Week 9: Investigative journalism - where to draw the line?

Journalism describes and explains about events which has an impact on our lives and is established in a few forms. It uses diverse techniques and writes for different objectives. I’ve done some research and realised that there are five main types of journalism: investigative, news, reviews, columns and feature writing. Let us focus on investigative journalism. Journalists who specialize in investigative journalism create headlines with news that typically exposes scandals however, that does not make them detectives! Basically, investigative journalism targets to probe and uncover the truth about a specific individual, subject or incident. However, where should journalists draw the line?

Hacking into a private individual’s cellular phone and deleting / forwarding the owner’s email / message is definitely unethical and unruly. However, major publications like News of The World– One of British’s largest selling newspaper did just that. It was reported by The Guardian (2011) that, reporters and journalists of the News of the World hacked into the cellular phone of assassinated teen Milly Dowler and gave her parents’ false hopes that she was still alive. The voicemail messages were erased by journalists in the first few days after Milly's disappearance to free up space for more messages. Hence, friends and relatives of Milly established erroneously that she might still be alive while police officers and investigators feared that evidence may have been destroyed. It was reported that News of the World journalists responded by engaging in what was normal and typical practice in their newsroom by employing private investigators to get them a story.

Despite the difficult nature in obtaining credible and authentic information, journalists should be ethical and, not sink so low. Although investigative journalism is distasteful, it is vital to a democracy’s socio-political hygiene. The tabloid newspaper’s behaviour is definitely derogatory to the journalism industry.

References

The Guardian. (2011). Missing Milly Dowler's voicemail was hacked by News of the World . Viewed on 9 June 2011. <http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/jul/04/milly-dowler-voicemail-hacked-news-of-world>.