That's not actually a defense of the practice. To make it a defense, you would have to actually argue why a long history of yellow journalism means the public should believe anonymous rumors and to deal with arguments that even supposedly trustworthy papers have betrayed that trust, for example with the Jayson Blair scandal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jayson_Blair
Why do you believe that facts are decided on the basis of anonymous rumors, rather than actual evidence? Trying to appeal to a bandwagon fallacy is not a great way to claim the high ground of rationality.