This is a reflection based off of a webinar. Today, Lise Olsen visited the JMS department virtually, read an excerpt from her book and talked about her investigative reporting that brought a federal judge to justice. Check out Code of Silence.
Investigative journalism makes a difference because Lise Olen talked about how it’s very likely that without her reporting, the judge would have gotten away with it. It took years of Lise Olsen investigating this topic, talking to people, learning about the judicial misconduct system, etc., to be able to tell these stories. Olsen said that it took years to be able to get to know some of her sources well enough to tell their stories in a more narrative way throughout the book. By being able to go very deep into this topic, she was able to excavate the story from underneath decades of silence. This is a totally different alley of journalism that may intersect with other types of news coverage, but do not overlap. Lise told us that this story started in the newsroom of the Houston Chronicle. So, for example, the reporting that is required to maintain a daily newspaper would have taken the same tip that Lise took a little differently. Maybe this story might not have been written because what Lise took the time to do is not necessarily what happens in daily beat reporting.
Lise used incredible research to hold this investigation. She did extensive research through statistics, through seeking out expert sources to explain to her the different systems at play and through the history of the judicial misconduct system. One of the challenges in writing this book was to be able to access these stories when they’re about something traumatic like sexual assault, and being able to talk to people who were entangled with very powerful people. The confidentiality that exists to protect the information that judges deal with made the fact gathering process more complicated. One particularly useful thing she did was to look for the people connected to the main players in the story, or the “second row” as Lise called it. In this case, because of the complication with confidentiality and investigations, she was able to get more information about the primary sources through their close friends and family.
One key insight that I got from Lise’s talk is that you should never assume that somebody won’t talk to you. It’s something that she said almost offhandedly, but it resonated with me very much because I almost never expected any of my sources to be my sources. Depending on the circumstances, sometimes you have information that the sources want which brings unexpected people out of the woodwork. And, Lise also said, the fact that she wanted to bring the puzzle pieces together to point to a solution, that makes a big difference in convincing a source because she’s creating momentum for them not exploiting their pain.
The second key insight that I got from Lise’s talk is that you should look for people that are lying to you when it comes to investigative journalism. People that are not telling you the truth are the first people that you start with, she said, whatever they’re hiding will probably be your first investigative story.