Why investigative journalism matters more than ever

Chris Hatzis
Eavesdrop on Experts, a podcast about stories of inspiration and insights. It’s where expert types obsess, confess and profess. I’m Chris Hatzis, let’s eavesdrop on experts changing the world - one lecture, one experiment, one interview at a time.

When’s the last time you picked up a newspaper? Do you even read the newspaper anymore? Maybe you get your news on Facebook now, or in bite-sized portions on Twitter. If that’s the case, how do you know that what you’re getting is an honest and balanced report? More importantly, without a strong and aggressive press, can democracy survive? And if investigative reporting can’t hold the powerful accountable, then who can?

These are just some of the concerns Walter V Robinson has about the current state of journalism. Walter is Editor at Large of The Boston Globe, but perhaps best known as the leader of the Spotlight investigative team, who reported on the mass cover-up of clerical child sexual abuse in the Catholic Church - this fame is partly thanks to Michael Keaton's portrayal of him in the Academy Award-winning film of the same name.

In a span of four decades at the Boston Globe, Walter has reported from 48 states and 34 countries, covered four presidential elections, two Presidencies and one-and-a-half wars. The Spotlight team he led won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for exposing that cover-up of clerical sexual abuse of children.

Walter V Robinson was recently in Melbourne to deliver the 2018 A.N. Smith Lecture in Journalism at the University of Melbourne, titled ‘From the Catholic Church to President Trump - Investigative Reporting vs. the Excesses of Power.’ Walter took some time to sit down with our reporter Louise Bennet to discuss his work and the worrying state of journalism and democracy.

Louise Bennet
I'd love you to tell me - who are you and what do you do?

Walter V Robinson
Well, that's a good question for which there's never an easy answer. I have several hats, none of them actually fit correctly. I am the Editor At Large at the Boston Globe and, ever since I was given that moniker four years ago, I've wondered what does it mean? Does it mean the editor thought I was larger than I used to be? I don't know.

But I guess I'm kind of in an emeritus position at the newspaper where I do a little bit of this and a little bit of that, I talk to editors and reporters about their stories, sometimes I'm helpful. But most of what I do now is, instead of doing journalism, I talk about it. For the last decade I've pretty much been teaching investigative reporting. Both in Boston to students, and I teach it by having them do it, and I now do that in the winter, thank god, in Arizona at the Cronkite School at Arizona State University.

Louise Bennet
So you're not up to your neck in snow during winter?

Walter V Robinson
I'm not up to my neck in snow, thank god. Because of that particular bolt of lightning that hit us on the Spotlight team, which I'm referring to the film that was made about our work, I do a fair amount of public speaking about reporting and journalism. Which is why I'm here in Melbourne.

Louise Bennet
The ‘Spotlight’ film is a real phenomenon because it won Oscars, and it was about your work at the Boston Globe leading the Spotlight investigation. How did that come about?

Walter V Robinson
Well, most - and I've only learned - everything I know about Hollywood I've learned in the last several years. It came about because two young producers in LA heard about our investigation. They heard about it from a fellow who was trying to market a novel to them for adaptation to the screen. They weren't quite interested in that. So he said, “well, you know, I did a case study for the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism about how the Boston Globe Spotlight team uncovered the sexual abuse of children by so many priests, would you be interested in that?”

They read that case study, which you can actually get online; if you go to Columbia University and google Columbia University, journalism and Spotlight, you can read it. They looked at that and somehow they thought that the boring, tedious, constipating work of reporting would make for a motion picture.

They came to Boston and we were, to put it mildly, sceptical. But they finally bought our rights, six of us, for I think the cost of about a cup of coffee. Then we expected never to hear from them again because, you know, most of the time when people do that the movie never gets made. A couple of years later, all of a sudden, they got funding to have the script developed by a very good screenwriter, Josh Singer, and a director, Tom McCarthy.

