chapter ONE

Defining
Investigative Reporting
What makes it different
from other types of journalism?

I
nvestigative reporting has many, sometimes
widely divergent, meanings. To understand what Investigative
investigative reporting is, it may be best to start journalism IS NOT:
by explaining what it is not.
Daily reporting
It is said that all reporting is investigative. After all, Leak journalism
journalists routinely dig for facts. They ask questions. Single source
They get information. They ‘investigate’. reporting
Misuse of information
But is this really the case? In the day-to-day practice Paparazzi journalism
of journalism, how deep do reporters really dig? How
probing are their questions? And how complete or
original is the information that they present? Investigative
journalism IS:
The reality is that daily news coverage is usually not
probing or investigative. It reports mainly what of- Watch-dog
ficials or institutions say, as well as other people’s journalism
responses to what has been previously said. Much Exposing how laws
of what we consider ‘news’ is reporting on official and regulations are
statements or reactions to official statements. Daily violated
journalism is also mainly about events that reporters Holding the powerful
have witnessed or interviewed witnesses about - such accountable
as a train collision, a demonstration, a criminal being
arrested. There is no digging beyond what has been said or what has been seen.
Daily news reporting is seldom investigative, it is mostly reactive.
Most of the time, journalists react to what is happening or what has been publicly an-
nounced. Reporters seldom decide on their own, what or who they cover. They often
do not initiate story ideas. Unfolding events and the daily schedule of news briefings
and press conferences determine what makes it to the newspaper, the newscast or
the Web.

For the most part, journalists do not set the news agenda. Instead, they take the
information they have been given, weigh its significance (does the prime minister’s
statement, for example, deserve to be on the front page of a newspaper or in the
first five minutes of a newscast?), check its accuracy and put it in context. The news
reporter’s job is to confirm the facts of the story, make sense of them and to put
them together in a coherent report.

Balkan Investigative Reporting Network 13

 Investigative reporting, however, does not just report the information that has been
given out by others - whether government, political parties, companies or advocacy
groups. It is reporting that relies on the journalist’s own enterprise and initiative.
Investigative reporting requires journalists to go beyond what they have seen and
what has been said, to unearth more facts and to provide something new and previ-
ously unknown.

Most of the time, investigative reporters uncover wrongdoing by individuals and in-
stitutions. The good that public officials or private companies do is often publicised; a
whole army of public relations people makes sure this is so. It is the wrong that pow-
erful groups and individuals do, that is kept secret and hidden from the public.

In the Balkans and other parts of the world, the term investigative reporting is some-
times associated with leaks. Public officials, police, intelligence agents or politicians
selectively ‘leak’ or release secret information or investigative files in order to pro-
mote their own interests. Journalists report on the leaked information, often without
checking or digging for additional facts on their own.

Leak journalism is not investigative reporting. An investigation can begin

from a leak, but journalists must do their own digging, verify information and provide
CHAPTER ONE DEFINING InvestiGATIve Reporting

context.

Unless they do so, their reports will be distorted and incomplete. They will also be
allowing themselves to be used to manipulate public opinion and to advance the
agenda of individuals, rather than the public interest.

Investigative reporting entails the use of multiple sources – both human and doc-
umentary – that together paint a picture of wrongdoing or abuse. It requires the
verification and corroboration of every piece of information, even if these come from
sources that are considered reliable or authoritative. Reporting based on a
single source cannot be considered investigative.
Paul Radu, founder of the Romanian Centre for Investigative Journalism (or CRJI, its
Romanian acronym), says that some reporters have used the information they have
uncovered in their investigations to extort money from individuals or companies. That
is true not just in Romania but in other Balkan countries and indeed, elsewhere as
well. These reporters taint the name of investigative journalism and do damage to its
tradition and reputation. Using information for extortion is not investigative
journalism.

