Investigative journalism- a subject covered briefly in previous lectures and from previous reading, it differs from that of other journalism as the journalist discovers the information themselves; the subjects which are written about are not on the agenda of all newspapers, meeting, in the courts or in the media spotlight but instead they are investigated by a journalist through investigation.
The founder of investigative journalism; Emile Zola, the French author of J’Aaccuse who managed to discover and investigate the case involving the claim that the French army blaming the Jews for the defeat against the Germans. Exposing the lies which saw Drefus sent to prison was the starting point for investigative journalism, but has undergone changes since then, which brings us to the current state of investigative journalism.
Today’s investigative journalism has been shown to have a bad name with papers tending to dip into the trivial matters involving celebrities live which does not really fall under the category of serious investigative journalism and instead tends to annoy celebrities as their lives are constantly under scrutiny. However investigative journalism has also provided the world with cases which have been uncovered and exposing truths.
Examples of investigative journalism include the Watergate scandal; with the insight team managing to discover information enough to bring down the president of the united states, uncovering lies and corruption within the government. This shows the importance of investigative journalism as one newspaper manages to uncover the truth to allowing a fair election; something which citizens believed they were already having. Thalidomide is another example of investigative journalism; despite distillers denial the Sunday times’ investigative journalism allowed truths to be uncovered and compensation to be awarded to the affected victims.
Programmes such as ‘World in action’ specifically devoted to investigative journalism, revealed truths behind the Edwards family meat supplies to Rochdale schools which was seen as inadequate and the ‘who bombed Birmingham case’ allowing innocent Irish men to be set free after being framed. Again the importances of these cases are that truths are revealed and innocent people are shown to be innocent.
Techniques such as subterfuge (hidden cameras) , despite only be able to use this technique if there is no other way of obtaining the information, with permission from the regulating bodies have been useful to catch out criminals or people undertaking illegal action such as the Hendon police training college which involved the capturing of a prospective police officers admitting being racist to a hidden camera exposing him. Importantly he was caught for his actions by this camera meaning he would not be able to bring his corruption to the police. Recent news of the world antics such as using ‘The fake Sheik’ have allowed royalty to be exposed for their greediness and willingness to d anything for money.
Any incorrect facts however can result in libel action, in criminal cases evidence defamatory accusations only have to be beyond reasonable doubt, however in civil cases there has to be evidence of the balance of probability. Serious cases protect journalists much more than celebrity cases.
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