In the old days, when Fleet Street in London was still the exiting and beating heart of the British media, there was a rhytme that went around. The rhytme said:
Tickle the public, make ‘em grim
The more you tickle, the more you win
Teach the public, you ‘ll never get rich
You ‘ll live like a beggar and die in a ditch

I am afraid I have bad news for the media owners en publishers. Because investigative journalisme most of the times means teaching the public. So don’t have  illusions about the material prosperity investigative journalisme will bring to you.
If you like to make money, go on and tickle the public. Do it in the Murdoch-way and write about scandals, sex and screw the facts.

Investigative journalism is different, sometimes dangerous, you will make a lot of enemies. But I have good news too. Giving priority to investigative journalism means that you will win respect, that you behave yourself as a professional, decent publisher and that, at the end, you will be  blessed with immaterial resources. So you have a world to win.

Let me express it sharp: investigative journalisme means the exposure of the problems of society. Investigative journalisme is an attempt to look at the hidden side of the politicians, the businessmen, the people in power.
Investigative journalism means looking for the truth in an unbiassed, honest way. Journalists who are engaged in investigations, most of the times are not popular at all. They have a nickname called ‘muckraker’ – a name that is also a word of honour.

The word ‘muckraker’ was introduced by the American president Theordore Rooseveld in the beginning of this century.
It was around 1900. The US was the new world for millions of immigrants from all over the world who settled theirselves as colonists. Life was very hard. Steel-barons and oil kings – called the robber barons – exploited the immigrants as cheap labour. There were no laws, it was the era of laissez-faire, unrestrained capitalism. The country was dominated by private and powerful interests, monopolies and trusts. In that time the workers were literally sacrificed for the profits of the new milionares. The workers were men, women and schildren and hardly recognised as human beings. They were employees in factory halls with bad conditions, dangerous machines and equipment.
A small number of journalists started to write about these abuses. One of them was Upton Sinclair. He worked for weeks in a meat factory and slaughterhouse in Chicago. He experienced that there was sick cattle and stinking meat, prepared for pork in tins. Because of the lack of safety-precautions, sometimes fingers and arms of worker disappeared with the meat in the tinned food.
His articles, published in the book ‘The Jungle’, caused unrest all over the USA.
There was another famous muckraker, called Ida Tarbell. Oneday she decided to write a series of articles about how John D.Rockefeller had put together his empire. One of the most powerful monopolies at that time was Standard Oil Company headed by the wealthiest man in de USA, John Rockefeller.
Ida Tarbell was curious and eager to find out how the company had been developed. She read articles, documents files in American court-houses, she interviewed employees en staff-members of Standard oil. She tried to find secret sources and she once received a package with documents from garbage-basket. And the end she wrote the real story, how Rockefeller won his fortune by fraud, corruptions, crimes, bribing railroad companies and using people.
Her articles were an eye-opener and she was very succesfull. The circulation of her weekly was skyrising and grew from 40.000 till 400.000. (good news – sometimes you win)

Rooseveldt grew very angry on Sinclair, Ida Tarbell and other journalists who were writing articles about the negative aspects of the American society. So he shouted, citing the book of John Bunyan: ‘Enough. Stop with the muckraking. Too much looking down at the muck and not enough looking at what is good about our society.’
Rooseveldt particular was fearful that the continuous writing about the dark side, would explode America in a social revolution.
I have learned a lot from the famous American journalist Izzy F.Stone. Stone had his own one-man newspaper called Stone’s Weekly. His articles always were based on a profound research and study of official newspapers, governmental notes, white papers and pronouncements of politicians. After doing his work years and years, he concluded: ‘Every government is headed by liars, nothing what they tell has to be believed’
For me, a Dutch journalist who started his work in the sixties – the most glorious and fruitful journalistic period in Western Europe because we learned to be anti-authoritarian – Stone’s experiences were very important.
Stone taught me about the most important principles of a journalist: be curious, be suspicious, be distrustful, be aware of the fact that there are always made attempts to use you for propaganda. Always  aware of the situation that there is a crook under every rock, a scandal behind every deal in the stockmarket and the possibility of a bribe everytime when businessmen and politicians shake hands.
And I know now from own experiences that every government is headed by liars.

Clinton is a liar, Nixon was, Bush lied about the Gulf-crisis, the Dutch government lied about the role of the Dutch solders during the massacre in Srebrenica. A lie with dramatic consequences was the lie of the former USA-president Lyndon Johnson  about the socalled Tonkin-incident, that started de war in Vietnam.

We as journalists in Western Europe and here in eastern Europe, have a lot in common – and of course I mean the good journalists  because there is a lot of dust in the media and there are many pink flamingo’s. Too many newspapers have gone into the entertainment business, dismissing serieous reporting as a luxuru they can no longer afford

What joins the good journalists is that

• we have to fight the lies of our politicians
• we have to scrutinise governments, public services and companies
• we have to discover and publish information – in stead of rumor and speculation spread by politicians and decisionmakers
• we have to inform our readers and we will promote free exchange of ideas so that justice will be done.

A former well known Dutch prime minister once told me: Property corrupts, but power corrupts completely. To expose this, a society needs good and honest journalists.

Are good journalists always, as a matter of course, investigative reporters? They share curiosity, they share their professional style. They have the same eagerness. For both journalism is not just a handycraft, it is a state of mind. But there are differences. In Holland by example there are many good journalists but you can count the investigative reporters on one hand An investigative journalist don’t accept systems and situations – he is always asking questions.
You don’t hardly find an investigative reporter at the usual places, press-conferences, at the offices of the information-services or in bar West. He is stubborn and follows his own way and knows his own places to find facts. The investigative reporter is distrustful, never believes the official spokesmen, never believes politicians. With a well-known American newsman of het 1920’s, H.L.Mencken, he says: ‘There is only one way to look at a politician and that is down’.
An investigative reporter has dedication, is skeptical, cynical and sometimes angry, has passion and is involved in the problems of society. To say it in an exalted way: an investigative reporter has a firm conviction about what is wrong and what is right. He or she has a certain human love and a predominant desire for a more decent live. The investigative reporter has sympathy with the underdog and the outcasts.

Albania/Kosovo needs these kind of people. I firmly believe that independency, democracy and participation of the people only is possible in an open en well informed society.
So Albania/Kosovo  needs good journalists. How to find and select these journalists to train them in investigative reporting. Of course my collegues and me certainly are able to teach you the skills, to show you the possibilities, to tell you how to do research. Journalism is universal, in every country the basics are the same. But we can’t teach you dedication, eagerness, involvement Only if this spiritual relation exists, a training in investigative journalisme will be a succes.