That even that inconsistent Bin Laden story purportedly relied on two distinct sources, and yet his Nord Stream story purportedly relies on only a single anonymous source, should be a significant red flag here. I have no reason to doubt that Hersh heard the quotes in his Nord Stream story from at least someone in government, but that source's motivations and truthfulness were not independently verified even, by his own admission, by Hersh. And that's just... not credible reporting.
since by his own admission, [what you said], that is credible reporting.
it might not be a credible source or story
I suggest that the ethics code says don't report facts as facts that you haven't verified as facts, but if you say "I could not verified this and I heard it from one source" you are within the code. "Sources in the Administration" often report things to reporters, and most of what they say can't be verified, it can only be echoed by more than one person. And if a reporter has a relationship with one leaker who has been reliable, you're claiming they can't use that, and I'm claiming they can and do. Sure, verify what you can, but being an honest reporter is what is required, not certain fact patterns.
Yes, in a deep dive publication like the New Yorker, they will often kill certain facts or an entire story if it cannot be corroborated, but that doesn't define journalism.
Worth noting that both the White House and the New York Times walked back inconsistent claims they made in the days after bin Laden's death. So the White House and Times were self-admittedly inconsistent about it. If Hersh is inconsistent it is in that light.
Hersh pokes holes in different points of the official narrative. Particularly the idea no one high up in the Pakistani government knew bin Laden was in the compound. Contradicting the White House, but very convincing to me and others.
However, to be fair to you, Hersh goes into a great deal of detail about the initial intelligence, the raid etc. Was any part of that wrong or inconsistent? It's hard to know. He didn't just make a few statements but went into a lot of detail. So there could theoretically be inconsistencies in Hersh's reporting about it too, since he covered so much ground. It is hard to know though. You just take what the White House said, what Hersh says, what the Pakistani press says and try to figure out what actually happened.
But I'm biased as well, my desire to believe is strong, only that I'm in team "'t was an inside job" so my bias is in clear opposition of these claims (but in limited to speculation, I find "Russia jumped from excuse to excuse to keep the pipelines closed anyways, so the only immediate winners of the explosions were people in Moscow who felt threatened by some real or imagined "make money not war" faction" logically compelling, but that's all there is, I guess, strongly, but can't claim to know)
https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/22/22-293/242292/2022...
Come on now. I get the desire for people to believe their own government could just never possibly engage in this kind of skullduggery (at least, not until they're comfortably removed from the incident in question by many decades and can safely file it under "well we don't do that kind of thing anymore"), but the idea that the Russians were the only ones with motive?!
I'm sure if they did, that was with the sole purpose of ensuring maximum factual accuracy, and no other purpose whatsoever.