Investigative journalism is a form of

journalism Journalism is the production and distribution of reports on the interaction of events, facts, ideas, and people that are the "news of the day" and that informs society to at least some degree. The word, a noun, applies to the occupation (pro ...

in which reporters deeply investigate a single topic of interest, such as serious crimes, political corruption, or corporate wrongdoing. An investigative journalist may spend months or years researching and preparing a report. Practitioners sometimes use the terms "watchdog reporting" or "accountability reporting." Most investigative journalism has traditionally been conducted by newspapers, wire services, and freelance journalists. With the decline in income through advertising, many traditional news services have struggled to fund investigative journalism, due to it being very time-consuming and expensive. Journalistic investigations are increasingly carried out by news organizations working together, even internationally (as in the case of the Panama Papers and Paradise Papers), or by organizations such as ProPublica, which have not operated previously as news publishers and which rely on the support of the public and benefactors to fund their work. The growth of media conglomerates in the U.S. since the 1980s has been accompanied by massive cuts in the budgets for investigative journalism. A 2002 study concluded "that investigative journalism has all but disappeared from the nation's commercial airwaves".

Definitions

University of Missouri journalism professor Steve Weinberg defined investigative journalism as: "Reporting, through one's own initiative and work product, matters of importance to readers, viewers, or listeners." In many cases, the subjects of the reporting wish the matters under scrutiny to remain undisclosed. There are currently university departments for teaching investigative journalism. Conferences are conducted presenting peer-reviewed research into investigative journalism. British media theorist

Hugo de Burgh Professor Hugo de Burgh (born 10 June 1949) is Director of the China Media Centre at the University of Westminster, which he founded in January 2005. Before that, he ran the Centre for Media Research at Goldsmiths College. de Burgh is founder, a ...

(2000) states that: "An investigative journalist is a man or woman whose profession is to discover the truth and to identify lapses from it in whatever media may be available. The act of doing this generally is called investigative journalism and is distinct from apparently similar work done by police, lawyers, auditors, and regulatory bodies in that it is not limited as to target, not legally founded and closely connected to publicity."

History

American journalism textbooks point out that muckraking standards promoted by '' McClure's Magazine'' around 1902, "Have become integral to the character of modern investigative journalism." Furthermore, the successes of the early muckrakers continued to inspire journalists.

Tools

An investigative reporter may make use of one or more of these tools, among others, on a single story: * Analysis of documents, such as

lawsuit - A lawsuit is a proceeding by a party or parties against another in the civil court of law. The archaic term "suit in law" is found in only a small number of laws still in effect today. The term "lawsuit" is used in reference to a civil actio ...

s and other legal documents, tax records, government reports, regulatory reports, and corporate financial filings. * Databases of public records. * Investigation of technical issues, including scrutiny of government and business practices and their effects. * Research into social and legal issues. * Subscription research sources such as LexisNexis. * Numerous interviews with on-the-record sources as well as, in some instances, interviews with anonymous sources (for example

whistleblower A whistleblower (also written as whistle-blower or whistle blower) is a person, often an employee, who reveals information about activity within a private or public organization that is deemed illegal, immoral, illicit, unsafe or fraudulent. Whi ...

s). * Federal or state Freedom of Information Acts to obtain documents and data from government agencies. * OSINT (Open-Source Intelligence) databases and tools that contain free and open resources that anybody can use.

Examples

* Julius Chambers of the '' New-York Tribune'' had himself committed to the

Bloomingdale Asylum Bloomingdale (literally ''blooming valley'' or ''valley of flowers'') may refer to: People * Bloomingdale (surname) Places ;Canada * Bloomingdale, Ontario ;United States * Bloomingdale, former name of Oregon City, California * Bloomingdale ...

in 1872, and his account led to the release of twelve patients who were not mentally ill, a reorganization of the staff and administration, and eventually to a change in the lunacy laws; this later led to the publication of the book ''A Mad World and Its Inhabitants'' (1876). * Ida B. Wells-Barnett's 189
Southern Horrors
documented lynching in the United States, exposing in the pages of black-owned newspapers as a campaign of oppression and intimidation against African Americans. A white mob destroyed her newspaper press and office in retaliation for her reporting. * Nellie Bly, a pseudonym used by Elizabeth Cochrane Seaman in the late 19th century, famously feigned insanity as part of her 1887 undercover investigation into and subsequent exposé regarding the inner-workings of the Women's Lunatic Asylum in New York City. Published to wide acclaim as a series of articles in the '' New York World'' which were later compiled and further detailed in her book '' Ten Days in a Mad-House'', Bly's revelations led to both a grand jury investigation of the asylum and increased funding for the Department of Public Charities and Corrections. *Between 1972-1974 Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein uncovered and exposed a variety of incriminating information regarding President Richard Nixon's 1968-1972 presidential campaign. The information exposed, prompted Nixon's resignation in 1974 and was then on recognized as the Watergate scandal. *

Bill Dedman Bill Dedman (born 1960) is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American journalist, an investigative reporter for '' Newsday'', and co-author of the biography of reclusive heiress Huguette Clark, '' Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark ...

