Who We Are
Welcome: A Note from the Founding Director
Journalism is protected by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution for a single reason: an unfettered news media is essential for a healthy democracy. What you don’t know can hurt you—when it becomes bad medicine, dangerous products, unsafe or unfair working conditions, wrongful convictions, evaporated pensions, or skewed and harmful policies. Without oversight, human beings too often behave badly. When the facts are pursued with ruthless thoroughness, watchdog journalism helps keep American institutions accountable to all.
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Unfortunately, the ongoing drive for higher media profits means that fewer and fewer resources are available for serious investigative journalism. Major newspapers have been cutting staff and budgets as they seek to impress Wall Street with mean and lean numbers. Too many corporations prefer not to invest in uncertain and expensive investigations, the results of which may bring on unwarranted, time-consuming attacks—when the airwaves and columns can be filled much more cheaply and quickly by feel-good features, quick-hit consumer news, and tabloid entertainment. As a result, the great American tradition of newspaper and broadcast muckraking is in danger of waning. Far too many talented and dedicated investigative reporters are working with dramatically reduced resources and against great odds.
The Brandeis Institute for Investigative Journalism, the nation’s first investigative reporting center based at a university, was launched in September 2004 to help fill the void in high-quality public interest and investigative journalism—and to counter the increasing corporate control of what Americans read, see, and hear. Our goals: investigate significant social and political problems, and uncover corporate and government abuses of power.
By being housed within a university, the Institute is firmly placed within an academic tradition that honors freedom of inquiry—and that offers independence from the government influence and corporate control that too often undercut today’s media. Brandeis University, with its longstanding dedication to social justice, human rights, and the pursuit of truth wherever that might lead, is the ideal host for this institute.
Let me add a personal note. Much of my journalism career has been devoted to stories that required an enormous amount of time, resources, and editorial commitment: breaking the Sen. Packwood sexual misconduct story with The Washington Post; revealing Pentagon contractors’ gross misuse of funds in Common Cause Magazine; or exposing Clinton accuser Kathleen Willey’s lack of credibility in The Nation. But today, in my experience, fewer and fewer news outlets are willing to make those investments in uncovering hidden wrongdoing. Ironically, at a time when we face a great deal of partisan noise and a blizzard of information that arrives via new technologies, real news and groundbreaking reporting are at a premium. Fewer serious media outlets are taking on truly urgent stories of public misconduct, leaving those stories untold.
And yet our democracy still desperately needs the news media to take up their constitutionally protected task, without fear or favor. Fortunately, I also know from personal experience that the focus, passion, and commitment of even a small group of determined people who care deeply about pursuing the truth and exposing social injustice can make an enormous difference. That’s why I felt compelled to launch this Institute. I hope you find this Institute’s work, including this website, to be valuable.
We are eager to hear your thoughts and ideas—especially, of course, any tips you might have about important stories. Please stay in touch with us at investigativejourn@brandeis.edu.
Florence George Graves
Director, The Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism
January 2006