Millions of dollars worth of subscriptions for reporting on government press releases with added spin seems like a great example of waste to me... The government shouldn't be paying any media outlets purely due to the conflict of interest, regardless.

> Or are we to believe that competence is just arbitrarily cross-applicable?

I would wager that even you are more competent than the average auditor, assuming you know how to program. I'm seeing a lot of appeals to authority and credentialism, and assumptions that people who are hired by bureaucrats and politicians to audit themselves have better aligned incentives than a wildcard entrepreneur. If we can't agree on the fundamental axioms, I don't see this conversation going anywhere.