Could academics take on the role of investigative journalists?

There are great professional risks involved in what the Sociologist Robert K Merton referred to as not just "muck-raking" but "muck making" in his research into the area of priority and claimed multiple independent discoveries in science - particularly when society and elite social institutions are in what anther great sociological genius Stanley Cohen called "states of denial". Journalists - if not their editors - were once thought to be capable of boldly dig for the truth at the expense of the reputations of others. But how many academics dare tread that path? And if they do, say 100% prove that entire academic industries have been making their fortune on the back of newly proven fallacies do not expect that the peer-reviewers and publishers making their money in that industry will embrace and promote the new disconfirming data for their mere unevidenced 'knowledge claims' - they will engage in a state of denial. With no journalists worth their salt to reveal the truth to the public, all we have left today is social media, blogs and websites. Will it be enough for the truth to ut?