The difference was that investigative journalism used to cough up documents, videos and proofs before running to the presses.
Now it's a string of 'anonymous official' and the new form that tries harder to be legit 'anonymous official heard X person say', with X a famous and readily recognizable character out of government.
At that point is hearsay vs hearsay. Reputable outlets are trashing their reputation and dragging it in the ground in the name of 'faster news' - but then it's even harder to normal people to tell what's grounded, what's likely, what's a half truth and what's propaganda.
It's far to easy to get position from a crackpot conspiracy theorist and wash them up into a better thought post on a unbranded website, so google searches now dig up as much trash as good posts for many important topics, and because the writing style and source weight is the same (hearsay) it'll be increasingly difficult for people to process.
This is especially true for controversial topics that sit at the edge of personal knowledge. I.e. some day ago I was curios about methane plant total lifecycle impact compared to solar panel disposal or solar concentrator plants, and happened across this article that brings up some interesting points, backs them up with some easily verifiable math and shows a greater complexity to a topic I thought was more straightforward:
http://energypost.eu/wind-solars-achilles-heel-methane-meltd...
and the problem is... I have no idea if anything written in there is actually true. it looks true, it sounds a reasonable and balanced analysis, but for that article there are three stating the contrary, and I have not the instruments for differentiating which is good and which is pushing an agenda, since it's not a clear case of partisanship (like you'd expect from articles pushed from 'the union of conservative scientists')