There are no explicit guidelines regarding the watchdog role of journalism, neither on the level of national standards and codes, nor in the mission statements of the leading news media outlets considered. Nevertheless, some general principles can be mentioned.
The first article of the Consolidated text of the journalists duties (ODG, 2021: art. 1) states:
It is an irrepressible right of journalists to freedom of information and criticism, limited by the observance of the rules of law dictated to protect the personality of others and it is their mandatory obligation to respect the substantive truth of the facts.
While not making explicit reference to the role of investigative journalism, this aims at protecting the journalist in carrying out investigative activities. In the leading news media outlets analysed here, the RAI service contract makes explicit reference to the realisation of “programmes or columns of in-depth analysis, investigative reporting” (Ministry of Economic Development & RAI, 2018: art. 4) and is committed to “enhancing and promoting its tradition of investigative journalism” (Ministry of Economic Development & RAI, 2018: art. 25).
However, the interviews show,
investigative journalism is one of the missions of the public service, the problem is that it is not always possible to guarantee this. There are programmes that revolve around investigative journalism – one example is Report – but it is always hard to push for more in-depth coverage. (Tg1 editor-in-chief)
In Italian news, major space is devoted to political news, often narrated through the statements of politicians (Legnante, 2009), a condition grounded in the close relationship between television and politics, which are configured as complementary institutions (Gurevitch et al., 2009), leaving little time for investigation and watchdog functions. So, this remains confined to specific containers, such as the aforementioned report. “Our newscast is very much focused on news, and less on in-depth analysis. It is also a question of resources, meaning time and finances. Newspapers have more space for in-depth analysis, and television newscasts have less. “On television, other types of investigative programmes work better than the news”, a TgLa7 newsroom member confirms.
In fact, although investigative journalism is not explicitly expressed in their mission statements, the selected online and print press media give more space and relevance to investigative journalism and the watchdog function. “The nature of our newspaper is based on the watchdog function […]. We come from investigative journalism and apply the same rules to political journalism”, explains the editor-in-chief of Il Fatto Quotidiano. However, even in the case of the print press, politics continues to occupy the centre of the agenda. “We have a pool of journalists who deal with investigations. Even if politics absorbs us daily. American-style investigative journalism is difficult and rare because of a lack of resources”, explains the newsroom member of la Repubblica. Worth mentioning is the magazine l’Espresso (same editorial group as la Repubblica), which focuses on investigations and in-depth analysis and is a member of the European Investigative Collaboration.
In general, investigative journalism has never had much space and market in Italy. This is also due to the high level of political parallelism, the low level of professionalisation of journalism (Hallin & Mancini, 2004), and the difficulties of exporting this model of journalism outside the liberal Anglo-American context (Gerli et al., 2018). The marginality of investigative journalism within the Italian information landscape is probably the reason why it is not considered a primary objective in the mission of the media outlets in our sample.
