[geofft]

Hm, if a journalist is going to describe something as a "much lauded performance," I'd expect her sources to be people lauding the performance, not her own judgment of the performance itself. It is weird if she hasn't seen it herself (so she can judge whether the lauds are sensible enough to pay attention to, to avoid manufactured lauding as you suggest) but it isn't that weird if her primary evidence for the claim that a thing is popular is media sources.

[vannevar]

If it was based on one article, which in turn was based on one tweet, then no, I wouldn't expect her to report that it was a "much lauded performance." And ten articles also based on the same self-serving tweet wouldn't make it any better. At some point, she would need to talk to people that were actually there, whether she was or not.