Custodians of Conscience

This text collects together over ten years of research and writing on the practice and effects of investigative journalism in America, providing an insight into journalism as a catalyst for social and moral inquiry. Focusing on the work of a number of reporters, some of whom have won Pulitzer Prizes, this analysis is punctuated with interviews with those writers, who discuss why they chose to write particular stories, how stories are developed and the surprising revelations that often come with the territory. The writers featured include broadcast journalist Pam Zekman, "Boston Globe" reporter Jonathan Kaufman and "Chicago Tribune" reporter Bill Gaines. Among the stories discussed are Zekman's exposure of negligent elevator mechanics in "Elevator Rip-Off: An Open and Shut Case" and the under-reporting of rape by the Chicago police in "Killing Crime: A Police Cop Out", and Kaufman's study of racial discrimination in the workplace, in "The Race Factor". What emerges from this analysis of the practice and meaning of investigative reporting is journalism not as mere news, but as an essential form of knowledge about the social world and an embodiment of public moral discourse.