On investigative journalism

Patron saints of investigative journalism: Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward in younger days

The best journalistic output is often created by individuals who are driven by a conviction that they alone have a handle on the truth. They are usually single-minded, sometimes bloody-minded, often preferring to work alone, even if they are nominally part of a newspaper team.

Wise editors know that certain reporters have qualities that place them apart and, despite the difficulties that sometimes causes, they give them their head.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the overlapping fields of investigative and campaigning journalism. These are the provinces of lone-wolf reporters and, of course, the individual editors who publish their work.

In an internet age, reporters can self-publish, but the results of their labours if it is to cause ructions and bring about real change presently require traditional media publication.

Rupert Murdoch said as much during his Margaret Thatcher lecture last week when contrasting the roles of bloggers and journalists.

I am less taken with the distinction than him, seeing a bright future of journalistic collaboration between the amateurs and professionals. However, I am with Murdoch on the need for the retention of big media to act as a public watchdog on big government and big business (not least his own, of course).

Most often, the people who best help to hold power to account are the diggers and delvers who work for Britains press. They work off diary. They eschew the fame and money that has lured so many to become columnists. They forgo the joy of a daily byline for the deeper pleasure of writing long-form journalism that can take many frustrating weeks of research before it reaches print or the web or TV.
Roy Greenslade
once editor of the Da! ily Mirr or
now a prof at City University, London
columnist at the Guardian and Evening Standard

Many Malaysian journalists would find little to quarrel with Greenslades thoughts. But there are probably many more Malaysian journalists and editors who would scoff at eschewing the daily byline, at carrying out a search for, and writing about, the truth. It tends to get in the way if you seek corporate honours, royal honours, free golf and other attendent perks. Much easier and more profitable to appear to campaign as long as its on behalf of the right political faction.

After all, the conventional measure of success in Malaysia is of what you have, who you know, and of journalists, also by what you chose not to write or chose to squash. The nice house, the nice car, the nice club, the nice overseas holidays, these dont come from revealing the truth. And the bulk of Malaysian journalists are utterly conventional in this regard.

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