Investigated reporting: Muckrakers, regulators, and the struggle over television documentary.

Raphael, C. (2005). Investigated reporting: Muckrakers, regulators, and the struggle over television documentary. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. 304 pages.

Investigated Reporting is an ambitious project designed to go beyond the content of the celebrated network television documentaries of the 1960s and 1970s. Raphael, an Associate Professor of Communication at Santa Clara University, digs deep into the before and after of some of the most discussed programs to discover how they came about, who was behind the attacks on these documentaries, and what effect those attacks had on the format and future.

Instead of attempting to study all documentaries from this period, Raphael focuses on a handful of programs, split into poverty and welfare (CBS's Harvest of Shame and Hunger in America, NBC's Battle of Newburgh), the cold war (NBC's The Tunnel, CBS's The Selling of the Pentagon and ill-fated Project Nassau), as well as business and consumerism (PBS's Banks and the Poor, and NBC's Pensions: The Broken Promise).

While documentaries have been celebrated as television's finest hour as a government watchdog, the author makes a strong argument that in most cases, these documentaries came straight out of government, with politicians and bureaucrats serving as experts, rarely challenging government structure or allowing outside voices to speak for themselves: "the news media consistently mainstreamed social movement actors' frames by passing them through a filter of official sanction" (pp. 237- 238).

Even with the strong emphasis on policy and legal questions surrounding these documentaries, Raphael's approach is refreshing because he pays specific attention to the differences and tensions between broadcast and print media at the time (which continue to this day). While television critics at newspapers often praised these documentaries because they were a departure from mindless TV entertainment, other print journalists lashed out at the documentaries, attempting to judge television journalism in a print frame. The Washington Post and Time went so far as to side with the Nixon administration in its criticism of CBS's The Selling of the Pentagon because of how interviews were edited: "(b)oth publications were more concerned with affirming their place in a cultural hierarchy of journalism" (p. 172). The Post even lectured CBS on journalism ethics by suggesting the network should include questions with answers, edit the answers in sequential order, and even allow the interviewee to see the segment before air, all practices that would never be followed by print journalists.

The author shows how critics learned early not to challenge the main points of the documentaries, but instead to concentrate on a specific journalistic practice. For both CBS's The Selling of the Pentagon and the Uncounted Enemy: A Vietnam Deception, the target was selective editing; for CBS's Hunger in America, the focus was on a filmed sequence of a baby incorrectly described as dying from malnutrition; even up to this century with the unverified letters in the 60 Minutes II segment on George W. Bush's Texas National Guard service.

While network journalists were able to fight off attacks from the White House, Congress, and the FCC, in the end, the market forces proved to be a much tougher opponent than any government regulation. Raphael contends that conservatives won the war by deregulating broadcast content (with the help of the networks) and privatizing the First Amendment. Without government regulation, corporations had little reason to invest money and valuable airtime in documentaries, so the format was allowed to starve to death. Plus, when critics disagreed with a story, they learned to skip the FCC and instead file a major lawsuit to scare the media corporations into an apology, a quick settlement, and a greater reluctance to take on corporate America in the future. As a stark contrast, most documentaries from 1968-1975 involved politics and economics while news magazines during the fall in 1997 focused on lifestyle, human interest, and celebrity news.

Raphael's Investigated Reporting may concentrate on the television documentary, but it is an important addition to our understanding of the role of government, corporations, and other powerful forces on the type of news that has been presented on television over the past 40 years and into the future.

Mike Conway (Ph.D., University of Texas at Austin) is an Assistant Professor in the School of Journalism at Indiana University. His research interests include the origins and development of television news, broadcast news content, and journalism history.

[c] 2007 Broadcast Education Association