1. Define Investigative journalism.

Investigative journalism is a form of journalism in which reporters deeply

investigate a single topic of interest, such as serious crimes, political corruption, or
corporate wrongdoing. An investigative journalist may spend months or years
researching and preparing a report. Practitioners sometimes use the terms "watchdog
reporting" or "accountability reporting."
Investigative Journalism means the unveiling of matters that are concealed either
deliberately by someone in a position of power, or accidentally, behind a chaotic
mass of facts and circumstances - and the analysis and exposure of all relevant facts
to the public. In this way, investigative journalism crucially contributes to freedom
of expression and media development, which are at the heart of UNESCO’s
mandate.
The role media can play as a watchdog is indispensable for democracy and it is for
this reason that UNESCO fully supports initiatives to strengthen the capacity
building of investigative journalism throughout the world. At a time of a widening
communications ecosystem, journalism today needs to clearly show its key value-
add to the public interest. In this light, credible investigative stories, like the kind
promoted in this book, are increasingly pivotal to public confirmation of the
continuing importance of professional journalistic work in the coming years. Most
investigative journalism has traditionally been conducted by newspapers, wire
services, and freelance journalists. With the decline in income through advertising,
many traditional news services have struggled to fund investigative journalism,
which is time-consuming and therefore expensive. Journalistic investigations are
increasingly carried out by news organizations working together, even
internationally (as in the case of the Panama Papers and Paradise Papers), or by
organizations such as ProPublica, which have not operated previously as news
publishing.

2. Importance of Investigative Journalism.

An investigative journalist is a journalist who deeply investig single topic of interest

for example serious crime, political issues, or corporate wrongdoing. An
investigative journalist spends over a year or month on a single topic to investigate
and to get the full information about the issue. Practitioners sometimes use terms for
investigative journalists as watchdog and accountability reporting. A mostly
investigative journalist gets hired by newspaper services, wire services, and
freelance journalists. Journalists talk to a wide range of sources to get the course of
the information of their investigations. These could be official services such as
government corporate officials or representatives.
The purpose of investigative journalism is to provide truth to the people about the
government entities, corporation house and companies who wants to keep their
illegal activities secret. Its purpose is to expose the accused for such actions that
involved can be held accountable. There are six methods of investigation first is
immediate action, second is to plan the investigation method, third is data
collection, fourth is Data analysis, step fifth is corrective actions and sixth is
reporting. The qualities investigative journalists must have are professionalism,
persistence, integrity, self-reliable, problem solver, courage.
Investigative journalism matters because of its many contributions to democratic
governance. Its role can be understood in keeping with the Fourth Estate model of
the press. According to this model, the press should make the government
accountable by publishing information about matters of public interest even if such
information reveals abuses or crimes perpetrated by those in authority. From this
perspective, investigative reporting is one of the most important contributions that
the press makes to democracy. It is linked to the logic of checks and balances in
democratic systems. It provides a valuable mechanism for monitoring the
performance of democratic institutions as they are most broadly defined to include
governmental bodies, civic organizations, and publicly held corporations.

The centrality of the media in contemporary democracies makes political elites

sensitive to news, particularly to "bad" news that often causes a public commotion.
The publication of news about political and economic wrongdoing can trigger
congressional and judicial investigations.

3. How can Indian journalism benefit from investigative journalism?

For years, Indian journalists have used their work to call the government and
corporate firms to account for wrongdoing, illegal practices, and corruption, often
sparking public outcry and reform.
Investigative journalism provides the truth about people from government and other
entities such as corporations who attempt to keep their often illegal activities secret.
Its purpose is to expose such actions so that those involved can be held accountable.
There is great merit in Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s assertion that “all journalism
should, by definition, be investigative” as well as in his admonition to young
journalists to understand that “ethics are not an occasional condition but should
always accompany journalism like the buzz accompanies the blowfly.” When
Marquez and several old-world journalists insist that there is nothing special that
needs to be called investigative journalism, they clearly do not mean this in a literal
sense. What they mean to convey especially to young journalists is that all
journalism worth the name must aspire, and be held up, to the higher standards
demanded by the profession, not necessarily as it is practiced in many places but at
its best. This approach reflects the high value they place on journalism as a calling
or profession. When you take the broad view of journalism that sees the
investigation as one of its intrinsic and core tasks, rather than as a super-specialty or
a sequestered discipline, a vast and wonderful vista opens up of work that is truth-
seeking, richly themed, exploratory, imaginative, creative, literary, and, above all,
passionate about freedom, humanity, and justice. Taking the wide-angle approach
does not mean that news organizations should not increase investigative bench
strength, or form special investigative teams for particular projects. They should, of
course. But it does mean that a much larger pool of journalists, educated and trained
in the precepts and practice of quality journalism, can be drawn into the task of
investigation than current professional practice seems to allow. Motivating and
empowering this greatly enlarged pool of young women and men to do thorough,
thoughtful, and carefully supervised investigations into subjects of social and moral
significance could have dramatic effects in terms of developing capabilities,
improving work culture, and raising quality in the profession. While investigating,
exploring, and experimenting

