That would be something, but the issue is that most people don't have the time or capacity to audit their own records, or to hire an attorney to escalate it. Journalists on the other hand specialize in this; they can audit everyone's records and expose wrongdoing at a state level.
A simple request for the audit record is absolutely something that consumers should be able to do. There's no guarantee that journalist is going to look at your record to get you help. It won't help in edge cases and those people will still be screwed.
> There's no guarantee that journalist is going to look at your record
The journalists look at aggregates first, and then individuals help tell the story. The point is that both individual-audit-records and full data+logic exports serve their unique purpose. Anyone should be able to use the data+logic to replay the execution, whether for oneself or for the entire community.