Those two fellows spent two years interviewing us ad nauseum, ad infinitum. They came up with a script which took five months of our work and distilled it down to two hours and eight minutes, which is the only way you could make it exciting. At that point, they had a script, I guess a good script. But in order to make a film you need a cast and you need money. You usually actually get them in the order of money and then cast and they had neither.

So they sent the script to Mark Ruffalo. He liked it and he sent it to Michael Keaton who's a friend of his, and they'd never worked on a film together and wanted to. Michael somehow liked the part of playing me. Then Michael sent it to Rachel McAdams and she loved it. So within the space of about a weekend they had three A-list actors who wanted to do this film.

Then, miraculously, the $20 million to make the film appeared, they found the money. $20 million is pocket change in Hollywood, that's - so an indie, this is an independent film, a relatively small budget. The film got made and I think we thought, well, it'll be a good film and it'll be in some arthouse cinema somewhere for a week and then it'll go to video. Lo and behold, as you know, it won the Oscar for best picture and best original screenplay.

Louise Bennet
That's a pretty great story. So all the stars aligned.

Walter V Robinson
All - and, really, as I think of it now, is that we were sort of struck by lightning and it turns out it felt pretty good. The film was really I think, at the time it came out, particularly for journalists, or as you call them here ‘journos’, it was a very uplifting moment at a very bad time in the business. Which is not to say there's been any good times in the last 12 or 15 years, but it was a really kind of good reminder of the importance of in-depth reporting or investigative reporting and what that can do to right wrongs in society.

Louise Bennet
So let's talk a bit about that. Because the movie is wonderful and very famous now, but the work that is behind it was this incredible investigation that you did into institutional child sex abuse from the Catholic Church in Boston. And you're talking about journalism, and you're going around the world talking about journalism and the importance of investigative journalism. Do you think journalists really make a difference?

Walter V Robinson
You know, if I didn't believe that I would have wasted an entire lifetime. I think every day journalists make a difference pretty much everywhere.

Louise Bennet
Do they still make a difference? How has it changed over time?

Walter V Robinson
Well, they still make a difference, because whatever real truth we put in front of people makes it possible, in a democracy, for people to make wise choices.

At the local level it's pretty simple; good reporting helps people understand their community, pick safe schools, know where to live, know that they can vote with some confidence because they're better informed. Those are the kinds of stories that we do every day at every newspaper. It's not investigative reporting. Although I would argue that investigative reporting is kind of a misnomer. There are good reporters and there are not so good reporters, and nowadays all good reporters really are investigative reporters because there are so many tools at our disposal. So that makes a difference.

Then, on top of that, if we have the resources and are willing to make the commitment, we can go even deeper and hold powerful people and institutions accountable. That we can expose injustices, that we can hold the feet of government agencies to the fire to make sure they do what we pay so much taxes to have them do. So without that democracy can't work, without good journalism you can't have good democracy anywhere.

Louise Bennet
Now, that's a very interesting point you make about holding people's feet to the fire. Because politically and news organisations often use the word 'balance'. I'd be really interested to hear what the word 'balance' means to you and democracy.

Walter V Robinson
Well, by balance if you mean - and I hope you mean - that when we approach a story we do our very best every time to give people a balanced view on any issue we write about. Which is to say both sides on any dispute get a full and fair airing, whether it's television, radio or newspaper.

One thing I think we've all come to realise, certainly in the US in the last 18 months, is that to achieve proper balance we have a further responsibility that, when we're telling both sides of the story, to make sure that if one side is not telling the truth that we call that, too, to the public's attention. That's what I would call real balance. It's a little bit more controversial, obviously, right now in the US. But it's extraordinarily important that that kind of balance be reflected in our news coverage.

Louise Bennet
Do you think that balance has been used as a word to excuse other sins?