's 1988 investigation, ''The Color of Money'', for '' The Atlanta Journal-Constitution'' on racial discrimination by mortgage lenders in middle-income neighborhoods, received the 1989 Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting and was an influential early example of computer-assisted reporting or database journalism. *

Brian Deer Brian Deer is a British investigative reporter, best known for inquiries into the drug industry, medicine and social issues for '' The Sunday Times''. Deer's investigative nonfiction book, ''The Doctor Who Fooled the World,'' was published in S ...

's British press award-winning investigation for ''

The Sunday Times ''The Sunday Times'' is a British newspaper whose circulation makes it the largest in Britain's quality press market category. It was founded in 1821 as ''The New Observer''. It is published by Times Newspapers Ltd, a subsidiary of News UK, wh ...

'' of London into the worldwide MMR vaccine controversy which revealed that research, published by '' The Lancet'', associating the children's vaccine with autism was fraudulent. *''

The Daily Telegraph ''The Daily Telegraph'', known online and elsewhere as ''The Telegraph'', is a national British daily broadsheet newspaper published in London by Telegraph Media Group and distributed across the United Kingdom and internationally. It was f ...

'' investigated claims that various British Members of Parliament had been filing dubious and frivolous expenses claims, and had done for many years in secret. The House of Commons Authority initially tried to block the release of the information, but the expenses were leaked to the ''Telegraph''. The newspaper then released pieces of information which dominated the news for weeks and caused considerable anger in the UK. * John M. Crewdson of the ''

Chicago Tribune The ''Chicago Tribune'' is a daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, United States, owned by Tribune Publishing. Founded in 1847, and formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" (a slogan for which WGN radio and television a ...

'' wrote a 1996 article proposing the installment of defibrillators on American airliners. Crewdson argued that based on his research and analysis, "Medical kits and defibrillators would be economically justified if they saved just 3 lives each year." Soon after the article's publication, airlines began installing defibrillators on planes, and the devices began to show up in airports and other public spaces. Ten years after installing defibrillators,

American Airlines American Airlines is a major US-based airline headquartered in Fort Worth, Texas, within the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex. It is the largest airline in the world when measured by fleet size, scheduled passengers carried, and revenue passenge ...

reported that 80 lives had been saved by the machines. *One of the largest teams of investigative journalists is the Washington-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) launched in 1997 by the Center for Public Integrity which includes 165 investigative reporters in over 65 countries working collaboratively on crime, corruption, and abuse of power at a global level, under Gerard Ryle as Director. Working with major media outlets globally, they have exposed organised crime, international tobacco companies, private military cartels, asbestos companies, climate change lobbyists, details of Iraq and Afghanistan war contracts, and most recently the Panama Papers and Paradise Papers. * Hopewell Chin'ono, the award-winning Zimbabwean journalist who investigated and exposed the Covid-gate scandal in Zimbabwe in June 2020. US$60 million was siphoned to a shadowy company called Drax that is linked to President Emmerson Mnangagwa. The exposure resulted in the dismissal and arrest of Health Minister Obbidiah Moyo. Hopewell Chin'ono was arrested on flimsy charges in an apparent attempt to silence him. * The investigative Commons center opened in

Berlin Berlin is Capital of Germany, the capital and largest city of Germany, both by area and List of cities in Germany by population, by population. Its more than 3.85 million inhabitants make it the European Union's List of cities in the European U ...

, Germany in 2021 and houses the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights, Forensic Architecture, and

Bellingcat Bellingcat (stylised as bell¿ngcat) is a Netherlands-based investigative journalism group that specialises in fact-checking and open-source intelligence (OSINT). It was founded by British journalist and former blogger Eliot Higgins in July 20 ...

Awards

* George Polk Awards * Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting * Investigative Reporters and Editors Award * Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting * Worth Bingham Prize for investigative reporting

References

External links