The heady optimism of the possibility of journalists reclaiming responsibility for the Fourth Estate ideal lingered well into the 1990s. A backlash was nonetheless building, which, by the end of the decade, had debased many of the principles that propelled the earlier movement. Audiences grew weary of disclosure and moral certainty, managements tired of the costs and journalists found their attentions directed towards small-time shysters, and populist campaigns designed to ‘name the guilty man’, and swamp public figures with saturation coverage. Just as had happened at the beginning of the century when the popularity of the American muckraking magazines reached into the mainstream before disappearing, the investigative journalism popularised in the 1980s progressed along a similar path.

At the beginning of the 1990s there was a plethora of programs and publications with an overtly watchdog agenda, most notably in commercial television current affairs. For a time the disclosures on the programs propelled ratings and set news agendas in what had become a highly competitive business. But the need to churn out product and keep the ratings high made it hard to sustain substantial investigations. The focus moved back towards consumer rip-offs, small crimes, law and order, the century-old standbys of popular journalism. The people meters that shaped much television programming dictated that this was what the audience wanted.