What is known today as investigative journalism has its roots in muckraking, a journalistic trend that spiked between 1890 and 1920 in the USA with the aim of exposing institutional or corporate wrong-doing. Those journalistic pioneers investigated among others unsafe working conditions in the meat industry, inhuman conditions in mental health hospitals or corruption due to a monopoly in the oil industry. Their publications raised public anger and awareness and led to litigation or changes in legislation.
Investigative journalism is also known as watchdog journalism and closely linked to the professional self-image of journalists all over the world (KAS 2010, Hunter 2011). It aims at the investigation of issues of public concern, exposing wrong-doing by governments, corporations or individuals such as power abuse or corruption. One of the most famous examples of investigative journalism certainly was the Watergate Scandal in 1974, when the reporting of The Washington Post’s reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein led to the resignation of US president Richard Nixon.
Investigative journalism today often makes use of different tools such as data bases of public records, legal documents such as tax records, government reports or legal documents, scientific reports, and interviews with official sources as well as anonymous whistleblowers. With the emergence of Freedom of Information laws increasingly more data from government and other state institutions can be accessed by journalists.
As such investigations are often time-consuming and therefore costly, most legacy media struggle to finance such investigations on a regular basis in the view of financial cuts due to the loss of advertising revenues. Lately, media outlets and journalists revived investigative journalism by working collaboratively and across newsrooms and national borders as in the Washington-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ). The ICIJ is a non-profit association that organises media organisations, journalists and NGOs with an interest in collaborative, investigative journalism and as of August 2019 has 249 members from over 90 countries. It was founded in 1997 to support its members with contacts, a secure infrastructure, training and networking possibilities, and it has led several high-profile investigations like the Pulitzer-Prize winning Panama Papers. Increasingly, foundations and philanthropists fund investigative journalists through long- and short-term grants.
