|
||
The Demise of Investigative Journalism
As professionals depart paid journalism, secrecy and corruption will flourish. Fear of public exposure is one of the few brakes on such behavior. The American Society of Journalists and Authors represents independent journalists, and our members are among those striving to pick up the slack in investigative journalism.
Veteran journalists are being pushed aside for beginning reporters without watchdog experience. What's filling news holes are superficial events coverage and fast "content" production that's farmed out to wire services, usually without reporters' bylines. The Internet, with few exceptions, is not replacing newspapers and magazines in providing paychecks for investigative reporters.
It took the public months to learn that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq because news outlets did not challenge the administration's story. The Associated Press reports that the Pentagon budget for public relations has increased by 63 percent since 2004 as it struggles for support of the Iraq war. The military will spend at least $4.7 billion in 2009, according to the AP. Imagine the challenge of journalists to get past the strength of this promotional marketing. If there's something to uncover here, it likely won't be discovered by a diminished press corps.
As financial support of serious journalism evaporates, reporters and editors will be reduced to chronicling the obvious, and dramatizing rather than digging. "If it bleeds, it leads" will become our society's ticket to information. That is one slim newsfeed.
Enterprise reporting costs news venues money. The payoff is in information-news that communities need to be healthy. This lament of a diminished world just isn't the tears of men and women practicing outdated technology. The need for knowing what is happening in our world is universal and eternal, no matter how it's transmitted.
What does it mean to lose the voices of those who hold our institutions accountable? How can we avoid the regret of a ruined system that once paid attention, if not perfectly, at least with professional standards, to school boards, health departments, legislatures, charities and corporations?
Investigative journalism is important. It saves lives and protects the public from corruption. How did we learn that the wood in playground equipment was treated with serious cancer-causing preservatives? Or that our government paid for poor patients to be injected with plutonium for horrifying medical research that killed and maimed them? We know these facts because reporters told us. Improvements in society don't come without a push. It's often news reporting that's behind legislatures, regulators, and trade groups finally acting to clean up abuses.
Our vigorous free press is one of the beacons that set America apart.
But those of us in the profession are watching with horror at how quickly that light is being extinguished and how little the public seems to care.
There is the possibility that freelance writers will be tapped to fill the void as newspapers and magazines lose staff, but managers still need to find the money for serious journalism, whether on-staff or off. During the transition to whatever comes next for investigative reporting, the public should know what it's missing.
We hope that media companies will recognize the value of professional watchdogs in the journalism community. Readers must let their news providers know that they want in-depth coverage of issues that matter. Without an outcry, we'll be left with pale imitations of news we need.
Loading comments…
Want to reply to a comment? Hint: Click "Reply" at the bottom of the comment; after being approved your comment will appear directly underneath the comment you replied to
Call me naïve, but I consider investigative journalism to be the highest calling there is. Without it we would all be in the dark, which is a sad and unenlightened place to be. However, serious journalism was losing its foothold because, sadly, most Americans WANTED to remain in the dark. This is not only obvious by the posts in this tread, but it was also displayed by the second coming of Bush. Lie to me today, lie to me tomorrow, just don't take my TV away. Many people just want to escape reality, not be confronted with it. Discrediting people who reveal the truth has become an American way of life in the past eight years. Those of us who feel that we need journalists to hold those in power accountable can only hope that this attitude will change with our new president in office. We can hope that the desire for a return to idealism that got him elected will swell into a shift out of complacency and into action. In that climate, journalism will again thrive and revive.
Worthwhile article. But muckraking investigative reporters are at the mercy of editors who are at the mercy of suits, who are at the mercy of business lawyers and advertisers. The process of illumination is clogged with concern about money--obviously. Subscribe to Mother Jones, typically two years ahead. Sinclair Lewis title, It Can't Happen Here (Eric Alterman recent blog) was scripted for NBC television in the 80's. NBC execs canned it saying it was TOO CEREBRAL. There you have it. Mushroom cloud.
Those who criticize the authors here are, I believe, missing the point. The authors are freelance writers, they are not part of the corporate media and they, like many of us, are lamenting the state of affairs.
If we lose magazine and newspapers the responsibility to hold corporations and government accountable for their actions will fall on freelancers like Wild and Engel. Very simply, freelancers don't have the economic ability to do so. Investigative reporting is enormously costly. This is simply a good and valuable column by two concerned writers. The anger at the media out there should be directed elsewhere.
There is no magic solution, just old fashion hard work.
The media have glided down to provide the half-digested pulp, lowering readers overall knowledge of public matters, and lowering further expectations. "Idiocracy", http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387808 , is on the end of this process.
One can see this as a moral issue. I see it as a money issue, as under-informed and undereducated person simply is losing in the global marketplace. In other words, it is in the best interest of an every individual as well as a society as a whole to have good journalism.
However, the business model of today’s media is based on asking readers what they want from their newspapers. Or asking viewers what they want from their TV news. It is like asking teenagers if they want advanced algebra or playing video games. Except a small minority, they will know the right answer twenty years later, when loosing jobs to foreigners who in their teens did not have that choice.
Summarizing, money can be made in providing good journalism. This is the only one way of fixing journalism. People who are in media business now do not have a clue how to do it.
BTW, if you know an investor who is willing to make money on fixing journalism, please let me know. I have an idea.
We used to be viewed as Mom and apple pie, now we're viewed as Murder and mayhem.
Ask yourself, who brought us to this?
