Investigative Journalism

My second last lecture in this course turned out to be the most compelling and you could say inspiring lecture. Throughout the lectures this semester, I began to deeply question my chosen career path of journalism. Churning out hard news stories and living my life by meeting deadline after deadline didn’t seem like my idea of living at all. So it was a welcome relief when my initial, unclouded and somewhat novice perception of journalism made itself apparent when Dr Redman covered investigative journalism. In a way its ironic, because you would expect anything you read that has been written by someone in the journalism profession to be well researched, thought out and planned. However, as I mentioned earlier a little thing called deadlines and of course money stop this from happening. Investigative journalism is the stuff that has the potential to change the world, and if that doesn’t inspire me then I don’t know what would.

These are the characteristics of investigative journalism that hit home with me:

Active intervention: the journalist doesn’t spend their days sipping skinny latte’s behind their desk; they’re out their getting involved with their story. The time spent on the story should almost make the journalist go insane, their sources should be well researched and thorough, just like the facts.

Exposure: appropriately titled Custodians of Conscience on the lecture slide, (Ettema and Glasser) investigation takes what the society considers normal and moral and identifies any breaches that may appear and brings them into public scrutiny. News of the world scandal anyone?

Public Interest: I like this one; it’s the idea of giving a voice to the voiceless and power to the powerless. In a sense it delivers social justice.

Fourth estate/Watchdog: In a way journalists are democracy detectives. Through interrogating the judiciary and government they ensure the free flow of information necessary to maintain a democratic society.

Dr Redman then went through and discussed the historical and honourable achievements of investigative journalism. The two trail blazers that stood out to me and are still fresh in my mind many weeks after this lecture are:

-       W.T. Stead and & The Salvos (William Booth); The maiden tribute of the modern Babylon. These journalists exposed in graphic detail the abduction, entrapment and sale of young girls to British brothels in the nineteenth century. Their investigation lead to the age of consent being increased from 13 to 16.

-       Although its not as awe-inspiring as the other trail blazers and it didn’t really change the world, the fact that student reporters from UQ uncovered something extremely news worthy and as a result the story was published seems pretty commendable to me.

The lecture then covered how to get an interview and what to do when you’re actually interviewing. Then of course, then inevitable threats to investigative journalism were covered, ranging from shrinking newsrooms to the rise of PR.

All in all, I consider this lecture to be the most interesting and captivating. It left me thinking that maybe even amongst all this gloom and deathly outlooks for journalism, investigative journalism is so powerful that surely it wont be resting in peace any time soon.