https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/campaigns/met...

to Standard&Poor used multiple sources: state government land titles from around the world, public information released to stock exchanges, and others.

The billions of dollars in market cap is what tends to make reputable stock market release information in minerals and energy especially reliable - where there's suspicion of fraud money flows to investigation, then litigation, etc.

Very little that cannot be backed by third party independant experts is posted, very few actual errors are posted, of those errors the majority are corrected in a timely manner.

Factually (in those capital intensive domains, by my experience) the information is easily more reliable than that published in general run of the mill newspapers.

Consolidating all that raw information into GIS database's that link layered companies, board members, physical plots of land etc. makes for a service that investors and industry members were and still are willing to pay well for.

Putting spin on facts and attempts at misdirection of course happens.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_One_controversy is an interesting example of where political and media spin in the US news cycle got entirely out of hand and at no point ever particularly addressed the essentially dull reasons for a POTUS to speak and endorse the transfer of Kazakhstan shares.

All of that dust in the air was far removed from facts about companies, shares, resources, etc released by the exchanges.