this woman is Ida Ida Tarbell it’s the
19th century and either is an American
journalist working on an investigation
into one of the biggest corporations in
the world an investigation into the
Standard Oil Company it is a company
that dominated at that time the oil
market in the US and she had the idea
that this company might play dirty and
that there might be something wrong with
it because they were so dominating and
they were much making so much money the
company old the company owner was john d
rockefeller and the rockefeller family
are really well-known name by now also
because of this company they got
insanely rich by by working in the
business and she spent days weeks months
in the end years I’m covering facts
about this company and she was able to
prove that they were bribing officials
fixing prices using industrial espionage
trying to cut out the other companies at
any cost pretty much and she was able to
back it up to have the evidence she
published a multi-part series in one of
the biggest magazines at that time Mike
Lewis is the name sure to publish the
book that’s cause the history of the
Standard Oil Company and because the
book was so good and her work was so
thorough she actually was able to
provide so much evidence that the u.s.
government took on her book and her
investigation did their own
investigation and in the end bloke up
the Standard Oil Company they broke it
up they said it’s a monopole list and
they are threatening and taking money
from the American citizens actually so
her work over years had real world
impact and had everyone in the US and I
think it’s a really good example still
today how investigative journalism can
achieve something great for the society
for every one of us and I think we need
that kind of journalism even more today
we have lots of things that are
problematic in our society and lots of
things that are threatening the
well being of lots of people in our
society so you have as they head back
then big corporations that sometimes
take more than they should take you can
see digitally like Facebook Amazon
Google’s you can see it in their
traditional markets focus wagon Walmart
big banks insurance companies hedge
funds you had the big financial crisis
there are lots of things that need to be
researched investigated and that need to
come to light so that citizens can make
an informed decision and government
connect on it and punish people who who
are overstepping their boundaries so
what is the mystery of journalism and
why is it different from normal
journalism that you would see day to day
in every paper on every website there
are five points pretty much that are
important to understand if you talk
about investigative journalism first one
is the reporter who is doing
investigative journalism has an active
role he’s not just there getting
information from someone being fed and
then publishing it like TR would do it
he’s himself or herself trying to get
new information and trying to find his
own angle and his own information the
new information is another after that
that’s important he or she is publishing
something that has not been covered yet
he’s not just writing something up that
has been published in a scientific paper
or something that someone has talked
about a year ago and I was like has a
new angle to it or something he’s really
trying to find new information as third
point is that investigative journalists
are looking into structural problems
systemic issues that affect lots of
people so when we in my office that i’m
talking about later on try to start a
new topic we always look at how many
people are affected and how badly are
they affected and the more people there
are and the more they are hurt the more
likely it is we take on the subject the
fourth thing is that investigative
journalist need to provide evidence
because normally they’re attacking
someone someone who is doing something
bad and they want to change something
and this someone obviously tries to
defend themselves and if you don’t have
your facts straight and if you don’t
have evidence that if necessary can back
up your claims in court do you have a
problem so this is hard work that you
need to do before you can even publish
something and the fifth point is that
investigative journalism
is something that overcomes obstacles so
normally something only counts as
investigative if you had to work for it
really hard and for example overcame
like threatening lawyers or government
that doesn’t want to release something
that you’re supposed to get or something
like that so these are the main
important points about investigative
journalism and to make it a little bit
more understandable i have two more
things two more examples that people
might know of maybe better than idabel
because either is dead for 72 years now
this one probably most of us know is the
Watergate scandal beginning of the 70s
to article to reporters from the
Washington Post investigated Nixon and
he in the end resigned and they made a
film out of it All the President’s Men
with Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman
it’s really good for them and that leads
me to another one and that’s another
film that’s more recent last year i
think at the oscars spotlight one pretty
big it’s based on an investigation
pulitzer prize-winning as it says from
the Boston Globe that researched
systemic child abuse by Catholic priests
in the Boston area and then even bigger
the story a bigger and bigger after the
published American widened worldwide and
these two movies All the President’s Men
and spotlight are depicting
investigative journalism pretty well
actually they are entertaining I really
like them just for fun but they’re also
really good because they are realistic
like if you watch these movies what
these people do this is actually what
investigative journalist do so i really
like these two movies i think they’re
the best movies from journalism that are
out there what these also show these
