If your entire thing has been based around manifesting snark around journalism without actually understanding it, you go into things without journalistic practices. One of the big ones is the assumption that all journalists get their news from each other, and simply take the text, perhaps jumble a bit up and paste it out. Which isn't the case.
I've had stuff I've done in the past, completely without press release, appear in other online outlets. Literally seeing my interpretations treated as the official line. Which I found amusing as well as pleasing as it meant that my words were not going completely into the void.
Because they think it is this piss easy world where you just paste news around and create social engagement, there is a massive perception issue when it comes to actual investigative journalism.