THE
INVESTIGATORS
We
start with our cover girl, Ida
Tarbell. Investigative reporting existed before she zeroed
in on Standard Oil, but she and her muckraking colleagues reshaped
the form. Over the next 100 years many others contributed to its
evolution, some of them highlighed in "Role Models" items -- accomplished
current investigators saluting those who inspired them. Here at
the turn of another century, Tarbell would be amazed at the breadth
and variety of investigative work.
Would
she be proud or worried? The duty to monitor power -- political,
corporate, whatever -- for the benefit of the general public is
why we get to carry the great shield of the First Amendment. That
watchdog role is close to the journalistic heart of the matter.
But as Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel point out in "Who
Needs A Watchdog?", the role is not guaranteed, and in
some ways it is threatened. Strikingly, it is threatened in part
by inadequate, unfair, or off-target work that echoes the style
of investigative reporting but not its core. And as Andrew Kohut
observes in "Barking up the
Wrong Tree," the rise of lurid, personally intrusive
journalism undermines the public's belief in the watchdog role.
Strong journalists carry on their shoulders the sins of weak and
cynical ones.
Can
it stay on target? Monica Lewinsky and Wen Ho Lee are receding
in our rear view mirrors, but it is difficult to see the future.
Who will play the part of Ida Tarbell now, helping to create a
kind of journalism that can monitor the new concentrations of
power that are coming into existence, just as they were in 1900?
Now, when power is going global and the very media companies we
work for throw the kind of weight that Standard Oil did then?
How
investigative reporting evolves depends partly on the spirit of
the time in which it exists and partly on the journalistic institutions
that do -- or do not -- nourish it. But it depends also on the
quality of the people who pitch and approve and produce the stories.
And here the news is good. Young journalists at the turn of this
century can be inspired by the best efforts of Jeff
Gerth, as portrayed in Ted Gup's profile. Or by the documentary
filmmaker Robert Richter,
plugging away against the odds, profiled by Lauren Janis. Or by
the quality work still being produced on television, explored
in Neil Hickey's "TV With Teeth"
article. Or by the voluminous and sometimes heroic work that is
being done -- day in and day out, often without fanfare -- in
many newspapers and a few magazines across the country, as Tracy
Barnett and Steve Weinberg describe in "The
New Muckrakers." In "Connections,"
Florence George Graves points out that what we investigate is
linked to who we are. We can't see what's ahead for investigative
journalism, but we can look around at the people who produce it
now and have a little faith.
