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Returning back to the issue of investigative journalism, we hardly trust the newspaper to report original stories. Most of the stories unfortunately are rehashed reported news from AP or Reuters (or a cut-paste job in TOI case). Tehelka introduced the way of investigative journalism by doing some great exposes; but sadly most of it was lost in the hype and sensationalism (that word, again!). Do we unconsciously associate original investigative journalism with sensationalism? Or maybe it is redundant to call exposes sensational. The recent revival in the Watergate scandal with the outing of the insider source, Deep Throat brought about a fresh round of debate on investigative journalism in America too. Somehow I always thought America does its share of such journalism sometimes even to a ridiculous extent. There would be no greater justification for introducing additional sources of news than to expose the nexus between mainstream media and the corporate/political world. They essentially feed off each other giving rise to a classic case of conflict of interest. The media cannot be expected bit the hand that feeds it future stories and we don’t essentially demand any more from the media anyway.
Bloggers can form an independent source of honest reporting and also produce original op-eds but who reads blogs anyway (in India) apart from bloggers themselves. Why are all intellectual and political dialogues restricted to the armchairs around the country? Don’t we deserve more accountability from our society? The written word ought to have a stronger impact than it does right now. I feel that the sword is way stronger than the pen today. Things should change soon.
by Patrix | on Friday, June 24th, 2005 at 5:00 pm | 
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June 24th, 2005 at 7:45 pm reply
In recent times Tehelka is the only one which comes to my mind. However I would still consider Indian Express as one of the pioneers of investigative journalism in India. Their role in Bofors and other such scams can’t be undermined. The sad thing is that Indian Express doesn’t have a great print run and hence they are not financially sound.
June 25th, 2005 at 2:51 pm reply
Well we dont even have many reporters who grill the person they interview. Only exception I can think of is Karan Thapar.