I’ve recently noticed that I’m a
bit of a minimalism junky. This isn’t new – for months now my room has been
entirely white, grey, silver, and impeccably clean, with a place for everything
and every electrical cord. The layout is thought out, I’ve informed myself on
clean, modern colour schemes, and invested the time to make it swish.
Though out? Informed? Invested?
This sounds like a case of investigative journalism! Although Ross Coulthart
pondered, “Isn’t all journalism investigative?”, this week’s JOUR1111 lecture clarified
exactly what it is.
While my room has been described
as creepily stark but somehow welcoming, investigative journalism is described
as a method of discovering the truth using any medium – finding out what
somebody somewhere wants to suppress. In my case, dust.
I don’t know if I have a talent for
linking random subjects together or if my life is weirdly based on this course,
but the cleaning of my room is a lot like I.J – critical and thorough and of a
substantial effort.
I can draw a line though. While I’m
one of the most pessimistic people you will ever meet on my off days, to be a
great investigative journo you have to be skeptical, NOT cynical. Bollocks.
I still have a fighting chance
though, as we were told that investigate journalism understands the hidden
agendas of messages and doesn’t just act as a channel for them. I doubt
everything, including media! The press lives by disclosure, so investigative
journalists should take nothing for granted.
This week we were asked: what do
many investigations have in common? They changed the world, and it is this
in-depth reporting that actually reveals important news. We came to the
conclusion that Wikileaks is not itself
an investigation, as it’s just data – just stuff,
meaningless until categorized, like the objects in my room. It needs
journalists to go through and analyse it.
Investigation thrives on
interaction, through interviews, observations, documents, and hell, if it comes
to it, trespass and theft. Yet it is
threatened, oddly, by the online phenomenon and, not oddly, by the growth in
PR. Investigative journalism could be big, but citizen journos are too afraid
to put themselves out there. Nowadays if you look at someone the wrong way they’ll
sue you, let alone if you reveal their shocking secrets.
We were asked what kind of
journalists we wanted to be, and the furthest I could really go was to say I
favoured print. Now I’m skeptical though.
How am I to put anything out there without it being either drivel, or make me
jail meat? I figure if I keep my work like my room – clean, emotionless, and
dimly lit – it might be total crap but at least I won’t have a law suit on my
hands. I hate formal wear.