Customer Reviews

Raising Hell: Straight Talk With Investigative Journalists

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For those wanting to learn about the ropes of investigative journalism, this book will prove disappointing. It features interviews with so called famous investigative journos, such as John Camp - whose reportage apparently brought down evangelist Jimmy Swaggart, Sydney Schanberg (The Killing Fields) etc. This should have proved fascinating reading, but this doesn't come through. For starters, it fails to recap the stories written by these journalists. So in the feature of John Camp, it describes vaguely that he uncovered the seedy money trail to Jimmy Swaggert, but fails to convey the excitement of how he broke the news, what the stories were, and how he did it. Second, the "stories'' are in question and answer format. This would be fine, except that some questions are seriously inane. For example, "do you have researchers to help you'', and worse, "do you use computer records in researching a story'' ? For those who want to be inspired about investigative journalism, reading Woodword and Bernstein in "All the President's Men'' would offer far greater insights. On the other hand, this book, while having the potential to be gripping, has turned out to be dry and boring. It had the opportunity to mine some great journalists on their biggest scoops. All it succeeded in doing was ask questions that elicited little value added. I don't care two hoots about whether they use computers. I would expect that few who pick up this book to learn about investigative journalism would.

"Raising Hell" is a collection of interviews with notable investigative reporters. The length of these talks give these journalists plenty of space to describe how they go about their work, which can take them from Vietnam and Cambodia (Sydney Schanberg, whose story was the basis for the movie "The Killing Fields") to the Boeing beat in Seattle (Byron Acohido, who won a Pulitzer for his coverage). Also interviewed are Gerald Posner, whose book on the JFK assassination, "Case Closed," is a brilliant and readable defense of the Warren Commission; conservative advocate David Brock, author of "The Real Anita Hill"; and John Camp, whose stories about Jimmy Swaggert led to the televangelist's downfall. Journalists interested in learning more about the investigative side of their profession will find this worth reading.