Confessions of an investigative reporter - Cover Story

Washington Monthly, March, 1992 by Christopher Georges

Not only are the original stories few and far between, but when they do appear, they generally have an instinct toward the capillaries. We only rarely step back to examine the most significant problems of governmental, financial, or scientific institutions--why our schools don't educate; how our banking system has failed; where the space program has gone wrong--reports that not only uncover the dirt, but analyze why the system's not working, giving us insight into how to fix it. For more important than uncovering, say, that military employees were pilfering millions of dollars worth of government equipment--as was revealed in 1990--is explaining how the system allowed it to happen in the first place. To be sure, such investigations appear occasionally--remember the series of 1990 stories by The Washington Post's Steve Coll and David Vise scrutinizing the Securities and Exchange Commission, or the 1986 series by Arthur Howe of The Philadelphia Inquirer on massive internal deficienciies at the IRS? But these are the exceptions.

Yet worse than a lack of ambition and originality is what the networks' multimillion-dollar budgets do produce. Perhaps we can excuse the majority of the fare simply as audience-bait--stories such as a September 1991 "Prime Time" segment, "Brian's Song" (promo blurb: "Beach Boy Brian Wilson is said by his family to be under the sway of a Svengali-like psychotherapist who is draining his finances"), or the fact that ABC's "20/20" did more in-depth segments in 1990 on domestic pets (four, including "Who Will Love My Pet: problems/solutions to pest surviving their owner's death or incapacity") than on any other topic. But even so, the few stories we are left with that are labeled serious investigations only fit that billing in the most superficial sense.

Consider--and only because it was hyped with an almost unprecedented double segment--the December 1990 piece by "60 Minutes" titled "Is There Poison in Your Mouth?" Conducting its own "investigation" of a story that had been percolating for years, the newsmagazine sought to show that ordinary mercury-based dental fillings are, and have been for decades, the cause of a wide range of debilitating illnesses from multiple sclerosis to kidney failure. Although no scientific study had ever linked the dental use of mercury to any illness, "60 Minutes" seized primarily on one 1990 study by a long-time anti-mercury crusader showing that six sheep fitted with mercury fillings had a drop in kidney function. The rest of the reporting was anecdotal. While science reporters at Newsweek and elsewhere had reported the story, stressing that the jury would remain out until the results of two comprehensive studies by the NIH and the FDA were reported, "60 Minutes" refused to wait. There will always remain some measure of doubt, but the studies, released a few months later, both concluded overwhelmingly that the use of mercury-based fillings is safe.

At least people closest to the TV news industry are honest with themselves. "It's a lot of PR" explains Av Westin, whose resume includes founding ABC's first investigative effort, "Close-Up," as well as stints as executive producer of "World News Tonight" and "20/20." Everyone wants the cosmetic lure of having an I-team, but by and large what we do is amplify what's already been done elsewhere." Echoing Westin is the former executive producer of CBS's evening news and current CNN Special Assignment producer, Richard Cohen: "[Investigative reporting on TV] is a myth. In fact, the whole concept of reporting isn't held in very high value in television."