14 Digging Deeper
Investigative journalism is also sometimes confused with stalking powerful or well-
known people and writing intimate details about their private lives, uncovering such
things as love affairs or other dark secrets. It is true that investigative reporters some-
times uncover details on the private lives of individuals – for example, the investiga-
tion by a US newspaper of Catholic priests accused of abusing boys. But such investi-
gations are done only when there is a clear public interest in exposure – in this case,
the priests conducted the abuse over many years and the Catholic Church hierarchy
knew the abuses were taking place but did not take action.

In corruption investigations in the Philippines and China, journalists have reported on

the mistresses of high public officials who were accused of bribery. The mistresses
were either conduits for the bribes or beneficiaries. A Philippine president, for ex-
ample, was found guilty of building fabulous mansions for four mistresses. In China,
an investigative journalist exposed a mayor who used public funds to buy apartments
for 29 mistresses. In both these cases, there was a clear public interest in reporting
on the private lives of officials.

Investigative reporting is not paparazzi journalism. Its focus is not private

lives; it is the public good.

Investigative reporting is watchdog journalism: it aims to check the abuses

of those who have wealth and power. It exposes wrongdoing so it can be corrected,
not because journalists and their patrons benefit from exposure.

Various metaphors have been used to describe the work that investigative journal-
ists do. They ‘lift the veil of secrecy’ by uncovering previously unknown facts, such
as the surveillance and wiretapping of citizens by government security forces, which
New York Times journalists uncovered in 2005. Another example is the reporting by
journalists in North America, Europe, South Asia and the Middle East on secret rendi-
tions – the abduction and detention in secret prisons of suspected terrorists after the
9/11 attacks in the United States.

Investigative journalists ‘strike through the mask’ - they go beyond what is publicly
proclaimed and expose the lies and hypocrisy of those who wield power. They have
reported on such issues as corruption in government, crime, corporate misdeeds,
environmental destruction, the exploitation of women, children, or minority groups,
and abuses committed by such entities as churches, criminal gangs, private armed
groups, and even non-profit organisations or charities.

Balkan Investigative Reporting Network 15

 In Thailand, journalists have written about scams and illegal money-making by Bud-
dhist monks, exposing the dark underside of a venerable institution. In 2007, a Croa-
tian journalist exposed false claims of business success made by a former minister.
The journalist wrote that the politician, then a candidate for prime minister, promot-
ing himself as a successful entrepreneur, actually had a string of business failures and
that his company had racked up huge debts.

Most of the time, investigative journalists report on how laws and regu-
lations are violated. They compare how organisations work, with how they are
supposed to work. They expose how and why individuals and institutions fail. They
report when things go wrong, who is responsible, how the wrongdoing was done
and its consequences.

The best investigative reports expose not just individual, but systemic, failures. They
show how individual wrongs are part of a larger pattern of negligence or abuse and
the systems that make these possible. They examine where the system went wrong
and show who suffers from the mistakes.
CHAPTER ONE DEFINING InvestiGATIve Reporting

The Power Brokers

The award-winning 2006 investigative series, The Power Brokers1, ex-

amined the Balkan energy market and the energy traders who had
made enormous profits from it. Reporters from Albania, Bosnia-Herze-
govina, Bulgaria and Romania traced the energy crisis in the Balkans to
“a murky, closed system that is not open to fair trade and where state
companies are giving away their advantage to well-connected energy
traders”.

The series showed complicity between state power companies, local

businessmen and public officials in the energy market. The system, they
said, meant profits for a few, while ordinary households had to pay high
prices for electricity and suffer from shoddy service as plants fell into
disrepair.

16 Digging Deeper
1 The Power Brokers - [Link]/powerbrokers
The Dutch-Flemish organisation of investigative journalists, known by the acronym
VVOJ, lists three kinds of investigative reporting:

Revealing scandals or the violation of laws, regulations and

ethical/moral standards by individuals or institutions.

Examining the policies or functions of governments, companies and

other organisations.

Describing social, economic, political and cultural trends.

