David Cross is extremely accomplished when you stack his resume against literally anyone you pay attention to for news. That's not to say Cross is a journalist but he's also not bound by the silly invented customs and self-importance of American truth-to-power journalism (as opposed to the kind that has always existed which is propaganda for the machine which BTW someone like Chomsky would say is the role of "mainstream" (although that term is a lot less relevant than when Manufacturing Consent was originally public, it's still applicable in the sense of corporate gotta pay the bills media versus the love of the game stuff no publisher wants to buy.