There is a long-running debate as to whether reporters covering Donald Trump should engage in “access journalism.” The phrase is usually used pejoratively to describe the practice of getting access to people in power by passing along their talking points without challenging them and/or doing “humanizing” puff pieces about them—pulling punches, in other words, to maintain good relationships with people who can supply breaking news scoops and help arrange exclusive Oval Office interviews. Reporters who are criticized for engaging in access journalism often argue in response that they’re being unfairly accused of endorsing behavior and viewpoints which they are simply conveying neutrally in order to inform the public how important decisions are understood by the people making them.

What both sides of the debate tend to assume is that the alternative to access journalism is career-disrupting bridge-burning. Critics believe that access journalists enjoy the feeling of proximity to power and only really care about preserving it. Those accused of access journalism, who usually work for big newspapers or TV networks, imply that the kind of aggressive stance their critics are demanding of them is the province of niche rabble-rousers, opinion bloggers (gross), and outsiders.

Recent developments, however, indicate that this dynamic doesn’t always pertain! Causing embarrassment to the people in Trump’s orbit by exposing their incompetence can be good for your career as a high-profile media figure.

Take Axios’ Jonathan Swan. Axios is a publication for “insiders” that more or less takes pride in how value-neutral and reductive it is; its articles have little bullet point subheads that say things like BOTTOM LINE: VOTING IS WHAT ELECTIONS ARE. Swan in particular has been criticized by left-leaning commentators for having once reported incorrectly that Rod Rosenstein had resigned (in a way that suggested Swan might have gotten used by an administration rival of Rosenstein’s) and seeming to bait Trump into endorsing a right-wing immigration policy proposal during a one-on-one interview (in a way that suggested Swan did so in order to be able to claim the endorsement as a scoop, i.e., using his time with Trump for his own good, not ours). Over the weekend, though, HBO aired an interview that Swan conducted with Jared Kushner, for an Axios-branded show, in which Swan asked Kushner tough (but reasonable!) questions and followed them up directly when Kushner tried to dodge. The results were very unflattering for Kushner—and spectacularly successful for Axios and HBO. One clip, of Kushner trying to wriggle out of admitting that birtherism was racist, has already been viewed more than 3 million times on Twitter. By pulling an access journalism bait-and-switch to get Kushner to sit down with him, then blowing him up, Jonathan Swan became a star!

Consider also author Michael Wolff. Early in the Trump administration, Wolff buttered up POTUS by making a cable news appearance in which he criticized other press coverage of the administration. That led to him getting invited into the White House and having access to Trump and other figures close to him, whom he then burned in a bestselling book, Fire and Fury, which portrayed the administration as the domain of back-stabbing creeps. Now, there were arguably a lot of things wrong with the book—it was hard to tell which parts of it were true and which were wild speculation—but it was undoubtedly good for Michael Wolff. According to its publisher, Fire and Fury sold more than 4 million copies, and its sequel (out today) is the seventh bestselling book on Amazon, which means it is already a giant hit. Again, access was used in a way that undermined the administration but also advanced the access-getter’s professional goals.

There are other examples. Chris Wallace is one of the most respected anchors on Fox News because he sometimes treats Trump World talking points with the skepticism they deserve, and that hasn’t prevented him from continuing to book administration guests. Writer Isaac Chotiner did a series of tough/surreal interviews with Trump hangers-on like Newt Gingrich and Alan Dershowitz for Slate—then got a job at the New Yorker, which is a way more prestigious gig than working at this dump, and immediately landed a huge interview with Rudy Giuliani.

In other words, embarrassing your sources in Trump’s circle can be great for your career and may not even result in your bridges being fully burned, because the people in that circle all need attention so much one of them will probably come back to do another controversial interview with you anyway. And then you’ll both get mentioned on TV. So let it rip!