Investigative journalism: No-one said it was easy
Jennifer O'Leary
is a reporter for BBC Northern Ireland's Spotlight programme
Some top investigative talent assembled at the BBC in Belfast last week to debate the role and value of this type of journalism: what it involves, why it matters and some of the key challenges facing journalists trying to mount investigations today.
The one-day event was to celebrate 40 years of BBC Northern Ireland’s respected Spotlight programme. And it was fitting that the final session of the day, chaired by Steve Hewlett, brought together a panel whose investigative careers spanned decades and whose advice was a mixture of painstaking traditional inquiry and cutting edge internet search tactics. The topic was ‘trade-craft and change’ and drew on the experiences of John Ware, Darragh MacIntyre, Roger Bolton and Paul Myers.
Roger Bolton, who previously edited Panorama, Tonight and Nationwide, admitted his concerns: “People are not thinking independently enough. The classic problem is to come up with a theory too early, look for facts to back that theory up, and miss out on others.”
He also criticised the media at large for a tendency to “decide what the main story is and compete with each other to advance that story”. Bolton, who was the editor of the historic Thames Television documentary Death on the Rock, about the SAS shootings of unarmed IRA terrorists in Gibraltar, argued for the importance of “someone in the production team to be the devil’s advocate on everything”.
John Ware - the former Panorama and BBC current affairs veteran behind landmark investigations like the RTS award-winning Who Bombed Omagh? - agreed that the same subject matter was too frequently under the spotlight. “Television journalism does have a tendency to be too predictable,” he said. For Ware, the traditional attributes of an investigative journalist were to be “a bit of an obsessive, interested in the micro, tenacious, and someone who gets a kick out of patient assembling of stuff”. He advised practitioners to “take copious notes of everything, and every remotely relevant conversation."
How the internet is changing investigative journalism was explored by BBC web research specialist Paul Myers who highlighted the potential risks in using online tools in investigations without taking precautions. Myers, who works with the College of Journalism, warned journalists to be aware of the risks. “I really would not expect journalists to know how to manipulate the inner workings of search engines, but they need to take care in how they communicate online,” he said.
“When you visit a website you leave an IP address that traces right back to your organisation, and undercover journalists put their story at risk if the people they are contacting realise, for example, they are really dealing with the BBC.” Myers advised using a neutral w-fi source and pay-as-you-go mobile phones for sensitive investigations.
Darragh MacIntyre, an award-winning reporter for Spotlight, Panorama and This World, identified the growing challenges of getting an investigative report on air. “It is increasingly hard to get a story through. You are looking at teams of lawyers and PR people - especially PR people - that simply were not there before, and in a way it’s a lot more difficult nowadays.”
MacIntyre - whose work has uncovered child abuse within the Catholic Church and includes the Iris Robinson Investigation for Spotlight (pictured), winner of a clutch of industry awards - was nevertheless optimistic that rigorous investigative journalism could still succeed. For him the key was the source: “If a story is good enough it will make it, and the number-one issue remains: is it compelling enough with good evidence?”
It was an assessment that echoed one from another contributor earlier in the day. Senator Susan O’ Keeffe, a current affairs-journalist-turned-politician, was certain that investigative journalism can be sustained because “there will always be people who want to tell the truth, no matter how hard”.
BBC Northern Ireland’s Spotlight programme
