> This is a No True Scotsman fallacy.

Ironically, this is not a real no true Scotsman.

Seems like a relatively consistent, generally agreed on definition at least of 'investigative journalist' shouldn't be impossible. Something like... 'A news gatherer, who uses primary sources and triangulates investigative techniques to gather information, establish causation and contribute to understanding of emerging and ongoing news.'

There is no other way.

Oh, I don't know, perhaps look at the huge amount of material from journalism schools on what journalism is and how it should be done, or maybe at journalism's professional bodies and their codes of ethics?

Cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journalism_ethics_and_standard...

Is the journalist advocating for something or simply reporting the facts.

I would define a real journalist as someone who adds new important previously unknown facts to a story, or reports on a previously unreported story and who discloses if their sources have a vested interest in the information they've presented.

So that eliminates cable news entirely and most of the work done by NYT, WAPO etc. who basically act as a mouthpiece for government and repeat the same stories ad infinitum.

There’s a whole sub field of journalism called “curatorial journalism” or “meta journalism” that reports aggregated news that has already been reported by other outlets. This means they don’t report any new facts per se, but sometimes the combination of facts over time can color a story differently than when the facts are reported in isolation. I find this form of journalism to be very compelling.