Investigative journalism in the public interestâthe daily supply of truths about the world that would otherwise be hiddenâonly has a short history. The phenomenon originated largely in the nineteenth century. Thanks to the work of a later generation of writers, editors, and movie-makersâthe Watergate generationâit went on to achieve an iconic status in the West and became seen as the lifeblood of democracy itself.
I believe that investigative journalists are vital to a decent society. But we need to acquire the right tools to survive in the job. For in the present century, this concept of truth-telling investigative journalism is under considerable threat. Government propagandists, repressive judges, corrupt officials, criminals, commercial bullies, and cynical tabloid proprietorsâthese people have always been the enemies of honest reporters, and their powers remain strong. But another hostile force is also growing. The idea of truth itself is under plausible attack.
Many Western journalists, myself included, were brought up with ideals that now feel almost naĂŻve. Believing that we help to make democratic societies work better, we were professionally occupied with attempts to distinguish fact from fiction. Our quest was to establish what actually was, or was not, the case. So we found it very jolting in the twenty-first century, when truth itself became a despised notion.
âSpeak Truth to Power: A Quaker Search for an Alternative to Violenceâ was the title of a US pamphlet, published in the 1950s at the height of the Cold War with the Soviet Union. This group of pacifist authors wanted to tell the US military that a looming Third World War could be avoided. They wrote: âOur truth is an ancient one: that love endures and overcomes; that hatred destroysâ [1]. This tough religious message about one kind of truth was subsequently adopted by US journalists, and its meaning morphed into a more glib job description. âSpeak truth to powerâ became a largely unexamined slogan ministering to the professional self-importance of Western news reporters (see [2, 3]).
For what happens the other way round, when power speaks bullyingly to truth? US President Donald Trumpâs uninhibited Twitter account appears to provide an unwelcome answer. Politicians and other powerful people who simply donât believe in the usefulness of truth have learned to manipulate new online forms of mass media, conveying visceral messages that energise their supporters, even though those messages often consist of downright lies. At the same time, the professionals of the so-called mainstream media (MSM) are targeted for volleys of abuse that delegitimise them.
Ironically, this âpost-truthâ campaign to destroy factual journalism has friends on the left. Counter-cultural analysts and anarchists such as Julian Assange of Wikileaks seek to demonstrate that just as history is only written by the victors, so the âMSMâ newspapers are all only written to peddle a capitalist narrative [4].
They are joined on the far right by a network of well-funded bloggers who denounce the mainstream media as merely a liberal conspiracy. On Breitbart or Infowars, activists paint a weird picture of themselves as the insurgent underdogs, victims of political correctness imposed upon them by the BBC or the
Washington Post
or CNN or the Guardian [5, 6]. âRealityâ seemed to become a contestable thing. Have the post-modern claims that truth is only relative seeped out of the campus to culminate in the likely wreck of serious journalism?
When I started out as a reporter in the 1970s, life for my colleagues was a series of battles to publish what we were confident were simple and necessary truths. We were inspired by the heroic myth of Watergate. We took on powerful newspaper bosses like âTinyâ Rowland at the Observer and William Rees-Mogg at the Times, and led resistance from their staffs. We challenged Britainâs judges: and we halted trials with our revelations. We published supposedly confidential documents, broke the rules by interviewing jurors, and faced down accusations of libel and contempt of court. We defied the knee-jerk secrecy of the military and the intelligence agencies to reveal spies, to defend whistleblowers; and to expose blacklisting, bugging, nuclear scandals, propaganda, and assassinations. We shot down false conspiracy theories and attacked corrupt or lying politicians. One of the pivotal moments of my own career came when one suchâcornered British cabinet minister Jonathan Aitkenâpublicly vowed in revenge to destroy me as âthe cancer of bent and twisted journalismâ [7]. (Luckily for me, he didnât succeed.)
My colleagues and I, particularly on the Guardian
and the Observer
in London, two papers where I was head of investigations, saw ourselves in this way as foot-soldiers in a War on Lies. We won awards over 40 years of exposure journalism and felt our activities were self-evidently useful. We did not see ourselves as peddling either a leftist Marxist âtruthâ or a capitalist âtruthâ. The current fundamental assault on our professional values was something we were slow to see coming.
For now the âlegacy mediaâ are almost too weak to resist ideological attacks. The giant Internet tech firms have sucked the money out of them. No single organisation can nowadays easily produce massive, unanswerable investigations which dominate the culture, as the once-famous
London Sunday Times
Insight team used to do. Instead, much news is consumed in a fragmentary landscape where what money there is comes with clicksâwebsites essentially trolling their own readers to elicit almost unconscious, twitch reactions. The 24-hour news cycle feeds on stories printed with little oversightâreplaceable, correctable, deletable, forgettable. Truth becomes almost irrelevant, when interesting fakes and lies get more clicks [8].
A toxic swirl of hyper-partisanship, media fragmentation, and âfake newsâ is polluting the information water supply. This makes life harder for credible journalism. The often-brilliant tradition of Western exposure reporting that we have all inherited may yet be eventually overwhelmed by its many opponents. But if such journalism were ever to disappear, ordinary citizens would be condemned to a bleak political future. For it will be a future in which no-one will bother any longer to ask the question: âIs it true?â Instead, people will merely demand âWhose side are you on?â
That wouldnât be good news. But there are ways to resist these dangerous developments. I hope that from handbooks like this, journalists of all kinds can learn how to practise and defend genuine investigative reporting. In the uncertain world we inhabit, it is needed more than ever.
References
- 1.American Friends Service Committee. 2 March 1955. Speak Truth to Power A Quaker Search for an Alternative to Violence. Accessed October 28, 2018. http://âwww.âquaker.âorg/âsttp.âhtml.
- 2.Edelstein, David. Journalists Speak Truth to Power in âSpotlightâ, 8 November, 2015. Accessed October 28, 2018. https://âwww.âcbsnews.âcom/âvideos/âreview-journalists-speak-truth-to-power-in-spotlight/â.
- 3.Stverak, Jason. Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity. Accessed October 28, 2018. http://âamericasfuture.âorg/âinvestigative-journalism-speak-truth-to-power/â.
- 4.Leigh, David, and Luke Harding. 2011. Wikileaks: Inside Julian Assangeâs War on Secrecy. London: Guardian Books.
- 5.Mulhall, Joe. 2017. Itâs Just Not Politically Correct to Talk Openly About Islamâs Rape Culture. Guardian, March 7. Accessed October 28, 2018. https://âwww.âtheguardian.âcom/âcommentisfree/â2017/âmar/â07/âbreitbart-threat-to-europe-postwar-liberal-consensus.
- 6.Snyder, Michael. 14 August 2013. 19 Shocking Examples of How Political Correctness is Destroying America. Infowars. Accessed October 28, 2018. https://âwww.âinfowars.âcom/â19-shocking-examples-of-how-political-correctness-is-destroying-america/â.
- 7.Harding, Luke, David Leigh, and David Pallister. 1999. The Liar. London: Guardian Books.
- 8.Vosoughi, Soroush, Deb Roy, and Sinan Aral. 2018. The Spread of True and False News Online. Science. Accessed October 28, 2018. http://âscience.âsciencemag.âorg/âcontent/â359/â6380/â1146.