Shattered Glass: Investigative journalism as a ”muckraking-lite” (Part 3)

Tabloid-styled journalism

As it was mentioned before, investigative reporters are not satisfied about the situation of twenty-first century investigative journalism. Journalists must have a purpose to be free and fair watchdogs of society, but professors of journalism also state that now there are many tabloid-styled stories wrongly labeled “investigative”, which purpose is to entertain. These entertainment-oriented articles are what another investigative journalist J. H. Dygert has called “muckraking-lite”.

Shattered Glass: principles of traditional investigative journalism (Part 2)

Traditional investigative journalism

When we are talking about thorough facts checking, we are usually mentioning investigative journalism. While watching the movie Shattered Glass probably a majority of people raise a question: how healthy is investigative journalism when our practice moves into twenty-first century? Despite the fact that today there are more journalists involved in investigative reporting than ever before, many investigative reporters are not satisfied about the situation. Before proceeding in finding answers to this question, it is essential to define what investigative journalism is and what the main values of it are.

Shattered Glass: read between the lies of investigative journalism (part 1)

Theatrical poster

It is known that when filmmakers want to reflect journalism, they usually transform journalists into some kind of heroic action characters. For instance in a movie The Insider we can see a reporter who demolishes extremely bad conspiracy or in All the President's Men two enthusiastic journalists made a corrupt president to be compulsorily retired. Not in a few movies journalists are depicted as life-savers. In this regard, Shattered Glass is a unique movie which describes the story of a journalist on a far more human scale (it is also seen on a trailer). The film is based on real events and it develops the world of pressured national political journalism. 

Maybe not war, not culture but the Internet cements European identity?

We all live in some kind of a social and cultural circle because we are born into a certain family, nation, environment. We are different and unique but nowadays we have a strong connection with not only our own small communities but with whole world. As E. Shafak said, if we stay for too long inside our cultural cocoons, our imagination might shrink, our hearts might dwindle and our humanness may wither. Communities of the likeminded are one of the greatest dangers of today’s globalized world.

So, the question is, how relevant is the overall idea of society’s culture in the globalized, de-territorialized world? Are we moving towards something universal, towards convergent communication culture? How relevant is the idea of ‘European journalism’? And what, actually, cements European identity?

ORAL HISTORY: what are differences and similarities with journalism?

Oral history

There can be a lot of different definitions of oral history and it is very imprecise term. L. Abrams in his book “Oral History Theory” explains that oral historian asks people questions to discover four things: what happened, how they felt about it, how they recall it, and what wider public memory they draw upon. He emphasizes that memory and the process of remembering are central to oral history. Donald A. Ritchie (“Doing Oral History”) also has a similar attitude to it because he considers memory as a core of oral history, from which meaning can be extracted and preserved. “Oral history collects memories and personal commentaries of historical significance through recorded interviews”, writes Donald A. Ritchie.

What does it mean to be a great journalist?

Talking from the wide perspective, nowadays, almost everyone has an opportunity to try to be a non-professional journalist and it looks like easy, quickly and interesting hobby when sometimes you can even win fame. BUT such media, when everyone can practise their skills of journalism, isn't professional and worth to trust. Traditional journalists make mistakes as well. So, what does it mean today to be a great journalist?

We can mention Carl Berstein, a professional and experienced American investigate journalist and author, who gave several proper tips about being a great journalist. 

Citizen journalism has disadvantages as well: BUT...

In order to analyze today’s media situation and citizen journalism in Lithuania, the editor of ikrauk.15min.lt news website, Renata Linkutė was interviewed. “Readers often send photos, notifications of events or sometimes just wrote one sentence in this portal. Then professional journalists can make of it a complete, high-quality article. A citizen often can be speedier, notice more interesting things, while a traditional journalist is sitting in Parliament or Government meeting,” said R. Linkutė.On the other hand, R. Linkutė said that the citizen-journalist cannot always gather all necessary information because he or she simply does not have professional journalist skills and knowledge or being in the place of incident did not dare to speak to witnesses.It is true that all electronic information needs to be treated with caution. “One misjudgement or error has the potential to escalate overnight into a cause ‘celebre’. All local journalism is now global, instantly available internationally,” is written in an article Diplomacy and Journalism.

Awesome advantages of a journalism of citizens

The professor Eric Freedman, Michigan State University, in his lecture said that bringing events to light is very important role of the press. It is undoubtedly true and it is exactly what citizen journalism is trying to do. In fact, the traditional newspaper readers can not know whether the article is ordered, how much a journalist is going to be paid for it and how much truth is in this article. Citizen journalism comes from people who truly want to notify something to people and do not require compensation for it. They are not required to listen to an owner of the newspaper and write in the way he or she wants. So, it is evident that some readers will increasingly rely on non-profit professional journalists. According to R. Sakadolskis, nowadays there is less and less reliance to traditional media and journalists. And in the article Diplomacy and Journalism (author: Bridget Kendall) is written that citizen journalism “have no interest in spilling the beans”.

Citizen journalism – unprofessional but innovative way of spreading news

More and more we get to know about the events not from professional journalists, print media but from blogs and citizen journalism portals (for example in Lithuania: ikrauk.15min.lt, vikipedija.lt; international: dailyHeights.com, Bluffton Today, international.ohmynews.com), which are rapidly expanding its activities. A new media era began, but yet it’s not clear, how it will end.

In a virtual environment anybody, despite their education, belief or age, can write, publish and spread the news. This is a citizen journalism, which offers opportunities for creativity, but also opportunities for untested, subjective information as well. So, what future can today's media journalists create? Maybe amateur journalists defame Lithuanian and other countries journalists? Or, conversely, encourage traditional journalists to improve their skills?

The culture of communication and media is changing. We CANNOT stand behind!

As we live in such times of rapid communication, it changes the relationship between media, audience and journalism. Now the audience has a lot of opportunities to be involved in journalistic activities.

According to the article The fragmenting mass media marketplace (authors: John Dimmick, Ohio State, Angela Powers and others):

 " The rise of Internet news and the inception of mobile devices represents additional gratification opportunities, opportunities to consume news anytime"

This means that opportunities to write news anytime and anywhere arise as well. The Internet has opened up a plenthora of new opportunities for people to express their views and interact with each other.