The whole idea of merit is to reward a good quality post. I don't think we should confuse it with a reporter's reporting status.
I agree with this matter somehow it could be possible to use merits as incentives for doing good reports. Merits is ideal as incentives. In my opinion regarding merit should not only be applicable to good or quality posts but also to overall good deeds done by a user.
So, the idea would be for each user to have a "millimerit" balance (either hidden from view, or maybe visible next to the existing report accuracy numbers). Moderators could then award members with say 25 millimerits for any good report and -100 for any bad report.
The balance can (maybe, not sure) go negative, so you would have to "work off" each of your bad reports to get back above zero and each time you accumulate 1000 millimerits (40 good reports) the balance gets reset and you're awarded one real merit.
In my case with or without merit, If I had seen some shitty posts that added to ruin things that I read to a certain topic then I will report that post. Most of the time those post like cursing, disrespectful posts, and other offensive posts especially that is all against the forum unofficial rules and regulation.