Now a days, Investigative Journalism or watchdog journalism is a rare form of journalism. Due to abundant news sources, today’s journalists tend to depend on the internet to gather information for writing their news reports. I am not saying that no one is investigating or researching through facts to find out evidences to help reveal the truth, what I mean to say is that more reporters are looking through social media platforms as their research tool. On the other hand, investigative journalism is a way of journalism that researches through a topic of interest to find out truth that are usually not revealed to public. In other words, investigative journalism is a primary source of information like newspapers. Investigative reporters, also known as Muckraker, research through a specific topic and investigate wrongdoings done by civilian or government like corruption, crimes, terrorism. Furthermore, investigative journalism informs people about news that they are normally unaware of. Based on Fred Dews and Thomas Young’s news article called Ten Noteworthy Moments in U.S. Investigative Journalism, published in Brookings, an American research group (Think Tank in Washington D.C.), “Robert Kaiser, a former reporter and managing editor of The Washington Post, calls journalism the lifeblood of a free, democratic society.” In their reports, they also mention “Kaiser recalls a golden era of journalism before declining budgets and profits cut into news reporting, including investigative journalism.” In addition, their news report includes examples and brief explanation of 10 important news during 20th and 21st century regarding investigative journalism that exposed true facts about corruption, conspiracy, and crime happened inside government and corporates, such as, "1902-03: Ida Tarbell profiles John D. Rockefeller and the Standard Oil Company, 1906: Upton Sinclair exposes conditions in Chicago’s meatpacking plants, 1953: Murrey Marder dogs Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s witch hunt, 1962-64: David Halberstam calls foul on the U.S. military’s rosy Vietnam claims, 1969: Seymour Hersh exposes the My Lai massacre and cover-up, 1971: The Pentagon Papers leaked and published, 1972: Woodward and Bernstein expose the Watergate break in, 2010: Dana Priest and William Arkin detail secret government organizations, 2013: The Washington Post and The Guardian report on NSA surveillance.” After reading through the whole report, I have realized how important investigative journalism is for informing public about the unknown and true facts which are not usually reported in the daily news outlets.
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