Law & Tools of being a Investigative journalist

All journalist must protect themselves as well as other people especially when it comes to the law. They must remember their rights as a journalist, ‘The rule 50 provision that an employment tribunal can exclude the public and therefore journalist from a hearing in order to protects a person’s convention rights.’ (Hanna & Dodd, 2016). However, every journalist must reflect on both legal and ethical issues. 

Legal issues: They must follow laws which are designed to stop them reporting information which may damage or harm other people or organisations.  

Ethical issues: Journalists follow professional ethical codes or guidelines. Ethics means doing what is ethically and morally right, regardless of what the law might say.

While writing a story, Journalists must also consider the Defamation law which is intended to protect people’s reputations and it helps prevent statements being published which might unfairly attack or harm an individual’s personal or professional reputation. ‘In civil law a statement making such an attack may be found a tort – a civil wrong for which a court may award monetary damages’ (Hanna &Dodd, 2016).

Tools

There are many ways to carry out an investigative case. Fortunately, the internet is one of best ways to get the information we need, giving us websites and apps to track down peoples contact information or social media accounts. There is a selection of tools to keep track of investigations for the new generation of journalists. According to (Maguire,2014) “You need to know the essential tools that top-notch journalists use to gather information, applying them in a structured way to produce articles with high credibility”. 

Hunter.io is a tool which again is tracks down contact information which is the biggest part of the investigative journalism job. The Hunter website also helps you find emails, whether is a company email or a personal one.

Another tool which is helpful is IntelTechniques. 
This tool focuses on searching for social media accounts and website platforms. It can be used to background a source or track someone down or even delve into someone’s online life.

Journalists also use tools like Documents, Observation and Talking. These tools are used by the best reporters as they cross-check and authenticate facts helping them to remove false allegations and get different perspective or understanding.

Documents are basically newspapers, books, photos, incident reports, emails or classified reports. Some of these documents aren’t as reliable as they can be hard to understand and as well as being time consuming. Many reporters end using a specific type of a reporting method. The one thing about written documents is that the story cannot be changed or shifted so the source has no choice but to stick to their story. 

However, not all documents mainly private correspondence which turns out to be a forgery. An example of that would be a segment which appeared in the Madeleine McCann documentary, where an investigator was hired to find any information from the day Madeleine went missing but instead he promised the parents with FBI satellite images and ended up misleading them with images from Google Maps. This meant the person that was hired was a fraud.

Observations are slightly different, it is more than just watching someone, it allows you to observe people and is part of processing and gathering information. It’s useful because you get information directly from the source as well as getting a better understanding of something. 

According to Miles Maguire (2014) ‘Some observations are collected in the form of eyewitness reporting, but at other times reporters will visit the scene of a news event to do a follow-up investigation. Human sources can give key details and walk a reporter through an explanation in a way that a document can’t. Listening is another tool which is part of observing, it again gives a better understanding of a story or subject.

One of the main tools is to talk. Talking to people and asking the right questions of the right people. Most journalists can naturally chat however the not so chatty, shy journalists prefer to wok behind the scenes. When it comes to engaging with sources, interviewing is what it usually comes down to. Journalists have a goal which is to seek out answers and gather information which is why they must consider what the best way to ask a question is and other alternatives beforehand.

More Tools

Google Docs – Not secure but is great for drafts and works well for first ideas or first collaborations.

Dropbox paper – Is like Google Docs but is created to work collaboratively as a team.

Workflowy – Easy way to make notes and share with colleagues.

Semaphor - More secure, can have group chats and work together.

XMind – Brainstorming app, helps to organise a story visually. Allows you to see different parts of your story and see potential gaps.

Go Moodboard – Storyboard to show how your story looks, similar to XMind.

Tweetdeck - Tracking and keeping up to date with news on Twitter from friends, important people etc.

Much quicker to use and allows you to filter or focus on certain things.

Mention – Keyword tracking, track alerts, similar to Google alerts but Mention is paid service.

IFTTT – Connect everything on the internet, automate connection between apps, tracking changes on the website.

Wikiwash – Tracks changes on website but specifically Wikipedia, 

Private Browsing – Google is a search tool but it is not confirmed to be secure, therefor private browsing is a lot safer so other people who may use the same computer or laptop will not be aware of what’s been searched for. It protects your private information and blocks some websites from tracking your search. 

Startpage - is a private browser which is another option if you’re not comfortable with the general private browsing since it doesn’t store your private information.

Tor – Is much deeper than private browsing itself and Startpage. It is recommended to use this if you are doing highly sensitive investigations.

360 Social Me – For more research on a particular person, this tool allows you to find relevant personal & social information on that person such as their Twitter, Instagram etc.

Graph Tips – Is a deep Facebook research page where it gives the numerology of a Facebook page and lets you see all the posts, comments and messages where someone has been mentioned. This can include things that may not even be on their own page.

Mention Map – This app is focused on Twitter and it discovers connections between twitter users and hashtags. It now lets you see trending users, save maps and filter users and hashtags.

Follower Wonk – Just like Tor is a much deeper app but for Twitter research tool and it shows the overlap of followers and people being followed. It allows you to compare the followers and discover if someone powerful is following someone who is not so powerful and see the connections between them.

Bond – Sets clear reminders for your contacts, similar to the usual reminder apps on your phone but this is used in a more journalistic environment. 

Document Cloud – A platform to analyse and annotate extensive documents. It is great for doing research on papers.

Overview – Breaks down thousands of document pages to allow you to find a single document which you may be searching for. It clusters subjects within the document which makes it easier to go through large volumes of data.

Import.io – Allows you to scrape information from websites and documents on the internet and make them accessible to use.

Ban.jo – Lets you monitor a location for a long period of time. It is free for journalists and lets you search social media but with a map view, so you can see who was at the location when something happened or what was tweeted or what pictures were uploaded around there. 

Newspaper Map – This app lets you read foreign online newspapers, it is easier than Google translate since all the online sources are in one place.

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