Reporters' jobs is to seek out the truth through every avenue available to them. We develop sources of information to use to try to get to the facts, which often are obfuscated. Some may serve as just middlemen, or essentially PR, but most of us work hard to dig up information, even if it tells a different story than the ones the sources of the information want to tell. This is the importance of journalism. Most major stories would never see the light of day (or at least not more than what those involved wanted to get out in public) without dedicated journalists digging them up.