This question could have worded several different ways. I guess I’m not understanding not seeing or hearing of straight shooting investigative reporters giving straight reports of Washington events, deeds and misdeeds in a non-prejudicial, straight forward manner.
They still exist, but nowadays I can see that a lot of what the investigators report is not maintained constantly in the public eye by most of the media, unlike nothing burgers such as the Benghazi “conspiracy”.
Good examples can be found with the Pulitzer price winners of investigative reporting:
Do you consider the DC reportage from PBS Newshour found wanting?
Certainly recommended viewing, no?
If the recent work by the NY Times and Washington Post isn’t investigative reporting, I don’t know what is. They are far from the only examples today.
I don’t know why non-prejudicial is a requirement. If your ox is being gored, you will consider the reporting highly prejudicial, whether you were a fan of the Vietnam War during the time if the Pentagon Papers of a fan of Trump today.
One reason I still subscribe to my local newspaper is that they still run major investigative stories once in a while. About a year ago they ran a huge series on kids in juvenile detention being drugged with inappropriate medications intended for psychotic adults. It got a lot of attention.
I pay an inordinate amount for home delivery of the NY Times in California, but the recent reports made me feel it was well worth it. Alas, the local group that bought the Mercury News does some investigative reporting, but not like it used to be.
ProPublica.org also supports investigative journalism by funding journalists to pursue in-depth stories and providing a network of investigative contacts worldwide, often in conjunction with other major news organizations like The Washington Post, The New York Times, ABC News, and Al Jazeera. They’ve actually done some of the best investigative journalism on the impact of the Afghanistan invasion, extralegal DEA operations in Mexico, and the impacts of income inequality in the United States including how municipal governments exploit the poor through citations for minor or non-existent crimes.
Stranger
Two more excellent investigative print/online sources:
I think budgets have gotten so tight they cannot afford to have a reporter working on a story for several weeks or to pay expenses like travel.
Reporters work on a story for several weeks all the time. They can actually work on more than one story at a time and submit shorter stories while working on longer investigative stories. Also, travel is what foreign correspondents do all the time.
Which isn’t to say budgets aren’t tight. But it seems to me that they’ve never been particularly generous in journalism.
I still enjoy Frontline, plus on occasion reading stories from those two major newspapers mentioned. I miss what Diane Sawyer’s used to do, busting Food Lion on selling rotting meat, and changing expiration dates on products. IIRC, I think they used baking soda along with chorine to clean it up.
Food Lion filed suit against the ABC program, not on the grounds that they found the piece inaccurate, but they accused the show of fraud by signing up as Food Lion employees, and using hidden cameras. Food Lion won its multimillion dollar suit against ABC, at least initially, but IIRC think it eventually got overturned. It’s been a long time ago, so not sure how it all ended up.
I think it was her show that did the expose on faith healing televangelists too. One televangelist got shut down completely, another took a break, but is still going strong. Would like to see somebody do some piece on the prosperity televangelists.
Do you subscribe to a newspaper? Likely not. They are disappearing. So, who then will pay the Investigative reporters? Who will stand behind them with teams of lawyers?
I may be wrong, but I don’t think most newspapers in general ever paid a lot for investigative reporting to begin with - just the big boys like the Times and Post?
So the question for me becomes, how expensive/extensive/in danger is non-national level investigative reporting as well?
Wehn I worked for the old LA Herald Examiner, we had some high paid ones.
In fact, most major papers supported reporters in doing in-depth investigative reporting, often allow8ng beat reporters a sabatical to work a promising story, which also allowed younger reporters to get experience covering beats. With declining subscription readership, most second tier papers have moved to curtailing even covering beats like courhouse or local politics in favor of public interest stories requiring coverage less fact-checking, and using news from wire services to cover major stories. However, a large amount of political corruption occurs at the local and state level and is only covered by metropolitan news organizations unless there is some connection to a larger story.
Stranger
One of the biggest barriers is budget. It costs a lot for investigative reporting. I used to write some pieces in China for web based news 15 years ago. It was a couple of hundred dollars per piece, and even though I put in a decent amount of hours, I didn’t put in a stupid amount of time.
Most folks now read news for free. Or use https to get around firewalls.
I finally decided that while I didn’t need to pay for a NY Times subscription, I wanted to do my bit to make sure they remain staffed. And there are not a lot of news organizations that can staff much for investigative journalism these days.
Today when people subscribe to newspapers like the New York Times or the Washington Post, they often subscribe to the online versions. The New York Times has 3.5 million subscribers. They’re not doing too poorly.
Even newspapers that don’t charge for online subscriptions make money as newspapers have always done: by ads.
Every local newspaper I’ve ever subscribed to has done investigative reporting. Of local stories the big boys are too big to cover.
I second this. I watched the Frontline episodes “Bitter Rivals” regarding the schism between Iran and Saudi Arabia last week and asked the same question as the OP (meaning, ‘why there is not more reporting like this?’).
I think the fact that you have to try (e.g. go a little out of your way) to find such reporting means it’s too much effort for most people. I think most people are lucky to catch their local evening news (where “reporting” amounts to what they can squeeze into 30 minutes), much less seek-out specific, detailed reporting.