Investigative Reporting . . .R.I.P.

It's official, NEWS is dead.  I understand with the 24 hr news cycle that you're gonna have some filler. Human interest stories, opinion and commentary, financial information, etc.  The problem is no one remembers how to be a reporter anymore.  They are too busy writing books, passing off each others mistakes as news, and all around too often becoming a part of the story.  West Viriginia - network anchors and camera persons probably outnumber the towns people 3 to 1.  First, 1 miner found dead.  Then word that the rest are alive, then one but the others unknown, then the rest did not survive.  Hats off to the guy who is the spokesman for the company.  I was also impressed with the Governor and his handling of the situation.  It appears that things were officially pretty tight on both those ends.  So where did this 'unofficial' report come from? Was it a well meaning person from within the command center, or someone nearby that overhead the initial report and went off on their own wanting to be the first to let everyone know? Why, aren't these questions "reporters" should be asking?
Maybe, if they would bother doing some investigative reporting, they might "A", find out that there was no official announcement before they started blabbing that they were all alive, and "B" never use the phrases 'we are hearing' and 'unconfirmed reports'.  The latter being what most of the rest of us call rumors, and the first could be cured by actually finding something out for yourself before you repeat it rather than wating for someone else to feed you something.
Come dawn, we might find out that after chasing all the families down as they headed home to capture the perfect picture of grief, maybe someone might actually do a little investigating to find out WHO is responsible for that first call/message that got to the families saying everyone was alive.  That would be nice.  I am afraid that they will all just be speculating because it's better TV, and that I am afraid would be the last nail in the coffin.