You need to develop trust with people because there are a lot of hoops. It’s not a transaction where you can just demand information. The skill of persuasion is really important. It has to be so, or you’re not going to get very far. Stephanie: Investigative journalism is really all consuming because you have to live and breathe the topic. What qualities do you need to be an investigative journalist? Government departments have changed over that period too – gone are the days when you could have an honest and open discussion to inform yourself better it feels as though it’s all chess moves and obfuscation now, which is so damaging to the democratic process. Rob: Often those who commit wrongdoing hide behind many layers of secrecy and then reach for their lawyer when they fear they are about to be exposed.įelicity: Over my 20 years investigating for the Guardian, I am struck by how long and ever more aggressive expensive lawyers’ letters have become. Juliette: Right … what can I say without getting sued? But the people whose secrets we’re exposing can be well-resourced adversaries. People see the media as powerful, and they’re right inasmuch as we have huge audiences. Often we’re up against small battalions of well-paid lawyers, public relations advisers and private investigators who are hired to defeat our reporting. Paul: Generally speaking, we’re making life difficult for people and institutions that have money or power (and sometimes both). What about the people we expose ? Presumably they don’t make it easy for us? You need a collaborative mentality too – anything we discovered in the Pandora papers we shared with other colleagues on the project.įelicity Lawrence: Stamina, forensic attention to detail, an open, objective mind, a healthy scepticism about authority, a certain bloody-mindedness in the face of obstacles, plus hours and hours of often mind-numbing homework. Luke Harding: It requires perseverance and background knowledge to piece together the big picture plus off-the-record conversations with sources. This is punctuated by moments of eureka, when you’ve got a source, you’ve got a document, we’ve discovered that what we thought was true is true. You follow the leads, the leads haven’t gone anywhere and you’re not really sure what you are doing. There’s the agony of trying to figure out the story, but that’s really only half the battle.ĭavid Pegg: A lot of the process is a feeling of scarcity and uncertainty and self-questioning. Juliette Garside: It’s a collaborative process and you are working a bit like a detective, you have pieces of a jigsaw and you’re trying to figure out how they go together. You have to have attention to detail because one date or place that’s wrong can really undermine your story. You start to lose your voice after a while. Sirin Kale: I was placing upwards of 20, 30, 40 phone calls a day. It was really frustrating, I was wondering whether I was barking up the wrong tree. It was quite lonely because I was working by myself, I was aware that there was a really serious problem. ![]() So, what does it take to do this kind of work?Īmelia Gentleman: At the height of reporting on the Windrush scandal there were three or four weeks when it completely enveloped my life. ![]() This is especially important when the police or others who are supposed to investigate misconduct fail to do so. Rob Evans: It is important that the Guardian and the media fulfil one of their key tasks – to expose wrongdoing and hold those in positions of power to account. Stephanie Kirchgaessner: The Guardian is not aligned to institutions, and can relentlessly questions institutions because we are not allied with them. ![]() Part of our job is holding those very institutions to account. Paul Lewis: We’re the last defence that the public has when those other institutions – parliament, government or the criminal justice system – have failed somehow.
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