Book award interview: Chad Raphael, Investigated reporting: Muckrakers, regulators, and the struggle over television documentary (original) (raw)
Related papers
Beyond “Woodstein”: Narratives of Investigative Journalism
Journalism Practice, 2019
Using a methodology inspired by structural narratology and by James Hamilton's [2016. Democracy's Detectives: The Economics of Investigative Journalism. Cambridge: Harvard] economic analysis of investigative journalism, this paper identifies a set of 14 recurring structural and formal elements (plot events, character types and functions, visual iconography) that constitute a fable about investigative journalism. The fable structure is applied to analyze six diverse films about investigative journalism produced in the US in the last 40 years. The films include two instantiations of successful investigative journalism (All the President's Men, Spotlight), two cases where conflict between journalists and corporate managers diminished the impact of the investigation (Good Night and Good Luck, The Insider), and two instances of a counter-fable of failed investigative journalism (Truth, Kill the Messenger). The paper argues that the films' representation of investigative journalism influences public perceptions of investigative journalism. It also speculates about the factors that will influence investigative journalism and its representations in the current political context in the US.
New Views of Investigative Reporting in the Twentieth Century
American Journalism, 2014
This paper examines materials from four decades worth of Pulitzer Prize entries to trace the prevalence of investigative reporting between the Muckraking era and the 1960s, a period commonly viewed as a time of dormancy for journalistic investigations in the United States. The research reveals a robust and steady tradition of such journalism, particularly at the local level, in newspapers of all sizes and in virtually every corner of the country. The findings suggest a conflation of national and local journalism has obscured important nuances in the development of journalistic practice. The newspaper press of the early and middle decades of the twentieth century frequently challenged official power by exposing breaches of accepted norms, a conclusion that complicates existing understandings of the conditions that are necessary for investigative reporting to occur on a regular basis.
Undercover Reporting : The Truth About Deception
2012
Long ago, during the fi rst year of my apprenticeship as a newspaperman, someone told me that a reporter is the person chosen by the tribe to enter the cave and tell them what lies within. If a furious storm is raging, the tribe might fi nd safety and warmth. But if the reporter does not go deep enough, a dragon might await them, and all could perish. That was, of course, a hopelessly romantic version of the reporter's role, but I was young enough to embrace it. As a street reporter, I discovered that the dragon could have many forms, all of them human. There were caves all over the big bad city. And a reporter could see the dragons and their acts in the cold dead eyes of the hoodlum; the corpse of the mutilated girl; the ashes of lives left by arson; the killer's smirk as he performed his perp walk. Making notes about the who of it, the what of it, the where and how and why. And what the weather was. Then rushing back to the newspaper to write it for the next day's paper, passing the report to all the tribes of New York. On some nights, I felt as if I were a bit player in some extraordinary fi lm noir. There in the shadows of Brooklyn or the Bronx lay various dangers, bad guys and cops, too many guns, and too much heroin. My press card would protect me. Or so I thought. At the same time, I was adding to my sense of the reporter as witness, living a life in which no day was like any other day (or night), and absorbing the lore and legends of my craft. I listened to the tales of old reporters and photographers. I watched movies about foreign FOREWORD xii FOREWORD PREFACE xvi PREFACE when used selectively, far outweigh the lapses, which, it turns out, are more of a preoccupation in only some quarters of the profession than they are with the public. The stories I have chosen to highlight in the following pages have been culled from an idiosyncratic collection of sources: prize and award lists; oblique and direct references found with key word searches in various databases, often incomplete, and in books that cite or allude to recent and archival newspaper, magazine, and journal articles and essays; citations in lawsuits and in law reviews and academic journals; and some old-style reeling of the microfi lm. Others emerged from cursory mentions in works of media criticism, commentary, history, ethics, or other, often out-of-print journalism texts. To the numerous authors and journalists who informed my thinking and to those on whom I relied the most, I off er special thanks. You'll fi nd their names in the text, sometimes repeatedly, and in the endnotes and bibliography. Special thanks to those who took the time to speak and message with me at length, including Soma
This study reports selected comparative findings from two national surveys of 861 self-identified investigative journalists and 1080 US journalists drawn from the profession as a whole. The study examines possible predictors of journalistic roles and support for controversial reporting techniques, including demographics, organizational context, and journalistic attitudes. It finds notable distinctions in demographic factors, perceptions of journalistic roles, and attitudes toward controversial reporting practices. As expected, investigative journalists are more likely to express support for the adversarial function of journalism. Among US journalists, those who support the adversarial approach are characterized by significant attitudinal differences. The study suggests the need for more research that analyzes distinct practitioner groups identified by the kind of journalism they produce.
Different Approaches to Investigatory Journalism in the Muckraking Era
2015
The muckraking era is seen as a golden age of investigatory journalism. This thesis argues that within the muckraking era, there were a number of distinct types of journalism. To understand the muckrakers, we must recognize these different types of investigatory journalism and the potential influence the different types of storytelling can have on public opinion. Fourteen of the preeminent muckrakers are analyzed based on their most important investigatory journalism articles
2015
This book began with somewhat amorphous and tentative thoughts on the workings of journalistic authority, by which the media assume the right to present authoritative versions of events. Journalistic authority was approached as a construct implicitly but identifiably located within the practices of American journalists. These pages have shown that journalistic authority is neither amorphous nor tentative. It exists in narrative, where journalists maintain it through the stories they tell. By varying who tells these stories, how they tell them, and what they do or do not tell, journalists enact their authority as a narrative craft, embodied in narrative forms. These narratives are then transported into collective memory, where they are used as models for understanding the authoritative role of the journalist and journalistic community. Specific narratives signal different boundaries of appropriate journalistic practice and help clarify the boundaries of cultural authority across time...