I attended the conference on a fellowship sponsored by the Global Investigative Journalism Network (GIJN) and the Incubator for Media Education and Development (iMEdD). These are four useful insights and tools, from the conference, for journalists wanting to incorporate more investigative methods into their everyday reporting.
Chapter One answers unequivocally how investigative reporting differs from news reporting. For me, the biggest point of departure is Hunter’s argument that investigative reporters refuse to “accept the world as it is” and aim to expose wrongdoing, in order to “reform” or “denounce” it.
Chapter Two, delves swiftly into what I believe is the best tool in the hands of a prospective investigative reporter. It argues that an investigative idea may be best articulated as a “hypothesis” to be proven, dispelled or reformulated on the basis of inquiry and evidence gathered.
Armed with these two insights, I believe that any reporter can interrogate the subject matter of their reporting from a new vantage point, unlocking the unlimited potential that an investigative lens brings to a reporting project. Story Based Inquiry: A Manual For Investigative Journalists is free to download.
In Story Based Inquiry, this point is driven home by an example from the Centre for Public Integrity – one of the top investigative, nonprofit newsrooms in the United States – where investigators are required to do several weeks of research before being allowed to start phoning sources. Google has long been the most accessible tool for journalists researching the topics surrounding their hypotheses. But, so often the results of our search phrases are frustratingly irrelevant to the questions we’re asking or information we seek.
In his session at #GIJC23 Henk van Ess, an expert at finding relevant, public information to advance investigative reporting, shared his hotlist of “all currently documented advanced search operators” also known as Google “dorks”. With these powerful scripts, you can home your Google search results to be as narrow and as relevant to your research question as possible. From searching for results within specific date ranges, or for specific types of files uploaded on specific websites (to name but a couple of hacks), these Google Dorks will change the way you research and access better sources on just about any topic.
#GIJC23’s panel undercover reporting showcased projects of recent years, from the BBC’s exposé of Islamic schools which chained and whipped students into submission in Sudan, to OpenDemocracy’s revelation that a global network of ‘crisis pregnancy centres’, backed by US anti-abortion groups, has been targeting vulnerable women with “disinformation, emotional manipulation and outright deceit”, to independent Kenyan journalist Naipanoi Lepapa undercover investigation into the shady surrogacy industry in her home country. The Global Investigative Journalism Network(GIJN) and the BBC’s guidelines for going undercover are starting points for journalists considering the potential of this classic method for gathering explosive evidence of wrongdoing or gaining hard access.
But use of AI does not necessarily have to be so complex and ambitious. Investigative reporters can now rely on accessible AI tools – ChatGPT or Google Gemini in particular – to assist their reporting. The concept of co -piloting your workday with ChatGPT has massive potential for investigative reporters. This involves writing prompts to ChatGPT to quickly do work - such as writing code to analyse databases or providing research briefs on particular topics - that might take a journalist hours to do manually.
Published originally on GroundUp.This article is licensed under a rel="license Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
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