News Bugs

The News Bugs are a loosely affiliated group of social activists dedicated to revealing the truth about society by any means necessary. While originally the group was founded to uncover corruption or misuse of power by local officials by careful listening and good journalism, it has since become something else.
Started by a group of disgruntled freelance journalist who felt they were being to constrained by "unimportant stories" the five original members founded the News Bugs and a paper dedicated to finding the truth in all civil matters and revealing them for the public to see by placing them on the local town message boards. This venture started off as a donation operated company and was originally well received uncovering some scandals and abuses of power that garnered public out cry and success for the News Bugs. For the first few years everything was going smoothly and they were able to expand from their original city to several near by cities. Eventually the hype around them began to die down and donations became less common they began to take on jobs from individuals that offered to donate large sums of money. This resulted investigations of small companies and persons less attached to civic leadership. Slowly this lead to more aggressive means of investigation including breaking and entering threats , coercion and similar actions. The news that began to come out became more and more showy and sensational to keep the publics interest. The donations more and more became people with agendas or axes to grind against other people or rival businesses. In recent years it has come to light that some of the stories shared by the News Bugs are stretched, misrepresented, or in the worst cases possibly completely made up. Rarely they have even admitted to making a "small error" though this is quickly followed up by a new story designed to catch the publics attention. Any accusations of violence caused by their warped or inflammatory articles is quickly brushed off as radical action, unsubstantiated or " In the public interest".
Of the original members three have since resigned from their positions as the organization they helped found has drifted from their initial vision, one has died and the last still maintains sole control over the News Bugs. More and more people have come to view the News Bugs as unreliable at best and dangerous at worst but these are small tight knit communities that have little influence on the success of the organization that has wronged them. Some communities have even banned the organization in their towns. 
In recent years an unknow benefactor has created a small rival organization known as the Skeleton Crew dedicated to challenging the varsity of News Bug articles. Rumors say that this new organization has several of the original founders as members and may boast a number of professional detectives as members.

Type

Social, Activist