Ah sorry, I think I misread what you meant in your original post. Yeah, I have the same problem. A lot of these issues would go away if journalist orgs worked together to a larger degree (sharing FOIA docs, etc), but the competition and risk of sharing info leads to naturally strange ethics systems.

Heh, nah. I'm a journalist and I've seen its effects directly on local government. For example, there was a police accountability committee that needed the local city hall to create a process for allowing people to apply. They completely forgot about it, though. The act of me researching and calling political offices put a real fire under their assess to get the process moving again. Accountability works.

That has nothing to do with "social webs".