Investigative Journalism Under Fire; Shrinking budgets, legal risk hurt a vital genre

[DeepModem Mom]

Broadcasting & Cable: Investigative Journalism Under Fire
Shrinking budgets and concerns over legal risk have hurt a vital genre
By Marisa Guthrie
6/22/2008

....Investigations of the rich and powerful, the multinational corporations and monopoly industries, have all but dried up, say a coterie of journalists still trying to ply their trade. To be sure, enterprise reporting on the network level is far from dead. Investigations are, for instance, still staples at 60 Minutes and PBS's Frontline. Brian Ross and his producers are a vibrant force in TV investigations that singlehandedly keep ABC News in the game. But the days of news divisions rich with staff and resources claiming multiple hours a week of primetime real estate with newsmagazines are now history.

Producers have felt the sting of contracting budgets and swelling corporate concern over the bottom line. Such conditions have been most inhospitable to reporters working on investigations requiring time and resources; these stories are often magnets for legal action....

Peering under proverbial rocks to bring corruption and abuse of power into the searing light of public scrutiny has always been the role of the watchdog press. And while it is true that the head of a state or federal agency may still end up on the hot seat being grilled by a network correspondent, the genre is on life-support compared to what it once was.

If networks are at all gun-shy, it's because of a vexing list of concerns. Deregulation has allowed news divisions to be swallowed by larger risk-adverse corporations. Investigating other billion-dollar corporations is less than prudent when those behemoths fight back in potentially ruinous lawsuits that can cripple a news division, which makes such stories an even less profitable and riskier investment for a GE, a Disney or others. Consequently, investigations into big business, arguably more essential than ever at a time when Wall Street machinations are at the center of the $400 billion subprime mortgage collapse, have become increasingly rare.

“What's really in danger is the availability of information in the public interest,” says Lowell Bergman, a veteran of CBS News and 60 Minutes. “That kind of work was never encouraged. You always had to know where the limits were. Now there isn't even a pretense of doing it.”...

http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/CA6572223.html