And I don't I think said they are illegitimate "if they aren't trying to sell things", rather I was trying to say that any large media network is going to need a lot of resources provided by external sources. In the case of Lemmy, that would be all the many instances operated by third parties, who are paying significant hosting fees themselves (and many therefore are asking for donations).

So, if they claim otherwise, that they "don't take help from anyone", then unless they are so small that they just pay for everything right out of their own pocket, then I think they are trying to scam people.

Instigate already gave what they called exceptions, but I mostly think are actually some examples of 1):

state-funded, independent broadcasters such as the BBC, Deutsche Welle, the Australian ABC, NPR etc.

I haven't listened to the Australian ABC, but I have spent some time listening to all those others, and I think they have all been pretty good, at least at some times in the past.

And even though we are primarily talking about formal news organizations, not free software specific stuff, since we are using free software I would like to at least mention that the FSF and other free software publishers and advocates (like the EFF, and even some the FSF has significant disagreements with, like Debian) can be good sources on a lot of things too, and for the most part are charities.

As examples of 2), keeping in mind that I did not say they are all inherently bad, just that a lot of people don't think they are very useful or don't use them much, and they do not primarily exist for charitable reasons, I would cite some state-funded nonindependent broadcasters like VoA/RFE/RL, Xinhua, RT/Sputnik, etc.

Edit: But apparently I did say if they also publish timely news, then they are "likely ... not a very credible news source". Crap. I'm gonna change that "likely" to "may ~~not~~ be".

Your first example is a very fair point, I wasn't thinking about people who basically stumble into something important and decide to publish it. But unless something very odd is happening, that will not happen over and over again to the same person. More likely, it may happen to them once and then they'll decide they want to become a regular citizen journalist, as you say, and then they will need to do a lot of work (with associated costs) even if they aren't getting paid for it. Which would be another example of my first suggestion.

For the rest, I realize that there are plenty of examples where people provide accurate and timely information without charge (a lot of Lemmy is, and hopefully will continue to be, an example of that!). But those people are, for the most part, doing volunteer work, which is very valuable and healthy, but nevertheless is still work (that has costs).

I was not claiming that free goods, or free news in particular, "can't" be worthwhile. Just that it implies that someone is supplying so much that goes above and beyond what a lot of people are trying to get that there is no need to charge for it. That can be an example of something very charitable and wonderful, or it can be an example of someone trying to push something that most people (rightly or wrongly) think is not very useful.