Below I’ve excerpted and linked to a fantastic article about Andrew Jennings, the investigative reporter that exposed the rampant corruption in FIFA.
It is an absolute crying shame that the vast majority of reporters are NOT like Jennings. Instead, most are unethical, cowardly suck-up shills for the rich and powerful. They won’t hold the politicians, celebrities or tycoons accountable because they are afraid they’ll lose access to them, or that they’ll burn a bridge to a possible next job.
Jennings is an advocate of slow, methodical journalism. For half a century, the 71-year-old investigative reporter has been digging into complex, time-consuming stories about organized crime. In the 1980s, it was bad cops, the Thai heroin trade and the Italian mob. In the ’90s, he turned to sports, exposing corruption with the International Olympic Committee.
For the past 15 years, Jennings has focused on the Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), international soccer’s governing body. As other journalists were ball watching — reporting scorelines or writing player profiles — Jennings was digging into the dirty deals underpinning the world’s most popular game….
Now, after decades of threats, suspicions about tapped phones and intermittent paychecks, Jennings is being vindicated with every twist and turn in the FIFA scandal….
“I’m a document hound. If I’ve got your documents, I know all about you,” [Jennings] said. “This journalism business is easy, you know. You just find some disgraceful, disgustingly corrupt people and you work on it! You have to. That’s what we do. The rest of the media gets far too cozy with them. It’s wrong. Your mother told you what was wrong. You know what’s wrong. Our job is to investigate, acquire evidence.”….
Read more at The Washington Post