The case for copyright is exactly the opposite: the form of content (the precise way the NYT writers presented it) is protected. The ideas therein, the actual news story, is very much not protected at all. You can freely and legally read an NYT article hot off the press and go on air on Fox News and recount it, as long as you're not copying their exact words. Even if the news turns out to be entirely fake and invented by the NYT to catch you leaking their stuff, you still have every right to present the information therein.
This isn't even "fair use". The ideas in a work are simply not protected by copyright, only the form is.