Confessions of an investigative reporter - Cover Story

Washington Monthly, March, 1992 by Christopher Georges

That should make us nervous. When we in the media rely on others to tell us where to probe, when to look, and even how to look, we entrust to the very people we should be scrutinizing the media's most precious heirloom: the right to set the investigative agenda. And at the same time, we create the mostly false impression that the press is probing our instituions and poking for malfeasance instead of selling commercial time to the highest bidder.

The easy excuse for all this is the high cost of doing business. Newspapers are facing cutbacks, and time-intensive investigative reports tend to be the first to go. In TV newsrooms, where network investigative pieces cost nearly $5,000 a minute, there appears to be little wiggle room for long-term investigations that can often turn up dry holes. But it didn't take $40,000 a story for a former reporter for a Washington, D.C., television station, Mark Feldstein, to advance--and at times lead--the investigation into Marion Barry. It tends not to be the team of high-priced technicians and video artists that gets the stories, but rather the lone reporter plugging away.

Pooped scoopers

Blasphemous as it may sound, we can, in part, blame Woodward and Bernstein for our troubles. The effects of Watergate, the Pentagon Papers, and the Vietnam war--the very forces that helped create the modern investigative frenzy in the first place--have conspired to change the climate of government. But in many ways, we have been slow to change with it.

"The results tonight of an ABC News investigation," said Peter Jennings, introducing a May 1991 spot on corruption in the U.S. Customs Service. But the allegations reported, made by Customs insiders two years earlier, had already been investigated by the FBI, DEA, and a U.S. attorney, found to be valied, and been reported in the local print press. The story went on to disclose that the Customs agents who reported the corruption had been punished by their superiors for doing so. Interesting, but the retaliation had also been fully investigated -- and verified -- by both the Customs Service and the federal Merit Systems Protection Board. The published results of the board's public hearings, moreover, had long before been reported by the print press.

Part of Watergate's well-scrutinized legacy has been an increased ability by the government to monitor itself. Congressional staffs have tripled in size since the early seventies, and legislative initiatives and constituent mail can only occupy so many hands. As a result, more young, eager staffers, led by the much-improved cadre at the GAO, have the time and resources to hunt down fraud and mismanagement. Results of congressional investigations are too numerous to list, but some of the recent headline-grabbers have included universities' misuse of federal funds and a legion of problems with the Stealth bomber. Not to be out-investigated, the executive branch boasts inspectors general and other internal watchdogs who now police dozens of federal agencies from Defense to the Postal Service. Endowed with subpoena power and with the full weight of the federal government behind them, these federal and congressional investigators have a leg up on the press.