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Public Health, Safety and Trustjournalists faces its unique challenges,of course, but the cycles of investigativereporting are eternal: corruption,then exposure, then reform—followedby more corruption, more exposure,and more reform—in an endless loopof societal self-cleansing.If history is any guide, no matterwhat form it takes, muckraking has abright future. Just like the venality itexposes, it will outlast us all. Mark Feldstein, a journalism professorat George Washington University,was an award-winning investigativereporter at CNN, ABC News, NBCNews, and various local televisionstations. His book, “Poisoning thePress: Richard Nixon, Jack Anderson,and the Rise of Washington’s ScandalCulture,” is scheduled to be publishedin 2010 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.Investigating Health and Safety Issues—As ScientistsWouldThe Chicago Tribune paid to have state-of-the-art testing done on productspeople eat and use and the results provided ‘clear reporting entry points intowhat are complex topics.’BY SAM ROEBack in 2003, when my wifebecame pregnant with twins,one of my weekend duties wasto go to the grocery store and carefullypick out small amounts of fish.We’d read that most seafood is contaminatedwith mercury, a metal thatcould harm fetuses. Pregnant womenwere advised to eat only a few ouncesof fish a week. After I’d weighed delituna and selected only small piecesof frozen salmon for a few weeks, Iwondered, “How did it get to the pointwhere we have to keep track of howmuch fish we eat?”I knew there was an investigativestory in this situation. But where?After talking with my editor, GeorgePapajohn, at the Chicago Tribune, thenewspaper decided to do somethingfairly novel. At least it was for us. Wewould buy dozens of samples of fish andhave them tested for mercury levels ata laboratory. Similarly, in 2007, whenwe decided to gauge the amount of leadin children’s toys, instead of relying ongovernment figures, we tested morethan 800 toys ourselves. Ours turnedout to be the largest study of its kindoutside of the government’s.Doing rigorous testing ourselvescosts money: For each of these twoinvestigations, the cost was about$9,000. Some will be surprised to learnthat despite being in bankruptcy, theTribune continues to support it. Lastfall, the newspaper spent $6,000 totest dozens of food products for “hiddenallergens.” These are ingredientsnot disclosed on labels but ones thatare potentially deadly to those withallergies. 1 Our testing revealed hiddenallergens in a variety of popularbrand-name foods from cookies to chilito chicken bites. The result: Hundredsof thousands of such items were pulledfrom shelves nationwide.As we look ahead, newsroom managersare discussing increasing our budgetfor testing products in the future, notdecreasing it. Of course, there are benefitsto the newsroom being so closelyinvolved with the testing, and some ofthem include the following that havegiven us an edge in reporting thesepublic service stories:• Selecting the items to send to labs fortesting forced us to master the subjectmatter quickly and thoroughly.• Being able to track the testing closelyhelped us determine precisely whomight be potentially hurt by what.• Having comprehensive access tothe details of test results providedus with clear reporting entry pointsinto what are complex topics.We found, too, doing the testingin this way elevated our coverage.At a time when many governmentregulators aren’t doing the kind ofprotective oversight that consumerswant and expect, we could use ourinvestigative journalism to alert themembers of the public to health andsafety dangers. Also, since we knew sowell the methodology of the testing,it would be difficult for our findingsto be disputed, though, as we foundout, some of them still were.1This investigative project, “Children at risk in food roulette,” can be read at:www.chicagotribune.com/features/lifestyle/chi-081120-allergens-tribuneinvestigation,0,3661180.story.Nieman Reports | Summer 2009 53