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This book is the culmination of more than a decade of research and writing on the nature of investigative journalism as a form of social and moral inquiry. Focusing on the work of a number of award-winning investigative reporters, James S. Ettema and Theodore L. Glasser punctuate their analysis of news and journalism with interviews with these writers and excerpts from their stories. Custodians of Conscience provides a powerful assessment and critique of the tensions and contradictions that characterize modern American journalism. It is a book that honors the rigor and importance of investigative journalism by showing how facts implicate values and by explaining why the future of news requires a deeper appreciation for the connection between human knowledge and human interest.
About the author
JAMES S. ETTEMA is on the faculty of the Department of Communication Studies at Northwestern University. He is the editor, with D. Charles Whitney, of
Individuals in Mass Media Organizations: Creativity and Constraint and Audience Making: How the Media Created the Audience.THEODORE L. GLASSER is a director of the Graduate Program in Journalism at Stanford University. He is the editor of the Idea of Public Journalism and, with Charles T. Salmon,
Public Opinion and the Communication of Consent.
Summary
Through in-depth interviews with award-winning investigative reporters and detailed analyses of the stories that brought them professional acclaim, the authors explain how journalists resolve, practically if not conceptually, the paradox of a press that is committed to exposing wrongdoing and is at the same time adamant about its disinterest in questions of right and wrong.
