I used to work at a pretty big newspaper. On the whole, journalists really don’t know anything about anything. They type stories fast under tight deadlines. That is really the only skill expected of them.
And of course, nowadays, the Talking Points are handed to them, and that makes the work even easier.
A lot of reporters just copy/paste press releases written by others.
A successful reporter has a bunch of “sources” willing to effectively write his stories for him, in exchange for being able to determine the slant.