Five Pillars of Investigative Journalism

On my family's last day on vacation in Chicago last weekend, we rode the bus to the city's Field Museum. Sitting across from my dad, my little sister, Nailah, and I saw him bring down his mask for a slight second to scratch his nose. Of course, he put it back on right afterward, but, as children, it is our job to make fun of our parents every chance we get. So immediately, I whipped out my phone and recorded a video of the bus' "Everyone must wear a mask!" sign then pointed to my dad, "maskless." Nailah and I snickered until we got off our stop and showed the rest of my family the video. "Ohhh, Daddy, you're about to get canceled," my ten-year-old brother, Jair, joked. "Man, please," my dad smiled, and we carried on with our tourist activities.

Since then, my family has made it a running joke that when someone does something slightly "controversial" (like pouring milk in the bowl before cereal) to say they are "canceled." We are, of course, poking fun at social media's current obsession with cancel culture, also known as "the mass withdrawal of support from public figures or celebrities who have done things that aren't socially accepted today."

Although we are not celebrities, our little family joke points to a more significant issue at hand. In a world where everyone on social media has a voice, people are obsessed with "calling out" and "exposing" one another no matter what evidence (usually lack thereof) lies in front of them. Suddenly, every user on Instagram and Twitter is a detective in a brown trench coat and magnifying glass at hand.

Whenever I need to take a break from the stuffy halls of online culture, I find myself at the door of an outlet that is unapologetically raw, empathetic, and seeks to do actual good without scapegoating people in the process. That is the shiny door of journalism — specifically investigative journalism.

Journalism is like condensed milk, seeping into every crevice of this raisin bread pudding we call life, and investigative journalism is the raisins. It has a hard shell, has dedicated investigative reporters as its sweet interior, and is poured into the average news reader's day in handfuls.

In a society where everyone is out to get one another, turning into hard-tacked reporting reminds us that there is always a larger issue at hand. Blink, and you might miss the wider injustice corporations commit all around us.

Here are five pieces of investigative journalism — one article, docu-series, documentary, movie, and podcast, everyone should consume. Unfortunately, not everyone can afford access to such treasure troves of investigative journalism, so if you can, more than ever, it is essential to read, watch and listen to these forms of media. You, too, can shine a light in the dark corners of our world as long as you trust the greater purpose that lies behind every move you make.

Article: “The Children of Pornhub” by Nicholas Kristof

Note: This article contains depictions of sexual assault, child abuse, and self-harm.

Pornhub is the number one free platform promoting adult films. With more than 3.5 billion visits a month, toppling Yahoo, Amazon, and even Netflix, Pornhub frequently lands in the ten most visited websites in the world. As we move into a more sex-positive world where cloaks of shame are no longer hiding sexual education, sexuality, and BDSM, if you don't know much about the company, it is easy to view Pornhub in a positive light. After all, it's just consenting adults uploading steamy content, right?

Well, no. In "The Children of Pornhub," writer Nicholas Kristoff reveals a much darker side to the website. It is a platform "infested with rape videos” that "monetizes child rapes, revenge pornography, spycam videos of women showering, racist and misogynist content, and footage of women being asphyxiated in plastic bags."

There is child abuse and nonconsensual violence littered all over Pornhub. Search keys like "14yo," "extra small petite teen," and "Girl with braces" are only a few words pointing to the company's larger issue at hand.

In the article, multiple women and men share stories on how Pornhub ruined their lives. Take Serena K. Fleites, for example. At nineteen, living in her car, she is currently looking for work. Yet she worries that when employers look up her name, they'll find videos of her fourteen-year-old self naked on Pornhub. Although she didn’t even upload the video, (her high school crush did it without her permission,) it hangs like a dark cloud over her life.

"It was one small thing that a teenager does, and it's crazy how it turns into something so much bigger," Fleites told Kristoff. "A whole life can be changed because of one little mistake."

Read now on The New York Times

Docu-series: Sophie: A Murder In West Cork

When Sophie Toscan du Plantier awoke in Schull, a tiny village off the coast of West Cork, Ireland, on the morning of December 23, 1996, it seemed like she had the rest of her life ahead of her. As a frequent visitor from Paris, the misty Aegean skies that danced in front of her window reminded her of her current isolated livelihood. But as an independent soul who moved to the beat of her own drum, it was fine. That is, until she was murdered. Then, her drum and heart stopped beating as one that winter night.
In Schull, a town so small that "you could buy a top and everyone would know," a media frenzy exploded when police found Toscan du Plantier's body three days later. Irish journalist Ian Bailey was the first reporter to the scene. In the early days of the police department's investigation, Bailey pumped out article after article surrounding the details of the death. Because of that, everyone in the neighborhood started paying much closer attention to him and his questionable ways.

It appeared that Bailey was writing his way out of suspicion, never enough words to escape the public's urge for his arrest.