Unlike Investigative Reporters and Editors, (IRE), in the United States, which defines
investigative journalism more narrowly as ‘reporting that reveals new facts, espe-
cially what is hidden or deliberately kept secret,’ the VVOJ is more inclusive. Report-
ing that interprets or connects already known facts in a new way is also investigative,
according to VVOJ. The Power Brokers series falls into this category of investigative
journalism: it pulls together information, much of it already known facts, from vari-
ous sources and across different countries so that readers are able to look at the Bal-
kan energy crisis in a new way and figure out who is responsible for it.

Holding the powerful accountable - Investigative reporters have always seen

themselves as guardians of the public interest. By exposing wrongdoing and failure,
they aim to hold the powerful accountable for their actions. In the United States in
the early 1900s, crusading journalists were called ‘muckrakers’, because they dug out
the muck - or the dirt - of society. The muckrakers exposed such issues as the abuses
of corporations, unsafe working conditions, the state of mental institutions and pov-
erty in the slums of the growing cities of the US.

The Watergate Case

In the 1970s, when Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, two young reporters
from The Washington Post, wrote the Watergate reports, they exposed the
involvement of President Richard Nixon and his staff in the bugging of their
rival party headquarters and the cover-up of the crime. Since then, inves-
tigative reporting has been associated with exposing wrongdoing in high
places. Nixon’s resignation because of Watergate and the Post’s exposes
demonstrated the power of investigative reporting: two rookie reporters
caused the downfall of the most powerful man in the world.

Balkan Investigative Reporting Network 17

 In the 1960s and 1970s, investigative reporters in the UK wrote on corruption in par-
liament, bribes paid by businessmen to politicians, and horrific scandals such as the
marketing of the drug thalidomide, a sedative prescribed for pregnant women which
caused severe birth defects.

Since the late 1980s, investigative reporting has taken root in new democracies
in Asia, Latin America, Eastern Europe and Africa. In these places, journalists have
exposed corruption, environmental damage, organised crime and the suffering of
women, children and marginalised groups. For example, between 2001 and 2004, re-
porters in Costa Rica uncovered malfeasance involving millions of dollars in bribes
paid by local and foreign companies to three respected former presidents.

Watchdog reporting in the Balkans

Investigative reporting is relatively new in the Balkans. In Romania, Bulgaria and
Albania, this kind of reporting began only after the fall of communism and the rise
CHAPTER ONE DEFINING InvestiGATIve Reporting

of a free press. Communist regimes in Romania and Bulgaria collapsed in 1989; in

Albania, in 1991.

Things were different in the former Yugoslavia, where there were some openings
in the press after 1980, with the death of Josip Broz Tito, the country’s president
since the end of the Second World War.

In the decade that followed, magazines across Yugoslavia published articles that
exposed wrongdoing and corruption by state companies and socialist officials.
Most of these investigations, however, were based largely on documents leaked
by various political groups intent on using the exposes to remove their competi-
tors from power.

Some of these investigations appeared to serve the interests of one ethnic group
and its leadership, while putting down the others. These may have helped create
an atmosphere of animosity that eventually led to war.

War first broke out in Croatia in 1991, then in Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1992 and Ko-
sovo in 1998. In all these places, jingoistic, war-oriented parties took control of the

18 Digging Deeper
state and of mainstream media. Nonetheless, some investigative reporters took
great risks to uncover and publicise war crimes and other human rights abuses.

Despite the lack of a watchdog reporting tradition and the inaccessibility of docu-
ments and sources, a growing community of Balkan investigative journalists has
emerged since the 1990s. These reporters have exposed corruption, especially in
relation to the privatisation of state companies, war crimes, organised crime, so-
cial problems such as human trafficking, and environmental destruction.

There was much to investigate. Massive economic problems and social dislocation
accompanied the transition from socialism. The fall of strong, centralised states re-
sulted in a breakdown of the rule of law, paving the way for the entry of organised
crime.

