Questioned competition with journalist (9)
I believe the answer is:
contested
'questioned' is the definition.
The definition and answer can be both to do with communicating as well as being past participle verbs.
Perhaps you can see an association between them that I don't see?
'competition with journalist' is the wordplay.
I cannot quite see how this works, but
'competition' could be 'contest' (contest is a kind of competition) and 'contest' is found in the answer.
'journalist' could be 'ed' (short for editor) and 'ed' is located in the answer.
This accounts for all the letters.
This explanation may well be incorrect...
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for contested that I've seen before include "Challenged, disputed" , "called into question" , "In dispute" .)