Art. 85 of the GDPR defines the exemptions in terms of how the data is used, not with respect to who uses it.
> For processing carried out for journalistic purposes or the purpose of academic artistic or literary expression, Member States shall provide for exemptions or derogations ... if they are necessary to reconcile the right to the protection of personal data with the freedom of expression and information.
You can of course shift the argument to "what is journalism?", which does indeed have some fuzzy boundaries, but to claim that investigating and exposing widespread government corruption is anywhere near those fuzzy boundaries is a stretch, to say the least.
> Who decides which organizations are part of the fourth estate?
In the United States, given our Constitution enumerates certain freedoms for the press, there is a rich corpus of case law drawing this delineation. I am not sure if such a corpus exists in the EU, and am fairly certain it does not exist in every one of the EU's twenty-eight member states.
The First Amendment says "Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press..." [1]. The comma is the delineation. In case law, the exploration of this delineation has produced definitions with precedent [2].
More practically, the linked-to article explores "whether the 'institutional press' is entitled to greater freedom from governmental regulations or restrictions than are non-press individuals, groups, or associations," concluding "the speech and press clauses may be analyzed under an umbrella 'expression' standard, with little, if any, hazard of missing significant doctrinal differences." (TL; DR There is a line, but it does not appear to matter much.)
This is basically the reason I don't like the idea of any law that treats journalists as some separate class or entity. Journalism is not something you should need a certain background to do, and any laws or exemptions made for it run the very real risk of being used to stifle competition or prop up state propaganda outfits.
> For processing carried out for journalistic purposes or the purpose of academic artistic or literary expression, Member States shall provide for exemptions or derogations ... if they are necessary to reconcile the right to the protection of personal data with the freedom of expression and information.
You can of course shift the argument to "what is journalism?", which does indeed have some fuzzy boundaries, but to claim that investigating and exposing widespread government corruption is anywhere near those fuzzy boundaries is a stretch, to say the least.