In many countries, organised crime developed in collaboration with state security

forces. In Serbia, in the 1990s, the government of the late Slobodan Milosevic used
organised crime as a tool to further its political and economic goals. In Albania, the
post-communist state was so weak that local mafias took over entire sections of
the economy. While state security forces were already involved in criminal activ-
ity during the communist era, the slow pace of the reforms and other transition
problems strengthened the links between the criminals and the state security ap-
paratus.

The transition also saw a decline in living standards, with many from the Balkan
middle class sliding into the category of the ‘new poor.’ Inequality grew, as the
collapse of welfare infrastructure meant that vulnerable groups could not rely on
the safety net of healthcare, insurance and pension systems. At the same time, the
legacies of the past had to be dealt with, whether these involved the crimes of the
communist era or the atrocities that were committed during the conflicts of the
early 1990s.

The Balkan media, meanwhile, were newly free but financially weak. New con-
stitutions and new laws guaranteed press freedom. Licensing requirements were
eased, allowing new newspapers and broadcasters to be set up. Donor support
funded new media initiatives. But the Balkan media could barely cope with the
day-to-day coverage of news events, much less delve into the urgent issues of tran-
sition. To this day, there is little time or effort put into in-depth or investigative
reporting.

Balkan Investigative Reporting Network 19

1
See Pavlina Trifonova, Partners in Crime: The Risks of Symbiosis between the Security Sector and Organised Crime in South-
eastern Europe, Sofia: Center for the Study of Democracy, 2004, in [Link]/intradoc/groups/public/documents/
UNTC/[Link]
 In recent years, independent investigative reporting
centres have emerged throughout the Balkans, providing
alternative means with which to tackle serious issues.
Today, such centres exist in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Romania, Croatia and
Serbia, funding journalists and providing them with editorial support to produce in-
vestigations, many of which are published in the mainstream media. In addition, the
Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN), a media development and publish-
ing group which emerged in 2005 through the localisation of an international pro-
gramme run since the early 1990s by the London-based Institute for War and Peace
Reporting (IWPR), has branches throughout the region and an online publication,
Balkan Insight: [Link]. The latter provides an outlet for publishing
investigative reports produced by its reporting teams and other co-operating journal-
ists with the support and mentoring of BIRN editors. These reports are often avail-
able for republication free of charge by the region’s media.

In addition, non-profit media organisations like BIRN and SCOOP, the latter a net-
work for investigative journalists in East and Southeastern Europe founded and man-
aged by the Danish Association of Investigative Journalists, hold training seminars for
would-be investigative journalists. These interventions have helped build a corps of
CHAPTER ONE DEFINING InvestiGATIve Reporting

journalists committed to investigative reporting.

This corps of investigative journalists has also been helped by new laws that guaran-
tee freedom of information and provide more protection for the press than existed
in the past. But the rule of law is weak in the Balkans, and the existence of these laws
does not mean that they are actually followed.

Thus, journalists often take risks - some have been questioned, threatened or sued. There
is little tolerance for critical reporting among public officials. At the same time, corrup-
tion and bribery of the press is common. In some countries, the media are controlled by
individuals who hold public office or run big businesses. Real conflicts of interest arise
and the investigative zeal of journalists is blunted in order to please press proprietors.

For the most part, despite occasional investigative reports,

journalism in the Balkans consists of daily news reporting.
Reporters are given several assignments per day, offered little
financial support or editorial supervision, and poorly paid,
while, as a profession, journalism does not have high prestige.

20 Digging Deeper
 Photo courtesy of the Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Exellence

Training is vital to build a corps of journalists committed to investigative reporting.

The good news is that, despite these difficulties, Balkan investigative journalists
have succeeded in exposing wrongdoing and making change possible. Their reports
have initiated official investigations. Overall, investigative reports have raised public
awareness about urgent social issues.