4. How can be investigative journalism done ethically?

Since Investigative Journalism ought to be done in the public interest and therefore
it is a public service it has to follow ethical principles.
Newspapers are first and foremost business. They do not exist to report news, to act
as watchdogs for the public, to be a check on the doings of government, to defend
the ordinary citizens against abuses of power, to unearth scandals, or to do any of
the other fine and noble things that are sometimes claimed for the press. They exist
to make money, just as any other business does. To the extent that they discharge
any of their public functions, they do so to succeed as businesses.
Investigative journalists cannot remain unaffected by this overwhelming business
outlook of the media and ever-falling ethical standards. The choice of stories for
investigation raises questions of ethics. “An investigation in a newspaper or on TV
is a heavy weapon to use on someone. If you attack someone, you need to be sure
you are right.”
While going through various writings on ethics, one comes across many moral
principles. It is beyond the scope of this study to enumerate all of them. For our
purposes here we would highlight four of them, “which have a significant following
and together represent a reasonably wide scope of time-tested alternatives

5. Discuss a case study on any 1 investigative journalism that took place in India or
other countries.

Watergate scandal, interlocking political scandals of the administration of U.S. Pres.

Richard M. Nixon was revealed following the arrest of five burglars at Democratic
National Committee (DNC) headquarters in the Watergate office-apartment-hotel
complex in Washington, D.C., on June 17, 1972. On August 9, 1974, facing likely
impeachment for his role in covering up the scandal, Nixon became the only U.S.
president to resign.
Early on June 17, 1972, police apprehended five burglars at the office of the DNC in
the Watergate complex. Four of them formerly had been active in Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA) activities against Fidel Castro in Cuba. (Though often
referred to in the press as “Cubans,” only three of the four were of Cuban heritage.)
The fifth, James W. McCord, Jr., was the security chief of the Committee to Re-
elect the President (later known popularly as CREEP), which was presided over by
John Mitchell, Nixon’s former attorney general. The arrest was reported in the next
morning’s Washington Post in an article written by Alfred E. Lewis, Carl Bernstein,
and Bob Woodward, the latter two a pair of relatively undistinguished young
reporters relegated to unglamorous beats—Bernstein to roving coverage of Virginia
politics and Woodward, still new to the Post, to covering minor criminal activities.
Soon after, Woodward and Bernstein and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)
investigators identified two co-conspirators in the burglary: E. Howard Hunt, Jr., a
former high-ranking CIA officer only recently appointed to the staff of the White
House, and G. Gordon Liddy, a former FBI agent working as a counsel for CREEP.
At the time of the break-in, Liddy had been overseeing a similar, though
uncompleted, attempt to break into and survey the headquarters of George S.
McGovern, soon to become the Democratic nominee in the 1972 U.S. presidential
election.
Presidential Press Secretary Ron Ziegler responded that the president would have no
comment on a “third-rate burglary attempt.” The preponderance of early media
reports, driven by a successful White House public relations campaign, claimed that
there had been no involvement by the Nixon administration or the re-election
committee. Meanwhile, the conspirators destroyed evidence, including their
burglary equipment and a stash of $100 bills. Jeb Magruder, deputy director of
CREEP, burned transcripts of wiretaps from an earlier break-in at the DNC’s
offices. The president, his chief of staff, H.R. (Bob) Haldeman, and the special
counsel to the president, Charles Colson, Nixon’s close political aide, spread alibis
around Washington. Meanwhile, the White House arranged for the “disappearance”
to another country of Hunt (who never actually left the United States), part of a plan
for the burglars to take the fall for the crime as overzealous anti-Communist
patriots. On June 23, 1972, the president, through channels, ordered the FBI to tamp
down its investigation. Later, this order, revealed in what became known as the
Nixon tapes (Nixon’s secret recordings of his phone calls and conversations in the
Oval Office), became the “smoking gun” proving that the president had been part of
a criminal cover-up from the beginning.
Throughout the 1972 campaign season, Woodward and Bernstein were fed leaks by
an anonymous source they referred to as “Deep Throat,” who, only some 30 years
later, was revealed to be FBI deputy director W. Mark Felt, Sr. They kept up a
steady stream of scoops demonstrating (1) the direct involvement of Nixon intimates
in Watergate activities, (2) that the Watergate wiretapping and break-in had been
financed through illegally laundered campaign contributions, and, in a blockbuster
October 10 front-page article, (3) that “the Watergate bugging incident stemmed
from a massive campaign of political spying and sabotage conducted on behalf of
President Nixon’s re-election and directed by officials of the White House,” part of
“a basic strategy of the Nixon re-election effort.”
Nevertheless, the White House successfully framed Woodward and Bernstein’s
reporting as the obsession of a single “liberal” newspaper pursuing a vendetta
against the president of the United States. Shortly before the election, CBS News
prepared a lengthy two-part television report synthesizing the scandal’s emerging
ties to the White House. However, after the first segment aired on October 27,
Colson threatened CBS’s president, William Paley, and the second segment was
truncated. Newspapers that were sympathetic to Nixon hardly mentioned Watergate
at all. In an election-eve Gallup Poll, respondents overwhelmingly said that they
trusted Nixon more than Democratic candidate McGovern. Nixon was re-elected in
a historic landslide—winning all but Massachusetts and the District of Columbia—
and embarked on what looked to be a dynamic second term.
Watergate trial and aftermath
The trial of the five arrested burglars and two accomplices began in federal court
less than two weeks before Nixon’s second-term inauguration. The relatively narrow
indictment on charges of burglary, conspiracy, and violation of federal wiretapping
laws itself spoke to the success of the White House in containing the scandal. The
presiding judge, John J. Sirica, however, kept badgering defendants and witnesses
on matters not covered in the indictment—namely, the financial and institutional
involvement of the White House and re-election campaign.
All the defendants pleaded guilty except Liddy and McCord, who were convicted at
the end of January. The court was scheduled to reconvene on March 23 to hear
sentences. In the interim, the Senate voted 77–0 to establish a special investigating
committee on abuses in the 1972 presidential campaign (the Select Committee on
Presidential Campaign Activities) to be presided over by the universally respected
conservative North Carolina Democrat Samuel J. Ervin, Jr. A strict constitutionalist,
Ervin had been speaking out angrily on Nixon’s extraordinary extensions of
presidential power, including the unprecedented presidential “impoundment” of
funds authorized for expenditure by Congress and his continuation of the bombing
of Cambodia even after a cease-fire had been agreed to in the Vietnam War.
At the beginning of March, during Senate confirmation hearings of Nixon’s
nominee to head the FBI, L. Patrick Gray, it was alleged that a little-known White
House legal aide named John Wesley Dean III had been given personal access to the
FBI’s Watergate investigation. This revelation was followed almost immediately by
the president’s unprecedentedly sweeping refusal, under the claim of “executive
privilege,” to allow aides such as Dean to testify before Congress. Ervin responded
that if the president pressed the issue, he would issue arrest warrants to compel
Nixon aides to testify.

