In early February 2017 , withdraw Army Lieutenant General Michael Flynn , the unawares - live interior security adviser to President Donald Trump , was one of the most influential figures in the U.S. government . But that all interchange as soon as the Washington Post publish a tarradiddle containing a bombshell Apocalypse . According to the Post ’s administration sources , the month before Trump took office , Flynn talk to Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak about U.S. sanctions against Russia — something that Trump ’s vice president , Mike Pence , denied ever acquire place [ root : Miller , Entous and Nakashima ] .
Five days after the story published , Flynn resigned [ reservoir : Miller and Rucker ] . The incident was yet another example of how even the most powerful the great unwashed in the reality have difficulty keeping secrets from investigativejournalists .
TheU.S. Constitutionexpressly bars the political science from interfere with exemption of the press , which is a signaling of how significant the nation ’s beginner thought it was to have the news medium act as another check and balance against abuses of power . It ’s a part that generations of journalist have occupy with readiness . They ’ve irked presidents date back to John Adams , who even convinced Congress to hand a short - lived law making it illegal for newspapers to put out " any false , shameful and malicious articles " about the government [ source : Ourdocuments.gov ] .
Nevertheless , these oft - maligned diarist have see that their readers ascertain about all sorts of wrongdoing , lay out from mistreatment of mental patients and corrupt practices by elephantine corporations , to a global surveillance program that kept track of their phone calls . And those investigations often have stop further vilification and compel reforms , and sometimes even insure compensation to victims of misbehavior .
" A huge aspect of journalism — or any journalism worthy of the name — is the number of putting insistency on power , " as New Yorker editor David Remnick once explained [ source : Malsin ] .
From the beginning of investigative journalism in the late 19th century to the present day , here are 10 news media exposés that made a difference .
10: Exposing Mistreatment of the Mentally Ill (1877)
Elizabeth Jane Cochran to begin with wanted to be a teacher , but after she go out of money to finish her training , she rather went to work helping her mother run a boarding house in Pittsburgh . One day , she happened to read anewspapercolumn by a man who insist that women should stick to domestic task such as cooking , sewingand fire tiddler and not work outside the home . She indite an angry letter of the alphabet in response — the editor in chief liked her writing so much that he hired her as a reporter for the women ’s Sir Frederick Handley Page and gave her the pen name Nellie Bly .
But Bly would n’t settle for piece of writing about blossom shows and way . She went to New York where a paper editor in chief offered her an designation to write about the mentally ill house at an asylum on Blackwell ’s Island . Bly daringly sham genial illness to get inside , and then spent 10 days remark the cruel mistreatment , including beatings and deoxyephedrine cold baths , to which patients were subject . Her lurid news report in the New York World call forth up public outrage , and led to much - needed reforms at the institution .
In the process , Bly also cook up a new expressive style of cloak-and-dagger investigatory news media , which would be emulate by generations of reporters [ germ : PBS ] .
9: Helping to Bust a Monopoly (1902-04)
In the late 1800s , John D. Rockefeller make the Standard Oil Co. into one of the biggest , richest and most brawny businesses the world had ever seen , one that check 90 percentage of U.S.oil refinement , as well as about all the oil grapevine in the Carry Amelia Moore Nation . Rockefeller achieved that dominance with brutal hardball tactic , forcing small refining companies to sell out to him or else face the prospect of ingest their supplying ofcrudeshut off .
In one instance , when another oil color company tried to build its own pipeline across Pennsylvania , Standard bought up all the domain along the route to block it . Rockefeller even bribed state legislator to assist him in strangling competition [ source : CRF ] .
Standard Oil satisfy its couple in a journalist named Ida Tarbell , the girl of a small - time oil manufacturer in northwestern Pennsylvania who ’d been harmed by Rockefeller ’s ruthlessness . As a author for McClure ’s magazine , Tarbell spent two years laboriously go through mass of government activity record and homage testimonial . Her 19 - part magazine series explain how Standard Oil built its monopoly , dissect its complex business maneuvers in a way that ordinary readers could understand . Her work sparked a growing public outcry that finally lead to the Court go against up Standard Oil in 1911 [ sources : PBS , King ] .
8: Confronting McCarthyism (1952-54)
In the years after World War II , Sen. Joseph McCarthy , a Republican from Wisconsin , capitalized upon public fear of the Soviet Union to stage a search forcommunistsympathizers in the government , the military and other role of society . McCarthy ’s shrill charge — such as his claim that he possess a list of 205 State Department employees who were communists — often were based upon thin evidence , but they still ruined lives and life history [ root : Friedman , History.com ] .
McCarthy ’s witch hunt roused CBS News journalist Edward R. Murrow — who saw him as a scourge to polite indecorum — into military action . In 1954 , Murrow and his manufacturer , Fred Friendly , put together a half - hour episode of Murrow ’s program " See it Now , " commit to reveal McCarthy ’s vilification of his magnate . In doing so , they employ powerful evidence — excerpts from McCarthy ’s own statement , whose contradictions and inaccuracy they then highlight .
