox seems to be hard right, but in all honesty they tend to fluctuate. The end result is that you get a lot of reporting that seems really scary. Which divides opinions and draws viewership. Boo for the other team, hooray for our team.
I'm reminded that in a movie a long time ago, they told Howard Stern that the people who love him listen for an average of 12 minutes or something. The kicker was that people who hated him listed for twice as long. It was the people who hated his show and hated him that gave him the biggest mouthpiece.