How Things Work

I first published a version of this essay three years ago. 

One of the main problems with the news business in America starts with its definition. 

We believe that the news is only what is new. That is obvious and hardly worth comment until you think of the implications.

Naturally, we all want to know what's new. What's new in the world, what's new down at the corner, what's new with those we care about. 

But by focusing our journalistic talent almost exclusively on the latest developments, our media industry largely ignores the far bigger stories, which are mainly about what is old.

Poverty is old. Racism is old. Sexism is old. The awful and endless disparity in opportunity is old. Access to education, health care, safety, security, even access to food is an old, old story.

Human rights abuses are old stories.

In addition, much of our standard news coverage focuses on the way things do not work. Whenever there is a breakdown of one system or another, that becomes news. Fires, accidents, losses, disasters and any kind of other anomaly is considered to be news.

To counter this problem at the Center for Investigative Reporting we used to have a saying that we weren't so interested in how things don't work. Rather, we were more interested in how things do work.

What we meant by that was our focus on was how power is actually exercised in the world day to day -- politically, economically, socially, culturally.

Our mission largely rested on the idea that the worst forms of corruption are those so entrenched systemically as to be virtually impossible to root out.

These are problems like internalized racism or structural inequality, historical sexism or unconscious bias of any kind.

These are not anomalies, these are the norm.

So that is why we need investigative reporters -- people who not only think outside of the box, but who can remain far enough outside of the box to see it for what it is:

A system that enriches a relative few by impoverishing the many.