Investigative journalism is a form of journalism in which reporters deeply investigate a single topic of interest, such as heinous crimes, political corruption, or corporate wrongdoing. An investigative journalist may spend months or years researching and preparing a report. Investigative journalism is a primary source of information. Most investigative journalism is conducted by newspapers and freelance journalists. Practitioners sometimes use the terms “watchdog reporting” or “accountability reporting”.
As a duty to readers and viewers as well as self-protection in a hostile legal environment, investigative journalism seeks above all to tell the documented truth in depth and without fear or favour. It is to provide a voice for the voiceless and to hold the powerful to account. It’s to comfort the affl icted and affl ict the comfortable. Th e media plays a crucial role in providing citizens with information that enables them to stand up to and fi ght corrupt.
Th is takes courage and determination from both the reporters and the people who tell stories, sometimes at great personal risk. An independent media is crucial for the illustration of the devastating eff ects of corruption around the world. Journalism acts as a public watchdog on the abuse of power – it enables people to demand accountability from leaders by providing citizens with the information they need to stand up to corruption. Corruption, on the other hand, is defi ned as the abuse of entrusted power for private gain, including everything from grand corruption to petty bribery. Investigative journalism involves exposing to the public matters that are concealed – either deliberately by someone in a position of power, or accidentally, behind a chaotic mass of facts and circumstances that obscure understanding. It requires using both secret and open sources and documents.
“Investigative journalism is critical and thorough journalism,” according to the defi nition of the Dutch-Flemish association for Investigative Journalism, VVOJ. Critical means that journalism is not merely passing on ‘news’ that already exist. It implies news, which would not be available without any journalistic intervention. Th is can be done by creating new facts, but also through re-interpretation or correlation of facts already at hand. Th orough means that one makes an own substantial eff ort, either in quantitative terms – much time spent in research, many sources consulted, etc. – in qualitative terms – sharp questions formulated, new approaches used, etc., or a combination of both. To stop corruption, investigative journalists must be able to work in an environment where whistle-blowers are protected so that they can share information with journalists, where citizens reading the news do not tolerate corruption and demand better from their society and their leaders, where anti-corruption legislation is adequate and eff ectively enforced, and with no impunity so that the guilty can be held to account. Nasir Ibrahim, Department of Mass Communication, Bayero University, Kano
