Abstract
Looking back with nostalgia, I am surprised that my career as an investigative journalist lasted as long as it did. I never went “undercover”, the false glamour of which has ruined serious investigative work. I never pretended to be other than what I was, a reporter on The Sunday Times. I never chased a guilty man down the street for a quote. I never stuck my foot in a door, stole a photograph off a mantelpiece, hacked a telephone or opened someone else's letter.
But I did spend days poring over records in the House of Lords library trying to master the intricacies of tax law and overseas trusts. In obscure Inland Revenue offices with misleading names, I listened to mind-numbing briefings on how the department detected tax evasion and what its officers did about it.
This was for the piece of which I am most proud — the revelation that the Vesteys, one of Britain's richest and most-respected families, had been major tax avoiders to the tune of millions of pounds for more than 60 years.
That story conforms to my definition of what investigative journalism is all about. It should reveal a major injustice or scandal which has been out there untouched for some time. The guilty parties should be people of substance. (“Don't waste time exposing anyone who earns less than you do,” that great investigative reporter Paul Foot is credited with saying.) It should lead to setting matters right and then legal or parliamentary reform so that it won't happen again. It should arouse indignation and yet be a good narrative read.
So how did I get into such a rewarding branch of journalism and what kept me there? I've never thought I made a conscious decision to become an investigative journalist. It was a natural progression from journalism that simply reported what had happened, to journalism that also explained why it had happened, to telling the readers what was really going on, as distinct from what those in power said was going on.
Like my colleagues at The Sunday Times during those golden years with Lord Thomson as proprietor, C D Hamilton as editor-in-chief and Harry Evans as editor, we naively believed that we could go on investigating forever. We had a free hand: neither Lord Thomson, Hamilton or Evans ever asked what an investigation was going to cost. And as far as I know, no-one had any idea even when an investigation was published or abandoned how much money had been spent on it. This may not have been good financial practice, but it made for excellent journalism.
Then the accountants took over and had their revenge. New technology made owners realise that they could improve their bottom line and they let the accountants loose to analyse what is essentially an art as if it were a retail sale. Journalists have to accept some of the blame for failing to see things from the accountants' point of view.
“Let me see if I've got this right, Mr Reporter. You want to examine how the drug, Thalidomide, came to be marketed in Britain as a benign cure for morning sickness. You want to tell how the company that marketed the drug reacted to the fact that instead of being perfectly safe, it caused more than 400 children to be born with terrible deformities, and is now using the law to force their families to accept a settlement that is inadequate. The investigation will need four journalists, three researchers and intermittent but expensive legal advice. You say the attorney general has already warned you to be careful about what you publish or we will be in contempt of court. The advertising manager has informed me that the parent company of DCBL spends £100,000 a year advertising with us. Are you seriously suggesting we embark on this project?”
Along with a drive for cost-effectiveness came zero-budgeting. At the old Sunday Times, each section of the editorial department had an annual budget negotiated by the managing editor, acting on behalf of the proprietor, and the editor of the section, acting on behalf of the journalists. If, at the end of the financial year, a section had not spent its budget, there was a rush for overseas trips and expensive projects. Zero-budgeting put an end to that because it demanded that every penny spent required approval of an executive who had nothing to do with the editorial side. “Never give journalists a budget,” Rupert Murdoch is supposed to have said, “because the bastards will spend it all.”
So with the money sucked out of investigative journalism, we either have to surrender gracefully and concede that it was peculiar to a certain period which is unlikely to recur (why spend money on expensive projects which may produce nothing, when the same money spent on promotion produces instant, measurable results?), or think of new ways of funding it.
The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), a not-for-profit organisation based in Washington, has reporters in 60 countries and tackles investigations ranging from tobacco smuggling to private military cartels. It has had great success in the United States by appealing to philanthropists for funds. Britain does not have the same tradition of philanthropy so I doubt we can emulate this success.
But a scaled-down, modified version, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, based at City University, is up and running. David Potter, the entrepreneur who founded the computer firm Psion, and his wife Elaine, a journalist who worked on many a Sunday Times investigation, have put up £2 million to finance the Bureau. It has had several major successes but has had difficulty in gaining charitable status and its real test will come when the Potters see if the Bureau can be self-financing within a reasonable time frame.
In Australia, the Public Interest Journalism Foundation has called on the federal government to introduce tax deductibility for philanthropic and other donations to non-profit media groups that produce quality journalism in the public interest.
The ICIJ had good results by targeting wealthy, publicly-spirited people and offering them a chance to finance journalistic investigations into areas that interested them. It also found that many were journalists manqués who were delighted to be offered a chance to follow an investigation they had financed.
If alternative ways of funding investigative journalism are to work, then we should follow the example set by various charities. First, we should set up a respectable organisation, like the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, with journalists of stature and talent. It should hire a dedicated, professional fund-raiser who would use all the promotional techniques developed by modern charities to raise money.
Some journalists will argue that this would raise issues of independence and accusations of selling out to commercial interests. It would lack the magic of the traditional approach. But unless we learn from the accountants who did us down and adopt a more commercial attitude, investigative reporting is doomed to wither away and die.