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First off, there is no way that Trump is getting a Nobel without first invading Sweden and replacing their committee. They gave Obama the peace prize for not being GWB, Trump would basically bring liberal democracy to China before they would even consider him.
Secondly, your reasoning seems to be akin to "when the girl started to talk about her father sexually abusing her, she destroyed what had previously been a happy family".
The job of the media, even the fucking, thrice-damned NYT, is to report the news. A previously unreported US military operation in North Korea seems pretty clearly news to me -- unlike outing or doxxing people, which seems evil in itself.
Like most actors, news media often have an agenda. They put spins on things, they select what to report on and when to release their reports. That is all SOP. If they want to frustrate Trump's efforts at peace, that is perhaps not maximally nice, but well within their expected alignment constraints. FWIW, I do not think that a few dead fishermen will be a dealbreaker for Kim Jong Un.
Did the NYT stop anyone else from discovering the story and publishing it in 2021? No? Then your problem might just be that their competitors suck at investigative journalism.
Finally, I think that this is just more of Trump trying to collect all the achievements that Obama got. I do not think he is very coherent about it, more completionist than seriously role-playing. So he got out of the Iranian deal and bombed them instead because he wanted the "Bomber President" achievement, then he makes some token effort to get his "Peacemaker President" in Korea, is gunning for "Law and Order achiever" while also maxing out his corruption meter.
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