Investigative Reporting: Journalism of Compassion

By Alec Klein
March 20, 2006 12:33 PM

When I was a cub reporter, I thought there was a vast unknowable secret to investigative reporting. That the information was somehow gleaned magically through the great force of ingenious Sherlockian detective work, the likes of which I had never seen before and I would never learn. Then I learned: There is no secret.

Except this - it helps to be nice.

I realize that for some great investigative journalists, an in-your-face approach works. At the moment, I'm seeing Mike Wallace's piercing visage. But as an investigative business reporter at The Washington Post, I take the approach that being nice is better.

That's how I approached my investigation of AOL's accounting practices in connection to its takeover of Time Warner, the largest merger in U.S. history. When some of my sources were afraid to take on the biggest media company in the world and wanted to withdraw their comments before publication, I let them go. My thought was that it just meant that I needed to work a little harder to report my story.

I took the same approach on my investigation of the world's major credit raters who wield enormous power in the financial markets with little oversight. When I uncovered some crucial details that could have potentially exposed a source's identity, I decided not to use the information, although I was under no obligation to do so and I knew it would dilute the story. Again, I figured I just needed to work harder to find more information. And the approach was the same on my latest investigation about the reuse of medical devices.

In the course of my reporting on that story, I came across the name of a gentleman who was a founder of this little known but growing industry called reprocessing, whereby medical devices designated for one-time use are refurbished and then reused on patients in various surgical procedures involving almost every part of the body. After I found his telephone number, I dialed him up and we had a brief conversation. But before I had a chance to follow up with him, a representative of the largest U.S. reprocessor called me to tell me not to call the founder again. I politely took the call but made no promises. Instead of getting angry, I got curious. Why would someone not want me to speak to this industry founder when his story was virtually unknown to the public?

That's how I found myself on an airplane, landing on the tarmac in Houston, then in a car rental, then knocking on the front door of this industry founder. I didn't have an appointment. He didn't know I was coming. But I did have this: He happened to be home. And he let me in. I didn't need to be confrontational. I just needed to ask to hear his story. We ended up talking for more than an hour, and his story of how he helped to invent a new industry in the reprocessing of single-use medical devices became an integral part of my series of stories.

What I did was nothing special. Reporters knock on doors all the time. All that it required of me was the willingness to fail - the prospect of having a door shut in my face - a lesson that a great editor, Jeff Leen of The Washington Post, reminded me of once.

But when I think of great investigative reporters, like Dan Golden of The Wall Street Journal and Gary Cohn of the Los Angeles Times, I think of, well, nice guys. Fierce tennis players. But incredibly nice guys. Golden uncovered, among other things, amazing detail about how the politics of privilege serve as a kind of affirmative action for some students who apply to selective colleges. Cohn has conducted numerous investigations, about death squads and injuries to workers in a corrupt business called shipbreaking.

Another great investigative reporter who is a nice guy: Joe Stephens of The Washington Post has written many powerful investigations, including a series of stories about the Nature Conservancy and how it turned into big business, compromising its environmental mission. All great and graceful stories - tough stories to document, to report. And yet, behind each story is a nice guy whose approach to investigative reporting is imbued by a strong ethic: Be fair, be compassionate.

I don't think it's an accident, this nice guy thing.

I've long come to the conclusion that the best investigative reporters are compassionate. That it takes compassion to do the job well. It doesn't mean that you're soft. It doesn't mean that you look the other way. It means that you treat people respectfully.

Nowadays, when journalism is excoriated for the few who flame out from stories that don't hold up under scrutiny, I think it's a good reminder. I always tell it to my students at Georgetown University, where I teach an introductory class in journalism: We are only as good as our word. It's the currency of journalism. If people don't believe us, then our stories will ring hollow.

Alec Klein is a bestselling author and an investigative business reporter at The Washington Post.

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