In those days , a federal principle called the Fairness Doctrine take CBS to provide equal time to McCarthy . But when the broadcast ended , the earphone calls , letters and telegram that inundated CBS run 15 to 1 in Murrow ’s favour . It was the beginning of the end for McCarthy , who was further exposed in televise Congressional hearings , and then censured by his Senate colleagues [ source : Friedman ] .
7: Exposing the My Lai Massacre (1969)
In 1968 , U.S. Army soldiers slaughter hundreds of unarmedciviliansin the Vietnamese village of My Lai . The following yr , a freelance diary keeper make Seymour Hersh got a tip from an antiwar attorney about the war crime . Hersh , who previously covered the Pentagon for the Associated Press , play one of his former military informant , who identified Lt . William Calley as being involved in the massacre [ origin : Hersh ] .
At a library , Hersh found a paper legal brief suppose that Calley had been charged with execution . Hersh then tracked down Calley at Fort Benning in Columbus , Georgia , and managed to get an consultation with him . Hersh then traveled around the U.S. finding othersoldiersand piecing together the story of the atrocity [ sources : Hersh , Pilger ] .
But getting the explosive narrative bring out was n’t easy . After both Life and Look magazine turned down a luck to publish Hersh ’s articles on My Lai , he finally learn them to Dispatch News Service , a little antiwar wire Robert William Service in Washington [ generator : Hersh ] . But after newspapers picked up Hersh ’s story , it blow out of the water the national conscience . President Richard Nixon , who publicly condemn the massacre but reduced Calley ’s life history sentence to three age of family arrest , later on wrote in his memoir that the incident undermined his efforts to build support for the war [ sources : Corley , PBS ] .
6: Publishing the Pentagon Papers (1971)
In 1967 , the Johnson Administration commissioned a secret survey , entitled " History of U.S. conclusion - make water Process on Vietnam Policy . " The 7,000 - Thomas Nelson Page document laid out in shameful detail the blunders and miscalculations made by the U.S. governing in the Vietnam War , include ignore intelligence service assessments and backing corrupted leaders with little keep from the Vietnamese populace . Nobody outside the regime might have ever seen it , except that RAND Corporation investigator Daniel Ellsberg — frustrated that the paper was being ignored — finally gave a copy to New York Times newsperson Neil Sheehan .
The Times published the first installment of a series based upon it in June 1971 . Johnson ’s replacement in the White House , Richard Nixon , was incense at the leak . He had his Attorney General , John Mitchell , place the Times to cease publishing information from the story and revert it , or confront prosecution forespionage .
When the Times refused , Mitchell go to court and sought an injunction . That lead to a watershed Supreme Court 6 - 3 decision , which belike had an even groovy impact than the scoop itself . It established that under the First Amendment , the government could n’t forestall the publication of exposés , no matter how unenviable the fact might be [ origin : Priest ] .
5: Uncovering a Cruel Government Medical Experiment (1972)
In the 1930s , 600 African - American men — mostly poor and ignorant Alabama sharecroppers — were offered a luck to take part in a U.S. Public Health Service ( USPHS ) research political platform for multitude with " bad blood . " They would receive benefit that most poor multitude in those days could just dream of — rides to the clinic , free medical checkups and a promise of stipends to their survivor .
What USPHS did n’t tell the men was that 399 of them had syphilis , a fatalinfectious disease , and that it actually wanted to take how it advance without discourse . The governing keep up the Tuskegee study , as it was called , for decades , even after penicillin emerged as a therapeutic in 1947 [ informant : Tuskegee.edu ] .
at long last , a young authorities researcher in San Francisco , Peter Buxtun , check of the secret experiment and tipped off a friend who worked for the Associated Press . She , in turn , passed the info along to Jean Heller in the AP ’s Washington dresser . Heller started researching , and in July 1972 , exposed the study ’s existence and lawful purpose in a story that draw on the front varlet of the Washington Star [ source : Jones ) .
The revelation eventually pull the government to compensate $ 10 million to compensate the patients and their survivors , and Congress held auditory modality on how to well protect experimental subjects [ source : Isenberg ] .
4: Watergate (1972-74)
If you ’ve seen the picture show " All the President ’s Men , " you already know this account . The Washington Post assigned two young , relatively unheralded reporters , Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward , to dig further into a June 1972 burglary at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington D.C. ’s Watergate coordination compound .
The two soon divulge connections between the burglary , the Nixon White House and the president ’s re - election hunting expedition . avail by an anonymous source they called " Deep Throat , " who decades afterward was expose to be FBI deputy director W. Mark Felt , Sr . , they issue storey showing , among other revelations , that the break - in had been financed through campaign contributions , and thatWatergatewas part of a sprawl confederacy of political espionage and " dirty fast one " to assure Nixon dumbfound a 2d term .
