investigative journalism 2

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Investigative Journalism /Investigative Reporting

a form of journalism in which reporters deeplyinvestigate a single topic of interest, often involving

crime, political corruption, or corporate wrongdoing

in many cases, the subjects of the reporting wish thematters under scrutiny to remain undisclosed

often called also watchdog journalism oraccountability reporting


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Professional Definitions

An investigative journalist is a man or womanwhose profession it is to discover the truth andto identify lapses from it in whatever mediamay be available. The act of doing thisgenerally is called investigative journalism and

is distinct from apparently similar work done bypolice, lawyers, auditors and regulatory bodiesin that it is not limited as to target, not legallyfounded and closely connected to publicity.

Hugo de Burgh, British media theorist (2000)


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Professional Definitions

Reporting, through one'sown initiative and workproduct, matters ofimportance to readers,viewers or listeners.Steve Weinberg, professor of journalism,

University of Missouri


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The politician-journalist relation

The politician always try to offer as much information tothe journalist as he can, because the journalist isconnecting him to his voters

The journalist also try to have a good relationship with

the politician, his main source of information On the other hand: there are always information that the

politician wants to keep secret/undisclosed

And there are journalists who are chasing exactly this

type of information; they are called investigativereporters


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The Fourth Power

As an exponent of the fourth power (controlling the threeother powers: legislative, executive, and judicial), thejournalist presumes that the undisclosed information pointstowards a breaking of the law or of the ethical rules

Investigative journalist is going primordially after the

corruption cases of political, business, and financial elites These are affairs involving abuse of power, or cases when

public funds go to private pockets

The people involved are trying to hide such information byclassifying the documents as being business, state, or bank

secrets classified documents


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Classified Documents

When a journalist finds suchdocuments, he/she have to carefullyconsider what is more important:

to respect the confidentiality of therevealed information, or

to take into consideration thegeneral public interest, and toexpose it


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Journalism of Outrage

1690-1972 :muckrakers /revealing

journalism

1972-1974 : TheWatergate Scandal

From 1974 (1977)

on: investigativereporting

1914-1920 First WorldWar

1939-1945 Second WorldWar

1948-1989 Cold War


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Watchdogs and Muckrakers:

Revealing Journalism as publicpolicy

Agenda-setting Theory: media do not/can not tell

people what to think; but tell them what to thinkabout!

Journalists reveals wrongdoings and motivate the public to think about them.From this point is up to the public to demand reforms from the government.Reporters see their goals as informing the public about wrongdoings, but notdirectly asking them to demand reforms. Under this perspective, the efforts of

journalism may not lead to big changes in policy agendas.


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Watchdogs and Muckrakers:Revealing Journalism as public policy

Agenda-building Theory: media,government, and citizenry reciprocally

influence one another

Agenda building role of the media is seen as a collectiveproces, in which reporters make certain issues more salientto the media, the public, and policy makers. Reporters basic

goal is to stimulate agenda-building process in order tocreate reformist outcomes policy changes that promotedemocracy, efficiency, or social justice.


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Theodore Roosevelt onmuckraking

President Theodore (Teddy)

Roosevelt (1858-1919), the 26th

president of the US was one of

the first people who accused

muckrakers with misleading the

public and being troublemakers,

not community builders. Others

claimed that muckrakers do not have the ethic of caring

people, and are harmful to the society. Proponents have

argued that by revealing wrongdoings, muckraking

serves to the American ideal of popular democracy.


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Muckraker = reform-minded journalist

Origin of the term Teddy Roosevelt, 1906 speech delivered on theoccasion of dedicating the U.S. House of Representatives office building :

There are, in the body politic, economic and social, many and graveevils, and there is urgent necessity for the sternest war upon them. Thereshould be relentless exposure of and attack upon every evil man whether

politician or business man, every evil practice, whether in politics, inbusiness, or in social life. I hail as a benefactor every writer or speaker,every man who, on the platform, or in book, magazine, or newspaper, withmerciless severity makes such attack, provided always that he in his turnremembers that the attack is of use only if it is absolutely truthful.


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Muckraker = reform-minded journalist

Roosevelt, on a character from JohnBunyans 1678 classic, Pilgrims Progress,said on the same occasion:

... you may recall the description of theMan with the Muck-rake, the man who couldlook no way but downward with the muck-rakein his hands; Who was offered a celestial crownfor his muck-rake, but who would neither lookup nor regard the crown he was offered, but

continued to rake to himself the filth of thefloor.

The muckrakers themselves proudlyadopted the label.


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Consequences of muckraking

In his book, The Era of the Muckrakers (1933), C. C. Regier argued that it is possible to

tabulate the achievements of revealing journalism during this period:

"The list of reforms accomplished between 1900 and 1915 is an impressive one. The convict andpeonage systems were destroyed in some states; prison reforms were undertaken; a federal purefood act was passed in 1906; child labor laws were adopted by many states; a federal employers'liability act was passed in 1906, and a second one in 1908, which was amended in 1910; forestreserves were set aside; the Newlands Act of 1902 made reclamation of millions of acres of landpossible; a policy of the conservation of natural resources was followed; eight-hour laws for womenwere passed in some states; race-track gambling was prohibited; twenty states passed mothers'

pension acts between 1908 and 1913; twenty-five states had workmen's compensation laws in 1915;an income tax amendment was added to the Constitution; the Standard Oil and the Tobaccocompanies were dissolved; Niagara Falls was saved from the greed of corporations; Alaska was savedfrom the Guggenheims and other capitalists; and better insurance laws and packing-house laws wereplaced on the statute books."