Balkan Investigative Reporting Network 21

 The characteristics of investigative reporting
In 2003, Bosnian journalist and founder of BIRN
Bosnia-Herzegovina, Nerma Jelacic, set out to in- An
vestigate the network of organised crime that sur- investigative
rounded the former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan story...
Karadzic, for many years a fugitive from interna-
tional justice, who was arrested only in 2008, and
sent to The Hague, accused of ordering the killing Is the product of a
of thousands of Bosnian Muslims and Croats in the reporter’s and his news
1990s. organisation’s initiative
and enterprise
After being indicted by the International War
Crimes Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) Is not leaked informa-
for, among other things, genocide and crimes tion or the findings of
against humanity, Karadzic had gone into hiding someone else’s investi-
and the search for his whereabouts was an ongo- gation
ing news story.
CHAPTER ONE DEFINING InvestiGATIve Reporting

Reveals information
While researching Karadzic’s support network, Jel- previously unknown or
acic frequently heard the name of one of his alleged kept hidden from the
aides, Milan Lukic. Lukic, too, had been charged public
with crimes against humanity for 1992 atrocities in
the city of Visegrad, a picturesque eastern Bosnian Puts together and con-
town on the banks of the Drina river. He was al- nects already-known
leged to have set fire to two houses in which he had facts in a new way
detained 130 Muslim women, children and elderly
men, and to have shot those who tried to escape Requires an investment
the blaze. He was also accused of having ordered of time and effort
the round-up of Muslim men and their transpor-
tation to the river where, as reported by the UK’s Addresses a matter of
Guardian newspaper, he and his men shot them public interest
and then threw them into the water, “dead or in
various states of half-death, turning the turquoise
of the Drina red with blood”.

22 Digging Deeper
Jelacic and her family were living in Visegrad at that time. They fled to Britain when
the atrocities began. Nerma was only 15 years old. When she returned to Bosnia-Her-
zegovina 11 years later, as a journalist and editor running IWPR’s Bosnian project, Mi-
lan Lukic’s name still sent chills down the spines of the local folk. During that period,
Lukic had made the transition from mass-murderer to well-connected criminal gang-
ster. Despite being charged with racketeering and involvement in organised crime, he
had eluded the law. He was arrested on three occasions but released each time. The
Hague tribunal was trying to find him in 2004. And so were Jelacic and her colleagues.

“I spent many weekends in Visegrad bars and pubs while my colleagues did the same
in Obrenovac,” a town not far from Belgrade, recalls Jelacic. “We spoke to various
people: ex-soldiers, Milan’s ex-roommates, his former friends and former police-
men. Someone, we thought, must know how we could get in touch with him. Three
months later, I had his phone number.”

This research, conducted by the IWPR’s Balkan programme, involved getting sources
within the police, the security and intelligence agencies, and the Hague tribunal, to
talk. These sources provided clues as to Lukic’s whereabouts and the vast network
that surrounded the illicit dealings he was involved in, together with wartime accom-
plices, smugglers and even active public servants. When Lukic’s brother Novica was
killed in a police raid on the family home, Tanja Matic, a member of the investigative
team from IWPR’s Kosovo office, persuaded Lukic’s parents to agree to an interview.
Later the journalists found that the police had ordered the raid after learning of Lu-
kic’s plan to meet with investigators from the Hague tribunal and provide them with
information on Karadzic’s support network.

This investigation led to the publication on May 4, 2004 in IWPR’s Balkan Crisis Re-
port, of a report detailing Lukic’s involvement in drug deals, his ties with Karadzic,
and his efforts to strike a deal with the Hague, which was subsequently reprinted by
140 local, regional and foreign newspapers1.

Milan Lukic was finally apprehended and transferred to the ICTY in August 2005,
and on July 20, 2009, was sentenced to life in prison for the crimes he committed
in Visegrad.

Balkan Investigative Reporting Network 23

1 The full text of ‘Serb police target Karadzic informer’ by Nerma Jelacic, Tanja Matic and Hugh Griffiths can be read on page 205
 Jelacic’s reporting on Lukic can be described as ‘investigative’ for the following
reasons:

Firstly, it provided previously unknown information. While there had been

some reporting on Lukic and his involvement in ethnic cleansing, no one had, until
then, been able to put together information on both his war crimes and organised
crime activities. Lukic’s network of crime would not have been revealed to the public
at large without the efforts and enterprise of IWPR’s editorial and reporting team.

