"J'Accuse! - We name the guilty men! "
To start of, a journalist has initiated the story - as oppose to the normal method of simply following what is happening in the courts, council, parliament, scheduled meetings (etc - the news agenda) or responding to some unscheduled disaster or crisis.
It therefore overlaps with GONZO journalism. The original humdinger investigative piece J'ACCUSE was initiated by the writer and journalist Emile Zola ( http://www.online-literature.com/emile-zola/). He formed the view that the French army officer Dreyfus (sent to Devil's Island had been scapegoated and framed. he went over the court case and proved this was the case, got Dreyfus out of jail and caused the Government to fall and the French state to be modernised and reformed.
In more recent times the Washington Post team of Woodward and Bernstein exposed the Nixon Watergate scandal. Granada's World in Action TV show (now defunct) managed to get the framed "Birmingham Six" out of jail.
The most common types of investigative pieces involve reviewing miscarriages of justice; exposing consumer fraud and it involves working with the police when they can't get a conviction.
The closest example of the investigative work is The University of Winchester’s new project. The university has become a member of the Innocence Network UK ( http://www.innocencenetwork.org.uk/) which in “overall aim is to improve the criminal justice system by overturning and preventing the wrongful conviction of the innocent.” The INUK has provided casework referral service for our university and helped us to link eligible applicants with member innocence projects to undertake independent, objective investigations into claims of factual innocence by alleged victims of wrongful convictions.
*From Chris Horrie's notes and other sources
*From Chris Horrie's notes and other sources
