Specifically, would reading the paper of record, that fucking newspaper, really convey any sense of what the Trump era was like to a future historian? By implication, does it convey much sense of that now?
It is wrong to argue that this because journalists attempt conform to some norm of balance/objectivity. Those bits - the "straight" news bits - in the New York Times are actually often fine.
The political reporters and the podcast guys, the ones who narrate the daily story in the way so much of the actual news bits get filtered, are actually off the leash. That leash, at least. Obviously the editors tug one way or another on another leash.
They do a lot of opinion disguised as analysis, and of course the very nature of that kind of reporting does not lend itself to the "straight news" constraints. They can describe things are they are, or obscure with emphasis and euphemism.
The people whose job it is to convey the broader nature of things, and not just the facts, have largely manufactured an alternative reality.
Trump does insane late night postings and racist rants regularly, and very little of that is conveyed.