Commercial News Criteria and Investigative Journalism

Since the 1980s, the commercialisation of the media in Norway has prompted two opposing theories concerning the impact of commercial news criteria; the first suggests it restrains, the second that it stimulates, investigative journalism. But the two theories draw the same normative conclusion, namely that commercialisation has negative implications for the contribution of media to democracy. This article presents the two theories, and puts their empirical assumptions to the test, using the distribution of awards for outstanding investigative journalism as a yardstick. The test results are discussed in the light of economic theory. It seems that critics of media commercialisation have placed too much emphasis on the cost-cutting aspect of a capitalist economy, and too little on capitalism as “the free-market innovation machine”. The conclusion is that commercial news criteria stimulate investigative journalism more than they restrain it, and that investigative journalism's contribution to democracy is more positive than negative.