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First colonialmuckraker

Benjamin Harris publisher of the first public

newspaper, Publick Occurences Both Forreign andDomestick, on September 5, 1690, in Boston Harris portrayed the torture of French prisoners by Indians

who were allies of the British Army

Four days later, British authorities suspended Harrisprinting license, before he published the second issue

The paper was a great piece: highlighted specific evidenceof misconduct; questioned the established public policy;left one page blank for readers opinions and comments


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Famous muckrakers

Upton Sinclair (1878-1968),

The Jungle (attacked

the meat-packing industry)

Frank Norris (1870-1902), The Octopus(attacked the railroad industry)


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Famous muckrakersIda Minerva Tarbell (1857-1944),

a series of exposs in Ladies HomeJournal (attacked Standard Oil)

John Spargo (1876-1966), Bitter Cry of Children

(attacked child labor)


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Famous muckrakersCharlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935), attacked child

labor

Samuel Hopkins Adams

(1871-1958), attacked

medicine industry and

public health system


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Famous muckrakersRay Stannard Baker (1870-1946),

attacked Americas racial divide

David Graham Phillips

(1867-1911), attacked the

corruption by big

businesses of the Senate


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D. G. Phillips: The Treason of the Senate

In February 1906, readers ofCosmopolitan magazine opened its pages to this statement: Treason is a strong word, but not too strong to characterize the situation in which the Senate is the eager, resourceful, and indefatigable

agent of interests as hostile to the American people as any invading army could be. This indictment launched a nine-part series of articles entitled Treason of the Senate. The Treason series placed the Senate at the center of a major drive by Progressive Era reformers to weaken the influence of large corporations and other major financial interests on government policy making. Direct popularelection of senators fit perfectly with their campaign to bring government closer to the people.

As originally adopted, the Constitutio n provided for the election of senators by individual state legislatures. In the years following the Civil War, that system became increasingly subject to bribery, fraud, and deadlock. As Congresstook on a greater role in shaping an industrializing nation, those with a major business stake in that development believed they could best exert their influence on the U.S. Senate by offering financial incentives to the statelegislators who selected its members.


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D. G. Phillips: The Treason of the Senate

The campaign for direct election of senators took on new force in 1906, followingconviction of two senators on corruption charges. Each had taken fees forinterceding with federal agencies on behalf of business clients. The resultingnegative publicity inspired publisher William Randolph Hearst, then a U.S. Housemember and owner ofCosmopolitan magazine, to commission popular novelistDavid Graham Phillips to prepare a series of investigative articles.

Making the point that large corporations and corrupt state legislators played too

large a role in selection of senators, these articles doubled Cosmopolitanscirculation within two months. Yet, Phillips' obvious reliance on innuendo andexaggeration soon earned him the scorn of other reformers. President TheodoreRoosevelt saw in these charges a politically motivated effort by Hearst to discredithis administration, and coined the term "muckraker" to describe the Phillips brandof overstated and sensationalist journalism.

For several decades before publication of Phillips series, certain southern senators

had blocked the direct election amendment out of fear that it would increase theinfluence of African-American voters. By 1906, however, many southern states hadenacted Jim Crow laws to undermine that influence. The Phillips series finallybroke Senate resistance and opened the way for the amendments ratification in1913.


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Muckraker Encyclopedia Britannica

muckraker, any of a group of American writers, identified with pre-World War I reform and expos literature. The muckrakers provided detailed, accurate journalistic accounts of thepolitical and economic corruption and social hardships caused by the power of big business in a rapidly industrializing United States. The name muckraker was pejorative when usedby President Theodore Roosevelt in his speech of April 14, 1906. But muckraker also came to take on favorable connotations of social concern and courageous exposition.The muckrakers work grew out of the yellow journalism of the 1890s, which whetted the public appetite for news arrestingly presented, and out of popular magazines, especiallythose established by S.S. McClure, Frank A. Munsey, and Peter F. Collier. The emergence of muckraking was heralded in the January 1903 issue of McClures Magazine by articles onmunicipal government, labor, and trusts, written by Lincoln Steffens, Ray Stannard Baker, and Ida M. Tarbell.


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Muckraker Encyclopedia BritannicaThe intense public interest aroused by articles critical of political corruption, industrial monopolies, and fraudulent business practices rallied journalists, novelists, and reformers of all sorts to sharpen their criticism of American society. Charles Edward Russell led the reform writers with exposs ranging from The Greatest Trust inthe World(1905)to The Uprising of the Many(1907), the latter reporting methods being tried to extend democracy in other countries. Lincoln Steffens wrote on corrupt city

andstate politics in The Shame of the Cities (1904). Brand Whitlock, who wrote The Turn of the Balance (1907), a novel opposing capital punishment, was also a reform mayor of Toledo, Ohio. Thomas W. Lawson, a Bostonfinancier, in Frenzied Finance( Everybodys,190405), provided a majorexpos of stock-market abuses and insurance fraud.Ida M. Tarbells History of the Standard Oil Company(1904)exposed the corrupt practices used to form a great industrial monopoly.Edwin Markhams Children inBondage was a major attack on child l abor.Upton Sinclairs novel The Jungle (1906) and Samuel Hopkins Adams Great American Fraud(1906), combined with the work of HarveyW. Wiley andSenatorAlbert J. Beveridge, brought about passage of the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act. DavidGraham Phillips series The Treason of the Senate ( Cosmopolitan, 1906), which inspired President Roosevelts speechin 1906, was influential in leading to the passage of the Seventeenth Amendmentto the Constitution, providing for popular senatorial elections. Muckrakingas a movement disappearedlatter.


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1972 The Watergate Scandal

Vietnam War the public was against it The Pentagon Papers revealed by

The New York Times

The Washington Post

Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein

The Watergate Hotel

Headquarters of the Democratic National

Committee in Washington Re-election of Richard Nixon

Involved: FBI, CIA, White House, U. S.Administration