Absolutely. I'm in a very privileged position in my job, where I get to know the majority of journalists, at least in Toronto. So I know a lot of people who write for them. One of their main freelancers at the moment is a guy whose main career was as a political staffer and then he decided to gradually go into journalism. He has broken some very interesting stories on the rise of the alt-right in Canada and some dangerous extremist groups on that side.
He would not have been able to talk to those people had they feared that their conversations were being spied on, because all of the sources are confidential. Again, he would not fit into the definition of a journalist.
CANADALAND is just one example. There are many others—