Their demise is here because th educated people who read them are figuring out they are nothing more than propaganda outfits. People don't like being lied to.
the disintegration of investigative journalism is all about the money. the main stream media is largely owned by just a few people. facts can be colored by choice of words or vocal inflection. it is easy to use reporting of the news as a means to further a particular agenda, even if the agenda is only the pursuit of viewers and therefore profit. sensationalism sells. too often, it is not about the subject of the story, but the gotcha moment. what is sexier, the story of a bad bill moving through congress or learning who got the drugs for anna nicole? what's more important to your life? good journalism is being killed by the pursuit of profit. the future of investigative journalism lies in efforts like that of huffington post. they compile hundreds of reports from regular people with no profit motive about the same event, and that way they learn the truth.
"But those of us in the profession are watching with horror at how quickly that light is being extinguished and how little the public seems to care. "
Mr. Wild and Ms. Engel:
Clean up your own ranks then. Call your colleagues on it when they merely regurgitate the "official" press releases and talking points! Shame them into being real, honest-to-goodness journalists!
Blaming the public is blaming the victim.
You should be MORTIFIED that late night comedy hosts like John Stewart are now doing your work, because YOU and your colleagues don't or won't.
"But those of us in the profession are watching with horror at how quickly that light is being extinguished and how little the public seems to care."
Why would the public care about the demise of what passes for journalism in thsi country?
For eight years you gave us republican/Bush/Cheney talking points, word for word. One had to go to the foreign press to get the real news.
And what is the press currently doing?
Why, everything in their power to try to undermine President Obama.
So, excuse me if I shed no tears for the demise of the press. It killed itself a long time ago.
QUOTE BuzzingAlong --
"But those of us in the profession are watching with horror at how quickly that light is being extinguished and how little the public seems to care."
Why would the public care about the demise of what passes for journalism in thsi country?
For eight years you gave us republican/Bush/Cheney talking points, word for word. One had to go to the foreign press to get the real news.
And what is the press currently doing?
Why, everything in their power to try to undermine President Obama.
So, excuse me if I shed no tears for the demise of the press. It killed itself a long time ago.
-- ENDQUOTE
I agree totally, except to note that before the press was undermining President Obama, it was undermining Candidate Obama. You in the media want to liken yourselves to Woodward and Bernstein, while we the public see you as nothing but infomercial pitchmen, spewing the RNC talking points.
Obama is doing plenty to undermine himself.
The networks have enormous resources to do investigative journalism and yet they don't. do nearly as much as they are capable because ripping and reading partisan blast faxes and stoking inane food fights is cheaper and it keeps the yokels entertained while media execs believe that serious stuff makes people's heads hurt. I wish I was kidding, but it's true.
Many of the reporters being laid off have been complicit in keeping a climate of fear stoked among the public while dumbing down the way they cover political campaigns and taking up more airtime with celebrity gossip. Thank God for bloggers.
The unfortunate fact is that even before the current recession hit, the media had entered its entropic phase and was fading in relevance. They did it to themselves. The general public are merely bystanders and victims.
"The 20,000 journalism jobs lost in the past 18 months"
G-bye! G-Bye! Bon Voyage!!! G-Bye! G-Bye!
We're gonna have roast rabbit, we're gonna have roast rabbit!
There are solutions but none are pretty, reporters contribute to many papers, other than the big money syndicates. Smaller newspapers, not so much in personal rather the clutter now used for news, less pay for articles..ouch, but which is more important the reporter or the news worthy item.Educate the populace, read a good paper in English or Government class, or Civics..? do they teach civics any more?Or is the furture of investigative news in the machine we are using now. But then who will varify the article or be called out if it is false and what are to do for the cross word puzzles.It ain't goona be easy.Read a good paper when you find one.
I've been an environmental journalist for 17 years and I've seen many an important story killed by newspapers for fear of alienating advertisers and stock holders. The demise of journalism is related to the fact that it had become a profit- and stockholder-driven industry. Finding a way to create an unencumbered non-profit news media (as suggested in Sarah Catania's post today, "How to Fix American Journalism" http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sara-catania/how-to-fix-american-journ_b_174292.html) seems the only - and a superior - answer to our continuing access to objective information. We'll still have our profit-based news via radio, television and internet. It's an entertainment business that's driven by marketing - not news.
You are so right on all of these counts... a free democracy requires the watchdogs of the press, but I read the entire post waiting to see you state the truth. Our vigorous free press WAS one of the beacons that set America apart. We don't have a free press, and secrecy and corruption DID flourish because the government and corporations that owned the media did not have to fear public exposure from the press. Did you miss the last eight years???? News reports were stenography, repeating exactly what was told with no investigation whatsoever, we even had paid actors giving canned news reports as if it were news without anyone even saying that "this is a paid advertisement from your government" You state,"But those of us in the profession are watching with horror at how quickly that light is being extinguished and how little the public seems to care." and I am amazed. The light was extinquished through eight solid years of the press commiting public suicide by undermining their own credibility, by treating the public as if they were too stupid to figure out they were being lied to, and misled. We have a financial crises that seems to have caught the media off guard, but we know better... and John Stewart, on a comedy channel is the only one of you that has the courage to point it out? Does that open your eyes at all? It does for most of the public.
"We hope that media companies will recognize the value of professional watchdogs in the journalism community."
Of course media companies have recognized that value - that's the reaon actual journalists have been have been replaced by propagandists. Given the level of investigative journalism done in the last decade, the profession can only benefit from having large numbers of them leave.
You must be logged in to comment. Log in or connect with
