Week 12: Investigative Journalism

Investigative journalism, to me, sounds really exciting. you can get caught up in some pretty crazy stuff and althought it could be pretty terrifying (especially if the police are trying to frame you) I think that it could be one of the most rewarding types of journalism out there. (I mean just look at Lois Lane and Clark Kent. Those two owned every story they got. I suppose it does help that they had Superman and that every story that they investigated had some sort of corruption element to it and they cracked every story they got. They also broke into places and stole stuff and always got away with its and it does help that they are fictional characters.) But I also think that it is definitely one of the hardest and one that takes the most amount of time. Like Dr Redman said about the Fitzgerald Inquiry, it took them 2 years to get 1 hour on television. Other reporters are on a story for the day or a few hours or a week but some invesitgative journalism stories can take forever to be broken and I am sure it gets to a point where you just can't get the story out of your mind so it would be really testing your sanity.

"What passes for investigative journalism is finding somebody with their pants down - literally or otherwise." - Robert Scheer, an American journalist.

Now this quote is pretty hilarious but sums up investigative journalism pretty perfectly. The best investigative journalism is the stuff that exposes what certain people are trying to supress from the public eye.

As an investigative journalist there are four things to keep in mind;

1. Active intervention - you must be an active participant making a substantial effort and to do so you must be critical and thorough.
2. Exposure - you must expose the 'civic voice' so that society can respond, you are custodians of justice
3. Public interest - you must provide a voice for those that are voiceless, power to the powerless, to provide social justice
4. Keep it balanced - you must be the fourth estate, the fourth branch of government and the watchdog

And the plan is to be SCEPTICAL NOT CYNICAL
  

I really liked the quote "If your mother says she loves you, check it out." Now that is the definition of not making assumptions. But surely if you get to the point where (if you have had a good childhood, with a mother that had stuck by you) you can't trust when your own mother says that she loves you then I think you could be a little paranoid and you might want to take a little time of work as investigative journalism must be getting to you. 

It could have just been me but I thought it was pretty obvious that you had to get up and get out into the world in order to investigate and to find the stories and the leads to help you break the story. 'Shoe leather journalism' makes sense. You need to walk around and ask questions, interview people, search through documents (and maybe trespass and 'borrow' but maybe not). How can you see the bigger picture from a desk? Take nothing for granted, even if its from your mother, and always check your facts.

Whilst looking up investigative journalism on the net, I found The Age Investigations. Seems like a pretty good site with a lot going on. Hopefully a lot will be going on for a while and further into the future. Also Crikey has quite a bit to offer for those who are lookng for investigative journalism. You have to subscribe but it's free for the first 20 something days before they want you to pay $3.55 per week. Investigative journalism costs money so it only makes sense that you have to pay for it.

So the future of investigative journalism, like Dr Redman said, the Youtube channel hasn't got all that much to offer, yet (?). But I do have some questions to pose; who will be doing the investigative journalism stories for this channel? Will it be anyone or will it be proper journalists? Will they be proper stories or will they be trivial things?