Secondly, the report was the product of the journalists’ own initiative. They
were not merely reporting others’ findings. While they tapped into the work of other agen-
cies investigating Lukic, they also launched their own investigative effort. Nor was informa-
tion deliberately leaked to them – they had to find it on their own. They were not simply
reacting to, or reporting an unfolding event, such as the killing of Novica Lukic. In fact, the
journalists questioned the police version of that event and alleged that they had raided the
Lukic family home to prevent Milan from cooperating with the Hague tribunal.

Thirdly, the report required an investment of time and effort. Investiga-

tive reporting requires painstaking work. It is not something that can be done over-
night. It implies talking to a range of sources, obtaining documents, when they are
CHAPTER ONE DEFINING InvestiGATIve Reporting

available, and spending weeks, even months, piecing a story together.

Fourthly, there was clear public interest in the investigation. Lukic was a
notorious war criminal who had long eluded prosecution for his crimes. In addition,
the conduct of the police - a public institution - deserved to be exposed so that it
could be held accountable for its actions in this case.

This last element - the public interest - is key to investigative reporting. Like private
detectives, investigative reporters uncover hidden or secret information. But inves-
tigative reporting is more than just private detective work. Investigative journalists
uncover information because they know that it is crucial to the public, and because
the public has a right to know of it.

Investigative reporters do not reveal secret facts merely for the thrill of doing so, or
the prospect of winning an award. They do not dig for dirt just to sell newspapers or
to make profits for television networks. Their work is motivated by a desire to expose
wrongdoing, so the public may know about it. They also hope that once the wrong-
doing is publicised, it will eventually be corrected.

24 Digging Deeper
Investigative reporting as a set of techniques
There are various ways of looking at investigative
reporting. At the most basic level, investigative
journalism can be considered as a set of research Investigative
and reporting techniques that are used to uncover techniques…
information that is secret, kept hidden, or is other-
wise difficult to access. Other reporters use these Getting documents or
techniques, but investigative journalists employ following the paper trail
them in a more systematic and intensive way.
Interviewing the
These techniques include: sources or following the
people trail
Getting documents or following the paper Using computers and
trail: Documents are at the heart of investigative the Internet or follow-
reporting. Often, they provide proof or clues as to ing the electronic trail
the wrongdoing that journalists wish to expose.
Documents can corroborate - or disprove - the in- Doing fieldwork
formation that is given by human sources.

Investigative reporters analyse the documents they obtain and use the information
they find there to piece their stories together. It is difficult, although not impossible,
to conduct investigations without some sort of paper trail. Many journalists begin by
unearthing documents even before they conduct interviews. This is because docu-
ments provide them with the background, context and detailed information they
need in order to pose more probing questions to their sources.

Often, documents give leads on how the investigation should go forward. They give
clues as to how the journalist should proceed. A signature on a government contract,
for example, points to the person who is responsible for it and therefore who the
journalist ought to interview. Sometimes documents cite other documents, thereby
providing clues as to what else journalists might obtain.

Interviewing sources or following the people trail: People are as important

as paper in a journalistic investigation. They can talk and answer questions – things
that documents cannot do. They can provide history, background, colour and anec-
dotes that spice up a story and give it depth. They can also lead the journalist to other
documents and people who may be vital to the investigation.

Balkan Investigative Reporting Network 25

 Journalists talk to a range of sources in the course of their investigations. These could
be official sources, such as government or corporate officials or representatives. They
could be private individuals involved in the case the journalist is probing. They could be
victims of crime or disaster, human traffickers, drug dealers or arms sellers. Sometimes
they are eyewitnesses to a crime, an accident or a calamity. They could be classmates,
neighbours, relatives or friends of a politician who has amassed wealth that cannot be
explained by what he earns. Journalistic sources are often also experts - scientists, law-
yers, accountants - who can explain the technical issues under consideration and make
an impartial or disinterested appraisal of available facts. In short, journalists interview
just about anyone who can provide information on the subject they are investigating.

