A golden moment for global muckraking

It  sometimes feels that I inhabit parallel universes.

In the United States, where I teach nine months of every year, there’s  much agonizing about the future of investigative reporting.  Especially  since Watergate, American newspapers have  been the keepers of the investigative flame. With many papers in their death throes, there’s a great deal of worry that flame would be snuffed out.

But elsewhere, it’s a different story. In Southeast Asia  where I come from and go back to regularly, as well as other places beyond North America and Western Europe, democracy and technology are prying open previously closed societies and providing citizens with information previously  unavailable to them. Read the rest of this entry »