Semi-Investigative Journalism in Slovenia: Research of Scandals Coverage in the Daily Newspaper Dnevnik

This paper adds the case of Slovenia to the vast body of studies on investigative journalism around the world. It explores how investigative journalism has developed in Slovenia since the late 1980s and tries to establish whether conclusions about the disappearance of quality investigative journalism are still up-to-date. A critical discourse analysis of news items covering three institutional scandals covered by the daily newspaper Dnevnik in 2008 showed that journalists dealt with relevant topics; however, the topics were investigated and covered in a kind of semi-investigative journalistic practice, for which it is typical that in one or more phases of the news production process, journalists do not meet all the criteria for their work to be classified as investigative journalism. Usually, uncovering scandals is not a result of a journalistic investigation, i.e., journalists start to investigate when a scandal is already uncovered by official sources. In cases when journalists uncovered a scandal on their own, further phases of news production turned out to be problematic. A case study of the Meta Rupel scandal revealed that the image of investigative journalism was established mainly by references to secret sources which were used with no cogent justification, while most of the reports were based on easily obtainable official sources. Despite deficiencies in investigation and coverage, these stories can not be dismissed as pseudo-investigative or sensationalistic, as they made positive contributions to the public good. Reasons for semi-