I agree, and journalism is definitely a profession that is reliant on trust. A reporter can get all the facts correct but still be completely wrong in judging their importance or interpretation. But that doesn't mean fact-checkers can't catch them when they are materially wrong about confirmable facts. Presumably, if a reporter completely misread/fabricated what a town's sign said, then they likely misjudged/fabricated the basis for describing the town as being close-minded and ignorant.
As a personal anecdote, the only time I've ever been published in the New York Times was in the NYT Magazine. A staffer had seen a comment I posted on HN (in a HN thread about a NYTM article) and asked if it'd be OK to print it as a letter to the editor. When I agreed, I had to email back and forth with a fact-checker for a couple of days to clarify the content of my HN comment -- she even went so far as to point out, to my embarrassment, how I had misremembered the plot of "Dumb and Dumber". If they put in that much time for a letter to the editor, I imagine that their actual staffer articles put under the same amount of scrutiny.
Here's a good article about the New Yorker's process: https://www.cjr.org/the_delacorte_lectures/new-yorkers-fact-...
As a personal anecdote, the only time I've ever been published in the New York Times was in the NYT Magazine. A staffer had seen a comment I posted on HN (in a HN thread about a NYTM article) and asked if it'd be OK to print it as a letter to the editor. When I agreed, I had to email back and forth with a fact-checker for a couple of days to clarify the content of my HN comment -- she even went so far as to point out, to my embarrassment, how I had misremembered the plot of "Dumb and Dumber". If they put in that much time for a letter to the editor, I imagine that their actual staffer articles put under the same amount of scrutiny.