Walter V Robinson
Well, I think sometimes, in ways that even we don't realise, when we cover issues we achieve what we think is balance, in that we give both sides equal weight. That's not real balance. If the facts that we report out show that truth is on one side and falsehood on the other, then we might not have done our job well. I mean the Catholic Church is a good example of that. I think of it sometimes, there's no story that I've ever been involved in where all the evil was on one side, the church. So if there's been any story in my lifetime where you really don't give the same say to both sides, this would be an example of that kind of story.

Louise Bennet
So tell us what it's like investigating so deeply into such a traumatic subject.

Walter V Robinson
Well, first of all, it's difficult within the community you're operating, because you're going up against an institution that everyone, all of us in our ignorance of what they've actually done, is held in the highest esteem. So you are taking on the most iconic institution. Which, ordinarily - and this was the case in Boston - has a depth of support among the most influential people and other institutions, that you have to be extraordinarily careful in your reporting that you document everything. This is not the kind of story that you could rely on anonymous sources. You have to prove the case that the priests, in a wholesale manner, were abusing hundreds and hundreds of children in order to be believed. So that was one major challenge.

The other - and it is a continuing challenge for journalists everywhere - is dealing with the thousands of people who have come forward who were victims, or survivors as they call themselves, of this kind of abuse. Who, in most or many cases, whose lives have been shattered and upended. I mean the rates of substance abuse, suicide, mental health problems, relationship issues among people who, as children, suffered from these heinous acts is astronomically high. Talking with or to people in this population is very difficult. It's the kind of interview that you're generally not prepared, as a journalist, to do. It's also something that takes a toll on the journalist themselves. There's a bit of emotional trauma associated with hearing these kinds of stories day in and day out.

Louise Bennet
I can imagine. When you were a child what did you want to be when you grew up?

Walter V Robinson
I wanted to be what you call a 'journo'. You know, I grew up in a household where we got two daily newspapers every day. Nobody sat around the dinner table with everybody on their smartphone. We all talked about the news. From an early age I was sort of fascinated by the news. Then I was a paper boy and 12 months of the year the papers got dropped off at five in the morning. Even on a winter morning, under a streetlight - it was still dark - I'd use my wire cutters to open the bail of papers. I'd sit there and read the paper before I bothered to put them in my basket of my bicycle and deliver them.

I'd read the paper and I felt like I was the first person in my community to know what was going on. So that was always my passion. So I kind of naturally ended up starting to study journalism and then getting newspaper jobs. I should also add, as most journalists would, I'm in this business because I'm horrible at math and science.

Louise Bennet
So then how did you become the lead of such a famous investigation at the Boston Globe?

Walter V Robinson
Well, I was fortunate, my whole career, to work for really what was, and still is, one of the best newspapers in the country. Early on I figured out the best way to get ahead. When you're a young reporter you get assigned to do the small stories that run inside the paper that people don't remember. I said, well, I could do these my whole career or I could take this small assignment and dig a little deeper and find out maybe there's a better story there. That was always my modus operandi.

All of a sudden, those small stories that I was doing ended up on the metro front and then on the front page and they started giving me bigger stories. So that's how I kind of figured out how to get ahead. But, in doing that, I developed, like a lot of reporters, a sense that whatever is in front of you, whatever's handed to you by a government agency is not the whole story. Our job is to just dig deeper, ask more questions and find the documents. Nobody ever called me an investigative reporter, that's just sort of what we should do, right?

Louise Bennet
You were a reporter.

Walter V Robinson
I was a reporter. Then I became an editor after years of reporting, most of it - a lot of it in Washington and abroad. I became an editor and then, subsequent to that, I was asked to run this investigative team in the year 2000, so I took over the Spotlight team.

Within a year we got a new editor at the paper, Marty Baron, and his first day he asked us to look into the case of one priest - one priest. We were so frightened of the new boss that we decided we'd better call everybody who knows anything about this subject. We did that and, by taking that approach, we quickly discovered that there were lots of priests and the church had covered it up, had hidden them. So I now think of fear of the boss as one of the most noble impulses of journalism. But that's how we sort of stumbled upon that this was a big, big story.

