Lecture 11 - Investigative Journalism

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

What is investigative journalism? What are the types and methods of investigative journalism? These are just a few questions that we talked about in today's lecture.

There are a few nice quotes which all try to define what investigative journalism is - the one above is a very nice example.

Investigative journalism has to be...

...intelligent

...informed

...intuitive

...inside

...and the journalist has to invest something of himself (mentally, physically).

As the deeper definitions and purpose of investigative journalism we identified the following:

- critical and thorough journalism

- custodians of conscience -> exposure!

- to provide a voice for those without one and to hold the powerful to account -> public interest!

- Fourth estate/Fourth branch of govt/"watchdog" -> especially important in QLD, since we do not have an upper house ("house of review") in parliament

We then talked about some remarkable historic examples of investigative journalism, for example W. T. Stead and his "The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon" Campaign (1885).

To the paramount question "WHAT do we investigate?" the answer is pretty short: everything, and, most importantly, always check your facts, assume nothing and expect whistleblowers to be crazy.

Different investigation types include conventional ones such as observations and interviews but also slightly more questionable ones like trespass or theft. Investigation methods can be summarised into interviewing, observing and analysing documents.

The biggest threat to investigative journalism is, without a doubt, online journalism.

Less money = less journalists + less time = less investigative journalism

But also a growth in PR is threatening investigative journalism since more PR = less journalism.

However, there are some glimpses of hope for investigative journalism, especially the possibility of paywalls in online journalism and outlets like youtube (who considers launching a special service dedicated to investigative journalism).