This may be sophistry but I differentiate between sprinters taking drugs to win and cyclist taking drugs to survive, say, a Grand Tour.
When the Tour started it was inhumanly hard and the RO said that ideally only one rider would survive the race (!) and whilst that might have been media talk it does encapsulate that the Tour was primarily about survival - and so naturally riders have taken whatever it took ever since.
No sensible rider is going to come out now and admit the misdoings of the past (unless they have a book to sell) because of the (hypocritical ) public reaction. IIRC Riis did and was then vilified because omerta applies not just to the riders but to all those in the media who depend on riders to pay their wages.
The official TdF DVD of the 1999 Tour when Armstrong won the prologue by a very wide margin was described by the live commentators (Sherwen & Ligget) as "astonishing" and "incredible" and in the post race interview their colleague says to Armstrong that the margin of victory was "so surprising" . In fact Armstrong looks a bit nonplussed as though his winning margin is a bit too good to be true and he knows it. Well well well.
But what happened next is that the commentators, instead of querying why Armstrong had changed from an average rider who then had cancer to turn into a Tour winner, bought into the "miracle". Did they really believe in "miracles" or did they collude to retain their good life?
Few media people come out of the EPO era with credit but the one who does is David Walsh. David has sold a few books about his campaign since but I do wonder if there are also guilty consciences amongst those in the media who decided to believe in "miracles" - despite the well document history of "extra help" in pro. cycling.