Access journalism has a bad rap, and for good reason. While it sometimes provides "all-access" insight into the psyches of the famous and powerful, it's often little more than public relations for real and would-be autocrats disguised as reporting. Yet, granting every critique of access journalism, what we might call "no-access" journalism—reporting based entirely on already public information, especially press releases or other crafted statements from the subject of the story—is surely just as bad, and a weed with roots in the press and broader public alike.
Let's begin with the press, and specifically its coverage of the war in Ukraine. Early on in the conflict, many international reporters were able to be on the ground in Ukraine, documenting the Russian invasion firsthand and picking up stories from still-active local media organizations. But as the conflict dragged on for more than six months, public interest in the war in the U.S. declined, and coverage priorities have shifted accordingly. Now it is not uncommon to see reports—particularly accounts of battlefield losses for Moscow—in which the Ukrainian government is a primary or only source for major elements of the story.