Louise Bennet
I'm interested to hear you say that fear of the boss is one of the most noble parts of journalism. Do you think it's still one of the most noble? Do you think bosses are asking the same things of journalists these days?

Walter V Robinson
Well, that's a good question. I have to say most places the answer is no. Bosses are asking a lot of journalists, they're asking them to do a lot of things. But not as often are they asking them to go very deep and investigate something, simply because news organisations have, in many cases, only perhaps half or a third the resources that they had 15 or 20 years ago. That's sad, because if people are ill informed in a democracy they make the wrong decisions often. That if we can't go deep on what government is doing, then government can get away with doing a lot of things that are inimicable to the best interests of the population and the population doesn't even know it.

Louise Bennet
So do you think journalism - proper journalism - and democracy are on the decline?

Walter V Robinson
I fear that is the case. I try to be optimistic because there are so many really good journalists and motivated young people who have figured out that journalism is an extraordinary adventure in which you can actually do real good in society.

But I fear - because political scientists are already writing about the decline of western democracy, the decline of the values that undergird our democracy, the inability of our democratic institutions to do effectively what we expect of them. The rise throughout the world of democratically-elected leaders who've decided that they can better do what they want to do by ignoring the checks and balances that should exist in any good democracy. Unfortunately, that's the case right now in the United States as well, god forbid.

Louise Bennet
Can we help that? Is there something we can do to change that?

Walter V Robinson
I'd like to think we could. I'd like to think that news organisations everywhere should re-examine the commitments they make of their resources and commit more of those resources to this accountability reporting, which is far more important than anything else we do including covering sports, I hate to say.

But there's really only one thing that local news organisations can do that people can't find elsewhere, and that is to do this kind of reporting, to hold powerful people and institutions accountable. That's what we need more of, not less of.

Louise Bennet
The next time people pick up a newspaper, what do you want them to think?

Walter V Robinson
Well, I think - and, because I'm in the business, I do this every day when I pick up a newspaper of my own or somebody else's. I look at the front page and the choices that editors make and I read those stories with an eye toward the question, is this the most important thing that I should know that day?

If the most important story that's of significance to the community is not on the front page and I can't find it anywhere in the paper, then I worry about whether that particular news organisation is committed to the kind of journalism that's important.

I'd call your attention to any number of well-known newspapers nowadays, where what you find, very often, highlighted most prominently are fluffy stories about celebrities that you're likely to forget 10 minutes later. That resources often are devoted more to those kinds of stories, for instance, that online will get you clicks, but really amount to kind of empty calories. So I look at my news organisations, the ones that I pay attention to, with that in mind.

Louise Bennet
So you teach journalism as well. What is your advice to journalists who are learning and hungry and ready to enter the world of fully-fledged journalism?

Walter V Robinson
Well, my advice includes telling them to get out of their own element. Because most journalists come from middle-class to affluent backgrounds, which makes it very difficult for us to do reporting on those who need our help the most, people who are run over by society, people who are victimised.

The other thing I tell reporters, young reporters, is do not ever take no for an answer. If you knock on a door and it doesn't open, keep knocking. It's persistence that gets results in journalism.

Chris Hatzis
Thanks to Walter V Robinson, editor at large of the Boston Globe. And thanks to our reporter Louise Bennet. Special thanks to Andrew Dodd and the Centre for Advancing Journalism at the University of Melbourne.

Eavesdrop on Experts - stories of inspiration and insights - was made possible by the University of Melbourne.

This episode was recorded on June 1, 2018. You’ll find a full transcript on the Pursuit website. Audio engineering by Arch Cuthbertson. Co-production - Dr Andi Horvath and Silvi Vann-Wall. Eavesdrop on Experts is licensed under Creative Commons, Copyright 2018, The University of Melbourne. If you enjoyed this podcast, drop us a review on iTunes, and check out the rest of the Eavesdrop episodes in our archive. I’m Chris Hatzis, producer and editor. Join us again next time for another Eavesdrop on Experts.