Arab investigative journalism practice

Given investigative journalism’s purpose of providing accountability and exposing wrongdoing of governments and business, this study examines whether changes in political circumstances due to the Arab revolutions have given rise to the production of more investigative reporting, whether Arab journalists have the same understanding of the meaning of investigative journalism as their western counterparts, and if individual or organizational characteristics encourage or hinder journalists’ performance. Findings indicated that changes in the political environment did not generally help them conduct such reporting. Results also indicated that individual, organization or ownership types did not dictate their capacity to perform such investigations. Rather the ability depended on how much the individual journalist believed and understood this to be a unique type of journalism genre as well as whether they were advanced enough in their career to perform such in-depth work. The results also indicated that Arab journalists believe in their ability to make change and are motivated by a sense of self-fulfillment to provide the public with watchdog journalism.