I'm not sure the reliance on primary sources is necessarily superior - or at least results in less of a reality "creation".
I would say the important thing is to have trust in who or what is curating/filtering and commenting/interpreting your inputs (which in itself is a very challenging problem), whether primary or secondary.
Part of what scared me was that his "authorities" on the matter were mainstream news commentators. It would have been one thing if he had been pointing to experts who actually knew the topic.
In this case, it was a newscaster on CNN. Couldn't tell you who.
The question, specifically, had been whether a politician had or had not authorized a change to a law. My primary sources were the law before he changed it and the law after he changed it, which had different text. It wasn't even a situation that required interpretation. My brother wasn't arguing that the change was meaningless. He was arguing that the law had not changed.
I appreciate that there are nuanced situations where interpretation matters a great deal, but newscasters are not experts on the things they report. That's not their job. Their saying something did or didn't happen when they don't even pretend to have been there, read the documents, or informed themselves about the situation isn't authoritative.
I would say the important thing is to have trust in who or what is curating/filtering and commenting/interpreting your inputs (which in itself is a very challenging problem), whether primary or secondary.