Investigative Journalism

So, I have just come out of an interesting and enjoyable lecture with Brian covering investigative journalism and the miscarriage of justice. Investigative Journalism is everyday news of reporting what has happened with interviews from witnesses or people affected by the events. The journalist set their own agenda that matches the audience of the publication. It is an off diary event which means that it is not prepared or planned and is a case that you as a Journalist find out. The event is usually something that someone doesn't want you to know or to be published.

 There are two things that need to be avoided when investigating which is malice (not to damage someones identity) and conflict of interest (a person that is involved in different interests where one by corrupt the motivation for an act in another. An example of this is John Snow who refuses to wear a poppy live on channel 4 as a sign of respect to the military, as he feels it is 'poppy fascism' and would conflict if he had to read a news story on channel 4 that highlights the military in a bad way.

 Alongside the public interest defence for publishing a story would be:

1. Hypocrisy (pretending to have moral or religions beliefs that you do not actually have.)
2. If there is a crime
3. If there is a public safety issue

Miscarriage of Justice
We concentrated a lot on this topic which lead to the lecture being very interesting and rather complicated at times. The classic 'off ageda' is miscarriage of justice as it could lead to a person being wrongly convicted of a crime when it wasn't them. The legal system has pronounced an idea of 'what if the justice system is corrupt?' which states that journalists may be the only answer. This lead to the innocence project that is a 'national litigation and public policy organisation dedicated to exonerating wrongfully convicted individuals through DNA testing and reforming the criminal justice system to prevent future injustice.

After Guilford 4 and the Birmingham 6 the government set up the Criminal Cases Review Commission to investigate cases of miscarriage of justice. Alleged offenders can write to the CCRC to show they were forced to sign the form to say that they are guilty.  This can lead to them being granted compensation if it is found that they were tortured by the police to sign the agreement. However this has not been proven to be very effective as the Justice system is supposed to be getting better and wont prove the police wrong in order to damage its reputation. In jail people who maintain their innocence and don't believe they are guilty will never be released. This is due to the fact that in prison you are given rehabilitation classes in order to admit you have committed a crime and overcome it. If people are innocent they may refuse to take part in the rehabilitation classes, and demand to be proven innocent by the justice system. This may lead to them being in jail forever, and would be easier for them to take part in rehabilitation and come out after their time. So why do people try and fight the justice system to prove their innocence?

This is a campaign set up for Warren Slaney who believes to be 'innocent' but was put in jail for being an alleged murderer.
http://j12.org/ps/warren.htm