It's a safe bet that his trust is based off his own opinions and evaluations of their articles and overall site content. When you look to get a better, more critical news article you start to move away from the corporate owned news media and start looking to and appraising the worth of independent journalists and websites, those who have a much better shot of being more factual and devoted to telling the meaty truth a story contains.
There's certainly independent sites that are put ups by larger companies as a steer and smear job, which is why evaluating them is important. Zerohedge isn't perfect but is pretty damn good overall, much better than the corporate news by a mile.
No, definitely not projecting.