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Journalism is a lot like defensive infosec, where the defender has to get everything right every single time, but the attacker only has to get it right once to get in. Every story a journalist writes contains dozens of facts that have to be right.
Some of the facts are minor but no less important - the spelling of names. Some have great impact if wrong - the publication of medical or health information. Some are critical for other reasons - legal, political.
National security facts are some of the most critical and hardest to verify, due to the general secrecy around the information and the fear - for anonymous sources - that they could be caught and prosecuted (if they work for the government).
On top of getting all of the facts right, the journalist contends with a lot of competing elements: 1) pressure to include all relevant information in a story v. pressure to write short and stay within an assigned word length;
2) pressure to take care to get everything right v. pressure to file quickly to beat competitors; to publish before the news cycle ends/changes and the story loses relevance; to meet an editor's arbitrary but unrealistic deadline for when something needs to file
3) good editors v. bad editors - good editors make your story better and understand the responsibility they have as gate keeper to help you get everything right; bad editors push stories through quickly out of their own haste/impatience and often introduce errors in the process
In the end, notwithstanding all these competing elements/interests, the writer has to write an engaging, informative story on time and at the proper word length, while getting everything right. Every writer knows how unforgiving the public is if you make a single error.
I should add another competing interest that makes the job even harder for journalists who risk their lives doing what they do: 4) the need to inform the public v. the desire of authoritarian regimes/terrorists and others who want that info to remain secret
