John Tedesco

What others are saying about watchdog journalism:

Here’s a well-articulated explanation of why it’s important for journalists to seek out documents and data. Brant Houston is the Knight Chair in Investigative Reporting at the University of Illinois, and the former executive director of Investigative Reporters and Editors.

It’s great to see IRE set up a YouTube channel where hopefully we’ll see videos with more tips and advice for journalists and bloggers who want to learn how to dig for information.

What exactly is an investigative journalist?

Is a journalist someone who does the tedious work of digging through records, analyzing data, and finding good human sources to ferret out the truth?

Or is a journalist someone who dresses up like a pimp, straps on a hidden camera, and tricks workers at ACORN to say really dumb things?

Filmmaker James O’Keefe went the easy pimp route. Last summer, O’Keefe shamed ACORN workers in an undercover video, and O’Keefe’s conservative supporters praised his tactics as real shoe-leather reporting that has been neglected by the mainstream media.

But investigative journalism is not a publicity stunt. It’s not a gimmick. It’s actually tedious, time-consuming work. And more people are beginning to understand that — thanks to one of O’Keefe’s recent stunts.

O’Keefe and his pals were recently arrested for dressing like phone repairmen and infiltrating the office of Sen. Mary Landrieu in a federal building. After the arrest, even conservatives started raising questions about O’Keefe’s methods. John Hood at National Review Online put it this way:

Whatever you think of these kinds of publicity stunts, they do not constitute investigative journalism. The earlier ACORN videos weren’t pieces of investigative journalism, either. It does the growing ranks of investigative journalists at conservative organizations a great disservice to invite a comparison of such publicity stunts with the hard, meticulous, and often boring work of exposing government waste and corruption.

The New York Times published a Sunday story pointing out O’Keefe “is just one of a group of young conservatives who use political pranks and embarrassing recordings to upend what they view as overwhelming liberal biases on college campuses and in the culture at large.” Jon Stewart at the Daily Show said it seems like O’Keefe gets all his story ideas from porn movies.

Instead of dressing up like a pimp to make a splash, why not dig up records to find out what’s really going on? That kind of work might seem boring to people like O’Keefe. But to the reporters who actually do this kind of work, sifting through documents, putting together the pieces of a puzzle, and discovering something no one else knows is rewarding and worthwhile.

Give it a try, James. You might be surprised at the real stories that are out there.

What others are saying about watchdog journalism:

What others are saying about watchdog journalism:

Express-News reader Rick Pratt wrote an interesting letter to the editor published today that discussed the consequences of our spending habits:

Dr. Carbonell suggests we shouldn’t travel to Cuba because we would only be lining the pockets of its dictatorial leaders, the Castro brothers. This is probably true, but where would he suggest we spend our hard-earned dollars?

We could get in our car and drive down to the gas station, where we have a choice of buying from companies like Citgo (Venezuelan oil), Chevron (Nigerian oil) or the many other stations that get their fuel oil from Saudi Arabia.

Or maybe we could just donate to China by shopping at retail outlets.

We don’t have to travel to a dictatorial regime in order to support them. We can do that in the good ol‘ freedom-loving US of A!

Pratt reminded me of a unique, compellingly written series of investigative stories by the Chicago Tribune’s Paul Salopek that traced the exact origins of gasoline shipped to a gas-hungry Chicago suburb. To tell this story, Salopek immersed himself in it. He volunteered as a gas station clerk, mopping floors and making change for customers, and he traveled to the war-torn regions that feed America’s insatiable appetite for oil.

Salopek had rare access to an oil company’s data and made the most of it, writing well-crafted sentences like this:

$73.81 worth of unleaded pumped one Saturday afternoon by a Little League mom was traced not simply back to Africa, but to a particular set of offshore fields in Nigeria through which Ibibio villagers canoed home to children dying of curable diseases.

The stories are a really good read, check them out if you get a chance.

Photo credit: ^riza^

What others are saying about watchdog journalism:

What others are saying about watchdog journalism, and how to fund it:

What others are saying about watchdog journalism:

What others are saying about watchdog journalism: