Why do you trust Consumer Reports?

Independent, non-profit, probably just two of the factors. They don't allow ads or ranking either. I don't think they've steered me wrong.

More like who else can I trust at all? By default I trust them the most because everybody else I can find is too obviously a sell out and so the bar is low.

Note that everybody else I can find is very different from everybody else. Someone else linked rtings - I'd never heard of them before they were not in the running. There are probably many many others that are trust worthy - but all search engines will find is obvious sell outs.