Meanwhile, Sirica controversially sought to leverage the hearings and continued

grand jury proceedings to induce the defendants to speak more forthrightly about a
broader conspiracy. He succeeded when defendant McCord passed him an
extraordinary presentencing letter, in which he explained that the defendants had
been pressured to plead guilty and perjure themselves about the involvement of
higher-ups. On March 23 Sirica read the letter in open court. He then took the
contentious step of passing exceptionally long “provisional” sentences on the
defendants. However, Sirica made clear that were the defendants to speak frankly to
the reconvened Watergate grand jury or the Senate hearings, he would reduce their
sentences.
Almost single-handedly, with great courage and risk to his reputation, Sirica had
broken the case wide open. Revelations began cascading through the press: that
Gray may have been involved in the cover-up; that the transnational conglomerate
International Telephone and Telegraph Corporation (later ITT Corporation), under
investigation for corrupt financial ties to the White House, had sabotaged a
democratic election in Chile; and that Mitchell may have interfered in the major
securities fraud case of a $250,000 donor to the Nixon campaign.
In the middle of April—with Mitchell and other top aides facing indictment—the
president nervously announced that his own investigations had determined that “no
one in this Administration, presently employed, was involved in this very bizarre
incident.” On April 17 presidential spokesman Ziegler infamously told the press that
all previous White House statements about Watergate were now “inoperative.” Two
weeks later, on April 30, 1973, Nixon gave a major televised address announcing
the resignations of Dean; his two closest aides by far, Haldeman and John D.
Ehrlichman; and Attorney General Richard Kleindienst. Nixon protested his own
innocence and promised cooperation with future investigations (even while
including legalistic language that implied strong limits to that cooperation).