Investigative journalism: A great reporter is dead. Who are the campaigners now?

Paul Foot was one of its finest exponents. But, says Phillip Knightley, it is a craft in decline

News in pictures
News in pictures
On Facebook
From the blogs

GCSEs are a pointless waste of time

A few facts. Last year almost 70% of 16 year olds achieved at least 5 GCSE passes with grades A*-C. ...

Asylum seekers: When the questions tell us so much more than the answers

For the last four years I've been paying my karmic dues (I would say "contributing to the big societ...

Thanks to The Sun, for enriching each of our lives

Those at the super-soaraway Sun are, yet again, making outlandish claims that they’ve changed the wo...

Ones to watch: Aiden Grimshaw to Hey Sholay

With so much new music coming out it’s difficult to keep track of what’s out there. It’s a lucky dip...

Paul Foot's death last week is an even greater tragedy than realised: it marked the end of investigative reporting in Britain as we have known it. Foot's working life spanned what can now be seen as a golden age for investigative and campaigning journalism, before greedy proprietors and their cost-cutting accountants killed it off.

Paul Foot's death last week is an even greater tragedy than realised: it marked the end of investigative reporting in Britain as we have known it. Foot's working life spanned what can now be seen as a golden age for investigative and campaigning journalism, before greedy proprietors and their cost-cutting accountants killed it off.

Today, what editor interested in keeping his job would commit his paper's resources and cash to expensive (and often unpopular) investigations and campaigns such as the Hanratty case, the Poulson scandal, the Birmingham bombings convictions, the Guildford Four, Jeremy Thorpe, John Stalker and the Northern Ireland shoot-to-kill policy, the Thalidomide scandal, the DC10 crash outside Paris, the Cambridge spy ring of Philby, Burgess, Maclean and Blunt?

Who would take on Robert Maxwell (Foot picketed Maxwell's Oxford home when Maxwell was his boss at the Mirror), James Goldsmith, the Vestey meat millionaires, Distillers, McDonnell Douglas, the British secret services, police, the armed services and a whole raft of the rich, privileged, powerful people who ran Britain in the 1970s and Eighties?

The Mirror under Mike Molloy (he hired Foot), The Sunday Times with Harold Evans (editor) and Denis Hamilton (editor-in-chief) and, occasionally, The Observer under Donald Trelford and The Daily Mail under David English jumped in, overcoming their proprietors' natural instincts not to upset the establishment. They were helped by gutsy lawyers such as Hugh Corrie on the Mirror and James Evans on The Sunday Times and managements who, albeit reluctantly, did not allow the phrase "cost-effective" to interfere with editorial ambition.

Today, investigative reporting has moved over to television where technological developments have made "undercover" stories with hidden cameras all the rage. Or it has gone offshore. The New Yorker magazine and Seymour Hersh lead the way in the United States, along with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalism (ICIJ), a co-operative run by a group of journalists in Washington, with members worldwide. Tellingly, the ICIJ is financed largely by donations from wealthy Americans unhappy at the lack of investigative reporting in their newspapers.

So what went wrong here? The arrival of new technol- ogy drew attention to the cost of journalism. While the print unions ran newspapers, an editor could defend his budget by pointing out what a small proportion it was of the total cost of production. On The Sunday Times, for instance, it was never more than about 15 per cent.

The death of the print unions and the great savings this produced brought calls from the accountants for similar savings on the editorial side. Rupert Murdoch ended editorial budgets on Times Newspapers the moment he took over. "Never give journalists a budget," he was reported as saying. "The bastards will spend every penny of it."

Investigative and campaigning journalism were obvious targets. They are expensive (the Thalidomide campaign cost nearly £1m in legal fees alone), time-consuming (I worked on the Vestey tax story for nearly two years), and unreliable (the story might not work out). A controversial columnist who will fill his or her space without fail, appears to accountants a better proposition no matter how outrageously high their fees may appear to be.

And with the arrival of media law firms offering anyone who is the target of a newspaper investigation the means of hitting back, a new threat has emerged to what little investigative reporting remains in this country.

As with so many of these things, the new technique for killing media investigations began in the US. Ambitious lawyers noticed insurance companies were reluctant to insure journalists against libel if more than two actions against them were pending - no matter how frivolous the grounds.

So they kill investigations quickly by starting enough libel actions to void the journalist's insurance policy. Seymour Hersh told me two years ago he had been forced to move his personal assets offshore when he was investigating an American oil company because his lawyer warned him that everything he owned could be at risk from legal actions the oil company might bring against him.

Various actions in the US have also set a precedent for corporations to bring criminal charges against investigative reporters, both to intimidate them and to deter others.

Investigative reporters going under cover in, say, a factory or a hospital, could find themselves charged with fraudulent misrepresentation and trespass. British media lawyers are well aware of US actions on these lines. How long before there are such cases here?

Paul Foot would have gone to jail to assert his right to protect the public against the powerful. Who would today?

Independent Comment
blog comments powered by Disqus
Career Services

Day In a Page

'I may be deaf, but you can still talk to me'

'I may be deaf, but you can still talk to me'

Being a teenager is hard enough – for those with hearing loss, it can be even more complicated
A right royal trip down the river

A right royal trip down the river

A new exhibition celebrates the glory days of London's mighty Thames
The 10 Best lawn mowers

The 10 Best lawn mowers

From petrol-fuelled to self-propelled
Every second counts

Why does life appear to speed up as we get older?

Matilda Battersby finds out how the clock plays tricks with our minds
Couture on the Croisette: Fashion hits

Couture on the Croisette

The best outfits from the 2012 Cannes Film Festival
Child of the revolution: the Burmese family that democracy brought back together

Home of the free

The Burmese family that democracy brought back together
Cannes review: Canine accolade and Hitler's return are high spots amid the gloom

Cannes review

Frocks, canine accolade and Hitler's return
Robert Fisk: The going price of getting away with murder... would $33m be enough?

The going price of getting away with murder

Robert Fisk: The long view
Principled Skinner rises above the fray

Principled Skinner rises above the fray

Andy McSmith meets Dennis Skinner
Patrick Cockburn: I fear this terrible massacre will be the beginning of a long civil war in Syria

Patrick Cockburn

I fear this terrible massacre will be the beginning of a long civil war in Syria
Hardeep Singh Kohli: For me, it is all about 'Gregory's Girl', a record of first love

Hardeep Singh Kohli

For me, it is all about 'Gregory's Girl', a record of first love
Christian Louboutin: 'I don't think comfort equals happiness'

Christian Louboutin interview

'I don't think comfort equals happiness'
Happy birthday, Hotel Babylon!

Happy birthday, Hotel Babylon!

Hollywood's home to the A-list celebrates 100 years of discreet luxury
Rupert Cornwell: Low-rise capital could finally reach for the sky

Rupert Cornwell: Out of America

Low-rise capital could finally reach for the sky
The secret life of the red carpet

The secret life of the red carpet

As Cannes reaches its climax with the Palme d'Or and the celebrities gather in London for the Baftas tonight, Kate Youde and Jack Dean investigate the real star of the show