15 Investigative reporting

WHAT TO INVESTIGATE

Investigate anything. Anything can be improved by a bit of investigation. The investigative story is often staring us in the face, waiting to be seen and looked into. The investigative story produces a story that is gathered and published or broadcast that would not have been revealed without your hard work. It provides a story of public importance that had to be pieced together from diverse and often obscure sources. It reveals a story that may be contrary to the version announced by the government or business officials, who might have tried to conceal the truth. It results in a story that is important and prominently displayed.

Investigative journalism is exciting. Consider an investigative piece as original work produced by a reporter, rather than a report on something. There will have been some attempt to conceal information, and the result will be very important to the audience.

Investigative journalists are always on the look out for corruption, mismanagement, unfairness and political secrecy. To be a good investigative reporter, you need to have in-depth familiarity with the way government and business works, how the law and the courts work and how to find out information from documents and from the Internet. You need to know how the police investigate graft and corruption, and about the civil service and criminals. You need to know how to find out about the latest drug scene, and all the rumours and gossip about who is controlling supply. A good investigative reporter has great knowledge and personal integrity, a balanced judgement, tenacity, a sense of justice and morality and a controlled sense of anger at injustice, unfairness or corruption in government or private institutions. The good investigative reporter also needs a wide general knowledge to pinpoint specific injustice and crime. Successful investigative reporters have to be fair and ethical in their investigations. If they aren’t, or involve themselves in something illegal or unfair, this can undercut the whole story and destroy a valid journalistic inquiry.

It pays to be honest and ethical. Always use an honest, direct, balanced approach when dealing with sources and investigative subjects. Sources and the public will be disillusioned if the reporter misuses the power and privilege of the press and intentionally distorts the picture or engages in superficial sensationalism. You need patience and confidence that an honest and systematic inquiry will eventually uncover the full truth or establish the official responsibility for a cover-up of mismanagement, corruption or other malfunctioning of government or a private company. You need the ability to stand back occasionally from the details of the story and view the participants in human terms. Try to imagine how the people you are investigating will think and feel, and ask yourself if you have been fair to them in your story line and approach – both to those who are your protected sources and to the people you are investigating. Successful investigative reporters also need the courage to admit that they were wrong on fact or perspective and to take the steps necessary to correct the record immediately when there has been a significant distortion that reflects adversely on anyone.

GETTING THE STORY

1 Research the records and interview in depth.

2 Don’t wait to be assigned to an investigative story; come up with your own. Develop small investigative projects on your own initiative. Be a self-starter on little projects that have little risk, and deal with simple record research, thorough legal research and in-depth interviews.

3 Look for as much corroborative evidence as you can. Get documentary evidence that will support the story. You have to do it cautiously and within your existing resources; you will quickly move on to bigger pieces. The foundation of effective investigative reporting is the dull, boring routine of repetitious record-checking at police stations, government offices, the courts, and on the Internet.

4 Develop a simple and accurate method of keeping records on an investigation that will give ready and quick access to the materials, and keep them safe for your later use but remember the Data Protection Act.

5 Good interviewing is essential. The technique you use will vary depending on the story and the people you are interviewing. E-mail can be useful. Sometimes you might like to appear ignorant of the facts when interviewing someone (but you must always be fully aware of all the facts in the case before you do any interview about it). There is no excuse in important interviews not to have examined the records, all available facts and documentary evidence before you do the interview.

6 Be careful when dealing with the police, government investigators and crown prosecutors. You don’t want to become an arm of the law enforcement; you must always be independent.

Write to the length of the importance of the story. There is a temptation to write very long, wordy pieces to justify the length of time taken, on the story investigation. Resist. Don’t over-estimate the audience, or their interest. Explain in clear simple language why a particular story is worth investigating and why it is against the law, but don’t insult their intelligence. There’s no need, for example, to tell them that ‘lots of people like money’. Always relate the story to how it affects them. Comparisons and analogies are particularly useful to illustrate just how the wrongdoing is costing taxpayers money, or how it is destroying their neighbourhood. Or how, if judges worked a 40-hour week like everyone else, x number of extra cases could be sorted out in a year. However, not every story needs to be like this. Stories of sex, glamour and great wealth will always be read, however they are written.

