http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/Nautilus-Investing-Is-More-Luck-Than-Talent-tp7588738p7588762.html
Without millions of dollars of cash flow, there can’t be professional investigators.
Not so. Not at all. There are several Internet-based, often donation-dependent (I donate to several), news and opinion outlets that do very good, in-depth investigative journalism Take a look at
Greg Palast, for one. Palast did a couple of investigative pieces on how the election results did not jive with the exit polling stats in dozens of cases. Exit polls have long been thought of as reliable leading indicators of ultimate winners.
Then there are CounterPunch, Truthout, and DemocracyNow (with Amy Goodman), The Real News Network, Truthdig (with über-investigative journalist Chris Hedges) are also among the many well-respected sources today for investigative journalism. I tend to like Glen Greenwald formerly of the Guardian and now with his own Investigative Journalism blog: The Intercept. These are the members of the Fifth Estate that are getting their acts together and doing the job formerly assigned by society to the Fourth Estate: reliable watchdog. Now we need a watchdog to watch the supposed watchdog.
If you happened to watch the movie
Spotlight, you would have learned that investigative journalism is largely disappearing from the MSM. It just isn't much appreciated by the subscribers (they rather be tantalized with the latest news about the Kardashians.), it doesn't pay the bills, and it is reasoned as too expensive to do. See also:
HuffPost:
Journalism Isn't Dying - It's Being Murdered (January 2016).
The genesis of this dilemma goes back to Bill Clinton's signing of the Telecommunications Act in 1996 giving a green light to the rapid and massive consolidation of the industry by the oligarchy and the large corporations that are often the subject of investigations. It is argued that Clinton did this to make nice with the GOP that wanted to impeach him at the time.
Let's actually give thanks to the emergent Fifth Estate for continuing to give investigative journalism life after the Telecommunications Act. Many of these reporters had to become freelancers or form their own online havens for plying their craft. That's what we see happening now in this profession.
Even skeptics of the expertise of journalists have to admit that an advantage of having a job is that you can do it all the time. The 5th estate may be less censored in their remarks, but without actual evidence they’ll run out of new things to say.
In my opinion, and as heard from others, what gives this survival of the craft "legs," post-Clinton--is the runaway condition of the neoliberal world benefiting only the elite. Lots to investigate and report to keep it going. The fake news that we find more often instream tends to be like anti-aircraft flak sent out--even by institutions like the Washington Post--to fool the readership away from zeroing in on anything damaging. I am not sure, but this Russian hacking thing could just be a distraction from zeroing in too much on why the Dems lost the election that they should have won. Not an original idea from me, but from the alternative news outlets that are now trying to keep an eye on things. 😎
To be sure, I also read the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and the Guardian. This is where you will find what the corporatocracy wants you to think. It's usually a good starting place, but not much in the way of investigative journalism except as brought in by the freelancers ... folks like Seymour Hersh. If it's important, then I think you must go to multiple alternative sources to calibrate. For example, nobody in the MSM is covering the election fraud story about CrossCheck. Greg Palast, DemocracyNow, The Rolling Stone, Daily Kos, and Slate are. Why? It seems quite important, especially against the backdrop of the Russian hacking story.
Cheers
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
by Dr. Strangelove