Is the less spin spin true?

An interesting comment from Martin Bright (my collaborator on Iraq dossier stories) in the New Statesman:

With briefings now at a minimum, political journalists have to spend their time speculating about what they genuinely don't know, rather than pretending to speculate about what they have already been told in advance.

Bright thinks this is a good thing and I agree. Are we any worse off for finding stuff out a bit later? Obviously the only things that journalists find out when they are fed stories are the things that the feeders want us to know, and on the feeders' own terms.