Investigative Reporting

This chapter tells me that my computer skills along with the techniques taught in this chapter will help me be well-equipped for reporting in the 21^st century.

This first thing before starting out an investigation is to have some suspicion about something, without some idea of what we are looking for, the investigation might turn out to be nothing.

As with any other reporting, this chapter tells us that the most important element in investigative journalism is the accuracy of your work. There is no good excuse for an error, so it is a good idea to use verification from two independent sources before an allegation could be published.

Something I didn’t know about investigative reporting is the fact that you need to consult with a lawyer before your story is published, and that they are the most important part of an investigative reporter’s career.

The IRE website is a good example of how the internet is the most important new tool of investigative reporting. It allows us to obtain, analyze and present information in ways that would have been impossible a few years ago. But the book tells us that the internet is only a “tool,” and we shouldn’t rely solely upon that to do our investigations.