One of ProPublica's greatest recent victories (in my opinion) was the FOIA lawsuit to secure public release of PPP loan information, along with other COVID relief loans like EIDL. Aside from the sheer scale ($1 trillion) and the rampant fraud [1], there were politicians from both sides of the aisle who took these forgivable business loans while delaying other forms of government relief.

1. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3906395

I disagree. This is the exception rather than the rule. The more corporate, the more likely to give the people what they want.

Isn't that contrary to the purpose of news organizations? They should give the people what they need to know, not what they want.

Who’s to be the judge of what people need to know?

My point is the more corporate the organization, the more they’ll only care about profit rather than what the public needs to know. Nonprofits, and orgs owned by individuals, are more likely to sacrifice revenue for such considerations.

How do you square that with social media being the source of news for many?

Social media is lambasted for presenting people with the most engaging information rather than what experts think they need to know, and social media companies are largely just maximizing revenue. I think it squares nicely.

I agree. I had interpreted "what people want" as actual investigative journalism to the earlier commenters point.

Pro publica doesn't endorse