George Churchill -
Why ask? We at WikiTree pride ourselves on collecting and evaluating sources, do we not?
This one is especially EASY to evaluate. Start of with the title itself, where it says "people" are being deported. As it turns out, in reading the article it becomes clear that ones being deported are more precisely described as "convicted criminals" and "foreign nationals". It turns out that your cousin's 12-year-old native Canadian child is NOT in their crosshairs, although they're trying to make it sound like everybody is at risk. They get rather hilarious regarding this point near the conclusion, where they warn the general public that their DNA might be used to do this, even though practically nobody reading it would be even remotely related to anybody effected by it.
It even avoids making the "convicted criminal" status of the individual obvious by saying he "...was charged two years later with importing and conspiring to import heroin and sentenced to seven years in jail. ..." Now, unless Canada is a LOT different than I think it is, they don't just sentence people to 7 years for simply being charged. I'm going to go ahead and assume there was a conviction inbetween that was magically left out.
So this person who is treated so sympathetically in the article is a "convicted heroin smuggler" too - not simply "people". We hear all kinds of obviously-biased alarmism from this guy's LAWYER, but not so much from the officials looking to deport him (who aren't allowed to talk about the specifics of cases). It's casually mentioned that he committed various other crimes, too, since they tried to deport him, almost making it sound like these crimes were CAUSED by the deportation attempt, or like this is a reasonable way to pass the time.
Then there's the fact, as I pointed out elsewhere, that they don't say ANYTHING about this guy's family, who probably know full well what country he's a citizen of. They don't even say where he was born - not only not the town, but not even the country. The story of what country he is a citizen of, and how that came to be is COMPLETELY ABSENT. So this career criminal is simply being believed, without any real questions.
Of course, there's the way that trying to ascertain the true citizenship of a foreign nation is treated like it's some sort of human rights violation - not exactly "fact-based" journalism.
"National Enquirer"? Not really the same thing - they push questionable gossip and conspiracy theories, while this is alarmist political propaganda - although those two are often one and the same these days! The line between major "news" sources and tabloids is pretty blurry right now, at least in the US. So I guess it's debatable, but your instincts are right on target - it's extremely biased and pushing conspiracy theories against DNA testing.
You're literally being called upon to raise your fist in righteous outrage at the idea that your DNA might be used to help identify the true citizenship of your heroin-smuggling career criminal second cousin from Botswana, and that he thereby might be sent back to his own country. This is not a parody, and the fact that it's completely insane, on many levels, is completely beyond them.
Anyway, you'd don't have to take anybody else's word for whether it's "reliable" - you just have to do a little critical thinking as you read it, and it should be self-evident.
