With the decline in income through advertising, many traditional news services have struggled to fund investigative journalism, due to it being very time-consuming and expensive.
The act of doing this generally is called investigative journalism and is distinct from apparently similar work done by police, lawyers, auditors, and regulatory bodies in that it is not limited as to target, not legally founded and closely connected to publicity.
Examples include Publick Occurrences Both Forreign and Domestick and Benjamin Franklin's New England Courant.
[6][7] The outlook for investigative journalism in the United States was improved by the 1960s with the Freedom of Information Act and New York Times Co. v. Sullivan.
[11] Working with major media outlets globally, they have exposed organised crime, international tobacco companies, private military cartels, asbestos companies, climate change lobbyists, details of Iraq and Afghanistan war contracts, and most recently the Panama Papers[10] and Paradise Papers.