Nixon still deliver the goods re - election , but the Post ’s Apocalypse help oneself lead to a Congressional investigation which , in turn , exposed the existence of secret recording of White House get together . Those tapes implicated Nixon in efforts to overcompensate up theconspiracy , and in August 1974 , he became the first U.S. president to resign [ source : Britannica.com ] .
As Woodward and Bernsteinwrote in 2012 , " Watergate was a brazen and venturous assault , led by Nixon himself , against the heart of American democracy . " Without their reporting , he might have come after .
3: Shining a Light Upon the AIDS Epidemic (1987)
As supervise editor of the schooltime newspaper at the University of Oregon in the former seventies , Randy Shilts made a bold , brave move for the times : He openly declared that he wasgay .
After gradation , Shilts eventually drive a business at the San Francisco Chronicle , just as a orphic newfangled menace calledAIDSwas just start to ravage the city ’s gay community . He was one of the first diary keeper to dig the significance of AIDS , and how it would become an important internal event . He persuade the newspaper to let him cover AIDS and turn it into a fulltime round . " Any good reporter could have done this story , " he once explained . But Shilts had a personal inducement as well , because people he knew were pall of the disease .
Shilts ' reporting for the Chronicle finally became the basis for his 1987 Scripture , " And the Band play On : political sympathies , People and the AIDS Epidemic , " which indicted the Reagan Administration , the healthcare organisation and even some brave organizations for not doing enough to manage with the disease ’s spreading . Shilts ' Holy Writ , which spent five week on the New York Times bestseller list , helped change attitudes about the disease , which he finally died from in 1994 [ source : Grimes ] .
2: Exposing a Sex-Abuse Cover-up (2001-02)
Back in 2001 , Boston Globe columnist Eileen McNamara wrote a scathing editorial about a local Roman Catholic priest , Rev. John Geoghan , who was a suspect in a civillawsuitbrought by 25 men who charge Geoghan of raping them as minor [ germ : McNamara ] . The newspaper ’s new editor , Martin Baron , read the editorial and asked the newspaper ’s Spotlight investigative squad to establish a wider probe of pedophile priest and what the church service leadership had known about their crimes .
The Spotlight reporters locomote after the case with forwardness , publishing more than 600 stories [ reference : Boston Globe ] . Their initial article , publish in January 2002 , laid out in heartbreaking detail how Geoghan allegedly had provoke more than 130 children at a half - dozen parishes over three decades — and how archdiocesan officials had failed to end him , even though they had " real grounds " of his predatory trend [ source : Carroll , Pfeiffer and Rezendes ] .
The Globe finally excavate evidence of a systematic binding - up of other nestling molestation cases . The Pulitzer Prize - winning effort led to the resignation of Cardinal Bernard Law , and the payment of billions in damages to molestation victims [ sourceLaporte ] . The story became basis of the movie " Spotlight , " which won theOscarfor Best Picture in 2016 .
1: Revealing Massive Government Surveillance Efforts (2013)
In May 2012 , Edward Snowden , a disillusioned entropy engineering science declarer for theNational Security Agency , told his supervisors that he needed to take some queasy leave . Instead , he vanish , taking with him a trove of document detailing the agency ’s electronicsurveillanceefforts around the orb .
Snowden finally connected with Laura Poitras , a documentary film maker . The first document Snowden sent was an 18 - page written document detailing how NSA intercept into fiber - optic cables to listen in on telephony around the world — convert her that this was a bombshell level . But Snowden had much more , admit evidence that NSA and bounteous net companies had collaborated in a confidential program called PRISM [ source : Harding ] .
Poitras eventually helped connect Snowden — who reckon his revelations might be too big for one journalist — with Glenn Greenwald , a editorialist for the Guardian , and Washington Post reporter Barton Gellman . Eventually , both papers won Pulitzer Prizes for their stories . Poitras , who shared in the Pulitzer , also won a 2015 Academy Award for her documentary on Snowden , " Citizenfour " [ source : Harris ] .
The revelations stimulated impassioned public public debate about the balance between personal privateness and internal security , and led Congress to conk legislating finish the bulk gathering of Americans ' telephone record , one of the practices Snowden revealed [ source : Siddiqui ] .
Lots More Information
Years ago , when I was work as a lineament writer for the Pittsburgh Press , it was inspiring to see two of my then - colleagues , the later Andrew Schneider and Mary Pat Flaherty , win a Pulitzer Prize for their investigation of violations and failures in the reed organ transplant arrangement . I also got at least a sense of the monolithic amount of hard work — the many hours of interviews , travel to faraway places , and roll up and digging through vast stash of documents — that it carry to get to the truth and tell a disgraceful story . I think if more the great unwashed actually saw what material reporters actually do , the news media would have a mass high public favorability rating than the 32 per centum shown in a2016 Gallup poll .
