[repolfx]

I don't mean investigations that hit dead ends and never get published. I mean investigative journalism that turns out to be wrong or fraudulent.

Claas Relotious is a particularly notorious recent example, but there is plenty of meta-investigative journalism out there, like Glenn Greenwald's writeups of how the media present things that look like investigations of scandals but which are factually wrong. Here's a recent summary he did of 10 such cases:

https://theintercept.com/2019/01/20/beyond-buzzfeed-the-10-w...

I myself am a subscriber to a daily newspaper, which I read online, to get access to paywalled content. It's essentially opinion and analysis which I find value, and only rarely investigation of scandals. There are lots of newsrooms and only occasionally do they ever get a genuine Watergate or Snowden style scoop which means I can't really subscribe to get them because I don't know where they'll crop up next. And anyway, any paper I do subscribe to will end up paraphrasing and summarising the original paper's investigations anyway, which for me is fine - there's no particular need to learn about these things quickly or even at all, because I can't do anything with the knowledge usually.

In the end I'm skeptical journalism is the right way to keep powerful institutions in check. There are other ways.