> on the one hand the New York Post is "a rag" as nicbou said, but on the other hand its reporters' judgments are reliable

I know a handful of Post reporters. The short answer is their bar for publishing is lower. That means they catch stories earlier than the majors. (Same way specialist blogs do.) But they also post stuff that later needs to, or should have been, retracted. (Again, like a blog.)

Put another way, it's an entertaining paper that's not really comparable to the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal or New York Times in terms of quality or intent. But it does bring a more conservative angle to the mix in the same way those papers' journalists (or more accurately, e.g. Jon Stewart) bring a liberal/leftist perspective to the fore.

> So on the one hand the New York Post is "a rag" as nicbou said, but on the other hand its reporters' judgments are reliable.

Another way to look at it is that the story stank so much, even NYPost reporters (who are probably used to the gutter journalism) didn't want their name near it.