these examples is that investigative
journalism is not just the watchdog that
you might have heard being described
that like the dog that bites someone
who’s trespassing who’s coming into an
error that he shouldn’t be in it’s also
some kind of a disinfectant it’s kind of
the scare the Scarecrow in the middle of
the field with us with its tinkling
scaring the clothes away so they don’t
pick the seat so the more investigative
drones and there is the more people feel
kind of scared to do bad things because
they might get cat caught by
investigative journalists transparency
international actually the
study they asked 3000 companies in 30
countries I think four years back at
Wars what they think is like the best
solution the best thing to do if you
want to to have a country that’s not
corrupt then you might have guessed it
by now the solution is investigative
journalism but most of the companies
actually said investigative journalism
is more important than all the other
solutions you might think of like strict
compliance rules or better civic society
things or better government or something
investigative journalism is one of the
things that they named the most actually
the sneak the thing they named the most
by far you can all even if you want to
put a number on the effect that
investigative journalism has on society
a macro economic value if you want to
it’s a little bit stretched but someone
James T Hamilton a professor from
Stanford try to do that he crunched a
lot of numbers did the economics on in
the soft investigative journalism it’s a
new book came out last year and he
calculated for example for Special
Investigations how much they contributed
to society and how much they cost the
newspaper for example to do it so he had
one example of the Washington Post
investigating deadly police force how
many people got shot by police and they
found out that the police was doing
something wrong and after they published
it the police changed it and after that
they could show that way less people got
shot than before and he talked to
insurance companies and tried to figure
out how much is every life worth there’s
the numbers you can put on that at least
insurance companies do that and then he
calculated that in the end he could show
that every dollar the Washington Post
put into the investigations saved
society one hundred and forty dollars so
in the macroeconomic view investigative
journalism is really worth spending on
the problem is for the micro economic
view it’s really hard to finance because
investigative journalism is really
expensive as you could you can see and
the examples that I had but also when I
am my colleagues and I do work we often
spend weeks months sometimes even years
on an investigation and we publish it
and sure people read it and people like
it and maybe someone buys a few
uh newspapers and it has me few more
clicks but you can never ever get the
money back that you spent the last 18
months or something on this
investigation especially there’s lots of
other articles that you publish on the
Internet are way easier to produce and
get probably even more clicks if you
have like some great interview with like
a soccer star or some photo shoots from
like a prominent person they they are
they easy to do they take a few hours
maybe a few days and then you get lots
of clicks and mr. give journalism is
different plus lots of us at least in my
case I don’t subscribe to any newspaper
anymore like I I get lots of my news
from the web I do support journalism I
do give donations sometime I do buy
newspapers I also pay for non-fiction
books in something but in general I get
lots of news on the internets from
facebook or twitter and that’s a problem
because obviously no money ends up at
the journalists in the drones bank
account and like they need to eat I need
to eat as well and feed my family so and
that’s hard to investigate to do a
mystic errands and then and some of the
people involved in a mr. give journals
and thought like what can we do now like
this is a problem that gets deeper and
deeper it gets worse and worse every
year in the u.s. you have lots of
newspapers already being closed in
Germany it starts as well maybe we can
do something that’s donation-based maybe
we can do something that where we can
pitch people to voluntarily give money
for investigative journalism and then
see what we can do with that and that’s
actually what we did we four years ago
set together a few colleagues of mine
and I and thought about like what can we
do how we can we pitch in the skip
drones and have a new pitch for it have
people can be convinced to give money
and came up with the idea of kerchief
torque and there are few outlets that do
the same in different countries in
America especially there are a lot of
outfits being nonprofit and
investigative news rooms that work for
the society and being funded by
foundations and and individual donors
and that’s what we we did as well with
kerchief talk but before I
get into the work at critical talk a
little bit deeper I want to explain to
you why I’m here and why I got into
journalism at all like why why do I talk
to you about investigative journalism so
I am from a rural region in the west of
Germany it’s called moon salons that’s
where from them from it’s a small from a
small town my dad is a car mechanic my
mom is an office clerk and I’m the first
one in our family to ever go to
university i have i’ve never known any
journalist before I myself went into
journalism I’m not from a academic
background or finance background or
anything like that i’m from a typical
working-class family and i think that’s
a good thing to to get into the city of
journalism from that point of view
because every time I’m around people who
have a lot of money you I have a lot of
power I always feel a little bit uneasy
I’m not really comfortable around them I
always think like I’m kind of the person
standing in the corner observing
everything but not really being part of