"People were fascinated, partly because Sophie was really beautiful," Sarah Lambert, the series producer, told The Irish Times. "But beautiful women in stories always have to be very simple," she continued. Sophies was anything but. Netflix's Sophie: A Murder in West Cork does an incredible job of remembering Sophie as the beautifully complex human she was and not the investigation the world knows her for.

Watch on Netflix Now

Documentary: Blackfish

Note: This film includes depictions of animal abuse.

Orcas (also known as Killer whales) are devastatingly beautiful, slicing through the water like a knife, with black and white skin melting across their sides. When in their natural waters, they travel in matriarchal pods passing on high levels of intelligence and lead enriching lives. But in 1965, this natural flow would change forever.

That year in San Diego, a new marine animal theme park franchise called SeaWorld captured their first Orca from the wild. After that, over the next four decades, it seemed as if SeaWorld parks all over America mastered performing a delicate and deadly "ballet routine": 1, 2, capture Orcas, 3, 4, force them to perform tricks and galore, 5, 6, put trainers at risk, 7, 8, overwork them and crush their fate, 9, 10, do it all over again.

On February 24, 2010, Tilikum, an Orca in SeaWorld's Orlando park, proved this routine all too true. During a performance, he killed his 40-year-old trainer, Dawn Brancheau. Tilikum dragged Brancheau into the park's 36 feet deep pool, and a later autopsy revealed that her death was a combination of drowning and blunt force trauma to the head, neck, and torso. Meanwhile, there have never been reports of Orcas harming humans in the wild.

Through interviews with former SeaWorld trainers, fishers, and scientists, Blackfish demonstrates how Tilikum’s actions should and do not reflect the entire Orca species. Instead, the public needs to question massive organizations like SeaWorld who yank these animals out of their natural habitats to perform circus shows for children. "If you were in a bathtub for 25 years, don't you think you'd get a little psychotic?" Jane Velez-Mitchell, a CNN anchor, wonders about Orcas in a clip used in the film.

Blackfish is an incredible and influential work of investigative journalism that emphasizes how ignorance is deadly when exploring the animal kingdom.

Watch now on Amazon Prime Video

Movie: City of God

There is an undeniable magic that only a camera can capture. Photos manage to sift between what the eye can see and the story our hearts want to tell. In one neighborhood of 1980s Rio de Janeiro nicknamed the City of God, teenager Rocket knows that his passion for the snaps and clicks of photojournalism is not just a way to branch out of his poverty-stricken world. Rather, this desire to capture the chaos and kaleidoscope in his town extends out a ladder to learn more about himself, his community, and what it means to lead with integrity instead of where the money runs.

In Rocket’s neighborhood, drug dealers, and gang leaders run the streets. Yet, with their surprisingly excellent work-life balance, in City of God, the audience sees charm, wit, and fire jump through such “hardcore” civilians amongst the dusty browns, scrambling chickens, and crowds. Rocket has grown up with criminals all his life, inevitably falling into the clouds of danger once or twice. But it takes an insider to understand there is more to these men than their drooling desire for cash and twitching instincts to kill anyone who looks their way.

So one afternoon, when Rocket takes an exclusive photo of a gang leader amidst a gang war, it hits the front page of every local newspaper. In one click, Rocket illuminates the notorious grit of his town and how there is still so much left to learn about the forgotten souls in the City of God.

City of God is based on the novel by the same name written by Paulo Lins, with splashes of influence from the life of Wilson Rodriguez, a Brazilian photographer. Photos truly have an undeniable strength in documenting the truth and turning up the volume to hear the worlds we have all hushed.

Watch now on iTunes

Podcast: Floodlines

Ever since the first African slaves were forced from their homes and into ships gliding to the “great” blue waters of America, African Americans have been living in between the lines of hopeful and hopeless. Each time we are on a crumbling cliff reaching out our cocoa butter palms for help, America uses its pale hand and, with its cold blue eyes, peels our fingers off the cliff one by one until we float downwards. In late August of 2005, when Hurricane Katrina caused wreckage to every person, place, or thing in its path, the same metaphor rang true.

Floodlines, an eight-episode podcast about the storm from The Atlantic, primarily focuses on New Orleans, Louisiana, as it was the primary victim of Katrina’s path. Host of the series, Atlantic staff writer Vann R. Newkirk II, does a powerful job in bringing the stories of Karina survivors to the shore of the public’s attention. New Orleans had a 67% Black population in the city when the hurricane arrived, and most of the community was left stranded during this time. The overall lack of shelters, empathy from police, and President Bush's inadequate response to the natural disaster make it very clear why rapper, Kanye West, said at a Katrina fundraising event, “George Bush doesn’t care about Black people.”

Floodlines is an example of investigative journalism at its finest, tapping into the soul of Louisianans who are still feeling the devastating impacts of a storm that did not have to be as damaging as it was. As Vulture writer Nicholas Quah points out, “Rather, [Katrina’s] actual disaster was rooted in what happened — and more importantly, what didn’t happen — in the aftermath, when more lives could’ve been saved with greater action.”

Listen to Floodlines now

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