> I’m in favour of projects like these - even on spending taxpayer money on them.

Even a few hits is extremely valuable. I mean the US's investments in CERN and ARPA sure lead to way more economic activity and resultant tax money than they ever spent. By many orders of magnitude (I mean the US still is committing like a billion a year, that's nothing in government money. Let alone considering how many multi-trillion dollar companies there are?)

  > However, when you’re doing journalism

Which is why I say the questions are fair and to not use them dismissively. I agree, context matters.