> No one says to themselves "That looks like a good story, but I'll just wait a few days and read about it in the New York Times."
I absolutely do. NYT isn't perfect, but all my other feeds are so full of junk I do wait to see what the NYT will write about it. You don't even have to wait a few days. The NYT is very good at covering developing stories online with reasonable accuracy.
I'm not sure why you assume consciousness happens "now". I would argue consciousness intuitively includes more time than that, perhaps even your entire conscious lifetime, as when you are conscious that includes your identity which would include your memories and hopes.