[grandalf]

How many of those stories would cause the reader to question core assumptions about the legitimacy of the US Government?

Corporate, local, and state-level corruption are all small potatoes fare that is used (along with sensational stories with little actually news content) as a tool to help the orgs pretend to be doing real journalism.

Notably, the NY Times was complicit in the propaganda effort to overthrow Saddam Hussein.

[potatolicious]

Let me get this straight.

Any investigative journalism that does not directly address what you believe to the most important topic (the legitimacy of the US government) is automatically not actual investigative journalism. Not only that, anything that does not address your favorite championed cause is automatically "small potatoes" that is in fact part of the conspiracy for journalists all over the country to fool everyone into believing real journalism is occurring.

Are you seriously leveling this claim?

In other news, all sci-fi TV shows are in fact not actual sci-fi TV shows because they aren't Firefly.

[grandalf]

When he first took office, George W. Bush thinned the herd of the White House press core. He broke the tradition of seasoned reporters getting access and replaced it with selective access based on his personal like/dislike of individual reporters.

This has had a chilling effect on de-facto press freedom in DC. In the meantime we've seen utterly shocking things go largely unreported b/c topics are generally verboten and the press instead focuses on less consequential issues.

In comparison to the stuff that is not getting significant press, the smaller stuff is largely irrelevant to the lives of most Americans.

There are great reporters who write about everything from local sports to local corporate corruption, but the high quality of their work should not shield the major players from accountability for utterly failing in their major moral and professional duty.