ABSTRACT
Serious investigative journalism has rarely been in evidence in Britain’s most popular newspapers from 1993 onwards. As one former investigative journalist with a successful track record said: ‘The tradition has been lost’ (Harrison, 2007). The inexorable movement in editorial agendas away from information to entertainment, away from news-to-use towards news-to-amuse, has squeezed out more serious journalistic content from the populars. Similarly, the reduction in editorial budgets, and the consequent reduction in staffing, has made almost all investigative journalism within such papers uneconomic. Even had editors wished to leaven the preponderance of celebrity copy with what has been traditionally called ‘hard-hitting investigative journalism’ they would have found themselves constrained by inadequate resources. The pressure on reporters to produce copy on a daily basis leaves little time and space for a journalism that depends on lengthy periods of supposedly ‘unproductive’ work.