Using computers and the Internet or following the electronic trail: In-
creasingly, investigative journalists are using the Internet to do research on just
about any topic they are investigating. The Internet, with its vast resources, is a mine
of information. Familiarity with online research techniques is now a pre-requisite for
investigations.

In addition, journalists have used e-mail to correspond with sources in government or

the private sector. They have also used electronic or digital communications (includ-
ing SMS, Skype, Google Talk etc.) to receive information from sources who wish to
CHAPTER ONE DEFINING InvestiGATIve Reporting

remain anonymous or who find it dangerous to meet with journalists face to face.

Computer databases that contain a lot of information are also now part of the inves-
tigative journalist’s toolkit. Reporters have analysed trends and patterns using data-
bases available from companies or government, and used these as building blocks
for their stories. Sometimes journalists construct databases themselves, based on
information obtained from documents.

Doing fieldwork: Often there is no substitute for the journalist getting his or her
hands dirty and going to the field to do research. Investigative journalists have gone
to the scenes of disaster, whether it is to examine an area destroyed by a fire or dev-
astated by toxic waste spilled by a mining company. They have visited, or even lived
for a time, in communities to report on victims of various forms of exploitation, such
as poor villages where women are forced to find jobs in cities and end up as sex work-
ers, factories where poorly paid immigrant workers are forced to labour, or mines
where workers risk their lives.

Fieldwork is essential for the journalist to get a feel for - and also the sounds and
smells of - the subject they are working on. Investigative reporting, like all journal-

26 Digging Deeper
ism, is about real life. Conveying a sense of other people’s lives as actually lived, is
as important as obtaining documents or getting informants to talk. For example, a
story on corruption in a government hospital is made more compelling if the reporter
spent time in the facility, observing the poor delivery of healthcare and the inadequa-
cy of drugs and equipment. By recording or filming what takes place in the hospital,
the journalist can provide graphic examples of how corruption causes unnecessary
suffering and even death.

In addition, fieldwork can be used to compare government reports of project accom-

plishments with the reality on the ground. For example, investigations on corruption
in public works projects have been done by getting documents on roads, bridges
and ports supposedly built, and then going to their intended locations to see if they
have indeed been completed. The same technique can be used when investigating
government purchases of textbooks and desks for public schools, or medicines and
equipment for government clinics.

Sometimes, fieldwork involves the use of undercover reporting, to gather informa-

tion more freely. This is a controversial method with ethical and legal implications.
Going undercover makes it easier for journalists to get into places where they are not
welcome or to interview people who would otherwise not talk to reporters. But it
risks violating the privacy of individuals and can be physically risky for the journalists
themselves. In addition, the reliability of information gathered through deception
can be questioned. Moreover, unorthodox techniques make journalists vulnerable to
criticism about their motives and methods.

Balkan Investigative Reporting Network 27

 Exercise 1
Dissecting an investigative report
Read the BIRN investigative report, ‘World Bank Demolished Albania Village’ by Besar
Likmeta and Gjergj Erebara, on page 212 and answer the following questions:

1. What is the new and previously unknown information in this report?

2. List the documents that the journalists obtained to prove their story.

3. List the people they interviewed.

CHAPTER ONE DEFINING InvestiGATIve Reporting

28 Digging Deeper
Additional reading & references
Investigative Reporting Institutions in the Balkans

Balkan Investigative Reporting Regional Network, BIRN

Bosnia-Herzegovina, [Link]

The Center for Investigative Reporting, CIN

Bosnia-Herzegovina, [Link]

Bulgarian Investigative Journalism Center

Bulgaria, [Link]

Romanian Centre for Investigative Journalism, CRJI

Romania, [Link]

The Center for Investigative Reporting in Serbia, CINS

Serbia, [Link]

Investigative Journalism Centre (Croatia), [Link]

Balkan Investigative Reporting Network 29