Gabriel García Marquez’s observation on journalism became a topic of discussion once again following > the Lawrence Dana Pinkham Memorial Lecture 2016 by N. Ram early this month. Marquez said: “Any training in schools of journalism must be based on three fundamental principles: first and foremost, there must be aptitude and talent; then the knowledge that ‘investigative’ journalism is not something special, but that all journalism must, by definition, be investigative; and, third, the awareness that ethics are not merely an occasional condition of the trade, but an integral part, as essentially a part of each other as the buzz and the horsefly.”
Some young journalists wanted to know the exact meaning of the master storyteller’s assertion that “all journalism must, by definition, be investigative”. Investigative journalism to these young minds meant stories that expose corruption and wrongdoings by the people holding high office, and subversion of the rule of law. I would like to draw from three influential news organisations — The Guardian, The New York Times and, of course, The Hindu — to share some of the finest recent examples of what constitutes good investigative reporting.
The Guardian’s special collaborative investigative work, “The Counted”, looked at the number of people killed by the police in the U.S. The Guardian noticed that the U.S. government had no comprehensive record of the number of people killed by its law enforcement agencies, and felt that this lack of basic data was glaring in the light of all the protests, riots and worldwide debates that were set in motion following the fatal police shooting of Michael Brown, an unarmed 18-year-old, in Ferguson, Missouri, in August 2014. It looked at the method deployed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s voluntary programme through which law enforcement agencies may or may not choose to submit their annual count of “justifiable homicides”, which the FBI defines as “the killing of a felon by a peace officer in the line of duty”. The investigation revealed the true number of people killed by law enforcement agencies and told the stories of who they were.
Lauren Kirchner, senior reporting fellow at ProPublica, considers “The Price of Nice Nails”, a series in The New York Times, as having had a widespread and immediate impact. Sarah Maslin Nir’s reportage documented New York’s nail salon industry’s labour exploitation, institutionalised racism, and the dire health risks faced by its manicurists. For Ms. Kirchner, the subtle impact of Ms. Nir’s investigation was of paramount importance: “Some real soul-searching among New Yorkers about the ethics of indulging in cheap luxuries — for many of us, the only luxuries we can afford.”
Combining reportage and macro data In the case of The Hindu, I would like to look at a recent six-part series called > ‘Last Drop’ . The team scrutinised the current status of water availability in India by combining field-level reportage and macro data. The Editor, Mukund Padmanabhan, Deputy Editor Narayan Lakshman, and Deputy National Editor Srinivasan Ramani first worked out how to proceed with this series during their daily editorial meetings. “The series sought to give our readers a comprehensive understanding of six critical themes underpinning the scarcity question. For each theme the series outlined the contours of the crisis at a national level; it also supplied grassroots context, telling compelling stories from villages across the country, to illustrate the hard realities that millions of water-starved rural poor live with daily,” observed Mr. Lakshman.
The team tried to get the latest data on various aspects of water availability or scarcity, the quality of water, surface water versus ground water, and river basins, among other things. The Central Water Board’s weekly reports on reservoir storage levels were an important quantitative component of this study. Samarth Bansal, Assistant Editor (Data), helped with sourcing relevant data from the mass of numbers generated by various computing departments of governments.
‘Last Drop’ was built upon reportage by Omar Rashid and Sharad Vyas on the drought-like situation in Bundelkhand in Uttar Pradesh and the Marathwada region in Maharashtra. The idea was to look at one theme in a particular region and obtain a national picture from piecing these strands together. Narayan Lakshman curated the series with the reporters: Sharad Vyas on borewells hurting the water table in Marathwada, B. Chandrashekhar on rainfall deficit and the tanker economy in Telangana, P.V. Srividya on the quality of water in northern Tamil Nadu, Syed Muthahar Saqaf on water storage in the vicinity of the Mettur Dam, Samarth Bansal and Jacob Koshy on the logic and potential pitfalls associated with big dams and the proposal to interlink major rivers, and Jayant Sriram on ancient water conservation devices in Rajasthan. Mr. Ramani worked with the design team to template the stories and present the narratives as well as the macro-level information as part of the daily series.
This integrated approach gave insights into the limitations of concentrating either on extraction-based solutions or on the massive rejigging of nature. It brought to our focus an approach that is a prudent combination of intervention and good practices such as conservation, recharge, and storage in a manner that reduces evaporation losses. ‘Last Drop’ was an attempt to look at everydayness with an eye for detail and produce a narrative that helps to make informed choices in the way we consume, manage, and preserve our biggest gift: water. It is a fine example of investigative journalism that looked beyond scams and scandals.
(readerseditor@thehindu.co.in)