Writing an investigative piece is not preaching a sermon or teaching a lesson. Don’t assume the audience is on your side. Every allegation must be supported with as many facts as possible; every instance in which the subject of the investigation has violated the law or accepted practice should be pointed out. Even when this is done, reporters will find that many readers display a surprisingly high level of tolerance to corruption. Your job is to show why and how the corruption exposed is bad for them, for many other people as well, or for an individual the reader can relate to. Readers aren’t interested in the trouble or frustrations of the journalist in getting the story; they want to know about the story itself. Unsupported allegations or insults directed at the subject of an investigation will always work against the reporter. Readers won’t be interested in those opinions. They’re interested in the facts the reporter has uncovered. But there’s no need to use every single fact you have uncovered.

As with all reporting, it’s what you can leave out that often makes the story better. You have to know by instinct and experience how to exclude irrelevant or uninteresting information from an investigative story. Most investigative stories are too long. No one reads a story if it’s too long, except specialists, and reporters are not writing for specialists but for the ordinary reader.

Investigative reporters have to live by the law. Stealing information and trespassing on private property are violations of the law. You must never deliberately misrepresent the facts, do a story for personal gain, out of a sense of victimization or out of personal bias. Beware of being too aggressive, although it’s better to be this way and get the story than not.

The methods used by an investigative reporter are mainly those used by all reporters:

• interviews: introductory interviews; interviews with the people closely involved; interviews with those being investigated so they have the opportunity to give their side of the story and answer all complaints or allegations

• documents: official and unofficial; you have absolute proof in a document, and it can’t change its story. Use the Internet

• surveillance: you will almost certainly have to watch people; you must see the area or the people, a slum story cannot be written without you getting first-hand knowledge of what it is like

• surveys: take a car to several garages to check on charges or how well they repair, testing the case, investigating, getting facts and figures and proof

• following a tip, an unknown voice on the phone, a casual remark from a friend: make some quick phone calls to check it out, search for some documents to substantiate at least some part of what you’ve been told.

To develop an investigative story, first gather lots of information about the subject. Stockpile it, organize it, make it understandable. This all takes time. Start with an idea; one idea leads to another idea, and each idea leads to a new search. When looking for a story, keep an eye out for such things as problems with public or private transport; nursing homes, prisons or public housing; well-intentioned government schemes gone wrong. Look for possible fraud or wrongdoing or inefficiency. Look for bad salesmen who may be getting people to sign up for wrong things. In each case, look for performance and cost. Is the school bus safe? Are the schools being overcharged for the service? Investigating government wrongdoing can mean getting a look at the records. Most investigative stories are about political issues and social problems rather than individuals, but people tend to become central issues in a story. An investigative personal profile can therefore be useful. When you are writing, decide whether to write a straight news story, a serious feature or a lighter piece. Illustrate the story and break it up with graphs, pictures and photos, but only use real shots. Never stage them or make them up.

Check and double check your facts and always keep in mind that you will probably have legal and ethical constraints on your investigative reporting. You may, however, have a public interest reason to override these constraints. Another restraint in most countries is some form of data protection in which people have the right of access to electronically stored information about themselves. Therefore it may be wise for investigative journalists to limit what is stored on their computers. Always check the local laws in operation before starting your investigation.

FURTHER READING

Davis, A. (1998). Magazine Journalism Today. Focal Press.

Gaines, W. (1998). Investigative Reporting for Print and Broadcast. Nelson-Hall.

Harris, G. and Spark, D. (1993). Practical Newspaper Reporting. Focal Press.

Welsh, T. and Greenwood, W. (1999). McNae’s Essential Law for Journalists. Butterworths.