the group being part of what their kind
of people I think that helps me being
this outside are having this outside
view finding seeing problems may be
earlier than someone who is used to be
around these people I actually got into
journalism because I was a paperboy
distributing the newspaper in our
neighborhood the free ad newspaper twice
a week and directed from home to home
and put into the mailbox and then some
time around i think was 14 or 15 the
friend of mine told me why are you
dragging these newspapers from door to
door you could write for the newspaper
it’s way better like you get way more
money so I got in Jonathan because of
money had changed over time I know I
have values I actually do it to do
something about problems in the world
and change society but that’s how I
started then I went to university a
university of dog monte and germany at
age 24 i joined an investigative unit at
a regional paper and did some nice
stories but i thought that’s not
everything i should try to get better
and as you obviously all know because
you are here on a saturday at learning
never stops you always try to get new
ideas so i decided
to go where investigative journalism has
a big tradition has lots of great
stories to tell as lots of great
teachers all the three examples we had
in the beginning we’re from the US so I
decided to go to the US and in 2013
actually briefly after my wedding I
boarded a plane to New York City and
joins us to be the center for
investigative journalism it’s in New
York at Columbia Journalism school and
together with 15 other people from eight
countries they were all nuts about it
mr. give journalism I learned about
investigative journalism for a year try
to fill the holes I had in my reporting
and push myself and my colleagues like
14 16 18 hours a day for a year and that
was really worthwhile because the people
were teaching they are really good there
are legends among among journalists
private detectives taught about their
methods as well there was a good year
and actually one day before I came back
from New York we launched corrective org
in Germany so we had been planning it
all the time and then all the while I
was in New York we were developing it
and one day before came back we started
so what did we do at kerchief torg we
are now two and a half years in and we
are about 20 reporters data journalists
about more less 20 people and we did
some investigations like for example
this one this is investigation into the
payments that big pharmaceutical
companies pay to doctors so we scraped
all the payments that were released at
like dubious websites over the internet
and put a database on our website where
people you now could like type in your
doctor if you have a doctor in Germany
Switzerland Austria and see if he got
money from big pharmaceutical companies
when he got it what for how much so you
can like try to find out if he has a
conflict of interest another story is
that we investigated the German more
than 400 German savings banks far cousin
as they occurred in Germany and we
compared their transparency report the
annual reports we had help from several
hundred citizens we had the tool built
called crowd newsroom where citizens
were able to put in effort and help us
doing the investigation and we found out
for example that lots of heads of
directors of these savings banks
weren’t more money than they were
supposed to earn from government
regulation we also looked into the
nursing home industry we talked to
hundreds of people in the nursing home
industry went undercover and several
nursing homes we scraped lots of data
and documents and in the end I wrote my
first non-fiction book about it and yeah
I had a good good insight into what the
problems are in Germany Germans elodie
care and I think that this is the work
we have done up to now is a proof of
concept I think after 12 years I can say
that it worked we have several
foundations supporting us we have more
than 2,000 members giving us a monthly
membership fee supporting us because I
want to they don’t have to they can read
off or our work on the internet but if
they want you to help us do our work I
think that’s really great I also think
that this is something that that should
should be done more often so I think
especially in these times where you have
all these more and more hostile
governments towards journalism more and
more popular ISM around more and more
anti social movements that try to like
and put themselves for it first and not
society first but i think it’s it’s also
important to support drones not only not
only financially but also with your with
your insight so i want to suggest to you
that you talk to journalists journalist
just like people like you and me
obviously like me but also like you
because they just want you to know
what’s going on I want to know where the
problems are and the more people talk to
journalists about their problems about
stuff that they observe doesn’t have to
happen to themselves they can see
something at work or in their social
lives and I think it’s really important
that people people people talk more to
journalist and support their work so if
you see something say something as they
say also leaked something if you can
leak something good journalists work
with secure email encryption tgp they
have secured drop workers drop boxes we
have that for example you can also do it
like traditional way old school style
sent an envelope to new zoom via the New
York Times or your local paper or bus
feet or kerchief the org I don’t care I
don’t to convince
you to become all a member of creative
talk although that would make my my work
way more easy if you all became a member
of Curtis that all but you can also
support other journalists and I think
that’s really important that we embrace
it because in spite of these darkening
times and the rise of populism and more
and more hate I truly believe that we
can make investigative journalism hours
again thank you
[Applause] [Music]