watchdog journalism

Watchdog journalism is a form of investigative journalism where journalists, authors or publishers of a news publication fact-check and interview political and public figures to increase accountability in democratic governance systems. Role Watchdog journalists gather information about the actions of people in power and inform the public in order to hold elected officials to account. This requires maintaining a certain professional distance from people in power. Watchdog journalists are different from propagandist journalists in that they report from an independent, nongovernmental perspective. Due to watchdog journalism's unique features, it also often works as the fourth estate. The general issues, topics, or scandals that watchdog journalists cover are political corruption and any wrongdoing of people in power such as government officials or corporation executives. Three dimensions of operationalization The role of the press to be a "watchdog" and monitor a government's actions has been one of the fundamental components of a democratic society. Ettema and Glasser (1998) argue that watchdog journalism's most important role is that their “stories implicitly demand the response of public officials.” Playing a role as a Fourth Estate, watchdog journalism is able to force governments to meet their obligations to the public by publicizing issues such as scandals, corruption, and failure to address needs of the public. Mellado (2015) identified and developed three dimensions of operationalization of the watchdog role: the intensity of scrutiny, journalistic voice, and the source of news event. Intensity of scrutiny: Watchdog journalism has a few levels of scrutiny in terms of its reporting style. First of all, at the lowest level, questions and interrogations are a key way to investigate people with power. At a next level, denunciation is still not necessarily needed. But it consists of more obvious and somewhat aggressive questions and interrogations. Lastly, the highest level of scrutiny involves the strategy which is designed for people who are investigated to confess their wrongdoing, which requires a variety of evidence of wrongdoing to be used. Journalistic voice: Watchdog journalism needs a few types of voices which are required to address the scrutiny. Specifically, journalists' own voice or a third party's voice is the most general type.