Breaking Big Stories and Getting to the Truth: Dave Levinthal on Investigative Journalism and Accountability

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Dave Leventhal has had an impressive career in investigative journalism, serving as editor-in-chief at Raw Story, And now taking on a new role as correspondent for CenterClip. His work has focused on politics, money, and power, and he continues to provide critical insights into the forces shaping our political landscape. Dave, thanks so much for joining us today on FMC Fast Chat.

Hey, my pleasure. Good to be with you.

What I'm really excited to talk to you about is The state of investigative journalism, for one, but also so much of what you do comes back to what the Fair Media Council does and what we advocate for. So, as you're aware, you know, our mission, we advocate for quality news, and that's becoming increasingly important, that word quality, when we talk about news. But we also work to create a media-savvy society because basically it comes down to this. You're never going to have media accountability if we don't have the media-savvy public to be able to back it up and know what it is that they're consuming on a daily basis. So with that in mind, how do you feel about the state of investigative reporting today versus maybe when you started?

I started my professional career about 25 years ago. It was a different time. It was a different era. It was a different age, as we all well know. And when I started, there were still crazy things like afternoon newspapers, and the internet was still in its infancy for all intents and purposes, at least for news gathering and news distribution purposes. The first newspaper that I worked for, which was an afternoon newspaper, they updated the internet once a day with the full offerings of their print edition. So just in a generation, it's just amazing to track how news and the dissemination thereof has changed so dramatically. So when you ask a question about investigative journalism, I think there's a geography element to this that really is critical and key, but oftentimes doesn't get the attention that it should. And that's the difference between local investigative journalism and national level investigative journalism. On one hand, I'm as bullish about National level investigative journalism as I ever have been. Although the sheer gross numbers of investigative journalists may have shrunk overall, the tools at our disposal today, our ability to gather information, to do research, to background, to stitch together disparate datasets, it's incredible and is light years ahead of where we were, were we having this conversation almost certainly not via video chat 25 years ago. So that's one reason to feel really excited about the prospects of investigative journalism. And I think the results speak for themselves in some of the incredible bombshell investigations that have been done all across the board at places like, sure, the New York Times and the Washington Post, but a lot of nonprofit news organizations, ProPublica, the Texas Tribune, et cetera, that have done Just absolutely incredible work. Where I do have concern, and I am certainly not alone in this respect, is the ability to do high-quality, sustained, sustainable investigative journalism at the local level. I mean, there are large cities in this country that are fast becoming— I wouldn't go so far as to say news deserts, but they are a shadow of what they used to be in terms of their overall community capability to dig deep on what city hall is doing, what the school board is doing, if there are business shenanigans taking place. And we're just talking about, you know, mid-sized municipalities here. We're not even getting into smaller cities or rural areas or whatnot where the need for investigative journalism, the need for accountability journalism may be as high as it's ever been, but the prospects of that happening are slim to none. One silver lining in all of this, in sort of the ashes of many legacy news organizations, have sprung up some nonprofit news organizations at that more local level that are fascinating, are doing some great work. I think of places like the Baltimore Banner, for example, that really just in the past 5 years has blossomed and burgeoned in ways that are heartening and exciting. And there is great journalism being done at a place such as that. And the States Newsroom, which is not a household name, but in essence is stitched together about really now 50 different newsrooms all across the country, some bigger than others, but doing incredible work all the same. And what now is basically a network or a collective of news organizations that can share resources, that can really get the best of one another and put that out in a national fashion. It'll be fascinating to see what happens to them. I could go on, but I think that'll give at least a good overview for now about really the duality of investigative journalism, again, from that geographic standpoint.

One of the issues that is repeated throughout time is simply investigative journalism is the most expensive type of journalism. And if we look at that in terms of manpower, I mean, we're talking a lot of hours as well as a lot of expenses, because if you're truly going to do an investigation, you need to go where it takes you. How would you compare all of the new resources that you mentioned being able to use for investigative reporting? Is that making it actually cheaper and more doable, or is it more expensive because you have to pay for these things?

Yeah, well, it's both at the same time, and it's different. The answer is different for different newsrooms, and every individual newsroom has its own set of financial circumstances that has its own set of headwinds. It also has its own audience that, that may be more supportive of investigative journalism efforts than others. And what I mean by that is you may have a community that is willing to quite literally fund on an aspirational basis, investigative journalism, often to, often, you know, at the nonprofit level, but also to otherwise too, by buying subscriptions for for-profit organizations or investing in, you know, the digital capabilities of that news organization. I think the Boston Globe in that respect is a fascinating and very powerful model of the transition from the old school, the traditional to very cutting-edge digital that allows it to do investigative journalism and fund it and sustain it and make it possible for a community that has been very supportive of that kind of work and on a broader scale, supportive of the news organization to a very strong degree. But yeah, I mean, if you're a newsroom and you're just struggling to keep the lights on and you've had 7 rounds of layoffs and buyouts and your staff used to be 100 and now it's 50, or it was 50 and now it's Probably the last thing that the editor and the publisher are thinking about at that point is, hey, how are we going to invest lots of money that we do not have into hardcore investigative journalism? So that is what worries me, and that is what should worry news consumers too. And I think a lot of people don't make the distinctions that we do about, well, what is investigative journalism versus any other kind of journalism? Out there, and you know I come from a print and textual background mostly. But this also applies absolutely to local television stations and even their ability to have a watchdog reporter on staff versus not. I mean, think of the dozens of stories that will get a broadcast as a result of having just that one reporter who's dedicated to righting wrongs in the community or doing. Watch Doggy work when somebody, you know, has gotten screwed over by a local business and, you know, you're going to get the bad guy who ripped you off or whatever the case may be. That is powerful local journalism in its own right. And that's the kind of journalism that I think consumers and readers and viewers and listeners need to be acutely aware of because when it's gone, it's very difficult for it to come back unless there's a concerted effort to make an investment in that kind of journalism. But when you don't have that kind of journalism going on, the bad guys win much more often than they would otherwise. And that is the power of investigative journalism. That's what has gotten me excited about investigative journalism at the local level, at the state level, at the national level, all throughout my career. Newsrooms also, too, just need to be investing in their own staff to give their staffers, oftentimes people who are either very young and very green, or people who've just never had the opportunity to do investigative journalism, the tools, the skills, the opportunity to learn and invest in them as journalists and as reporters and editors so that they individually have the ability to take the initiative to do that kind of work in the first place.

And you actually touch upon an element that I have big concerns about. And, and a lot of this we blame on the digital landscape, which is we need to move fast. We need to get stories out there fast, right? We want to be breaking news, that sort of thing. But that movement has really kind of dissected the role of a journalist so that if I get the news out, I'm relying on someone else to be that fact checker. So the idea we have a generation of reporters out there that don't know how to check their facts. Now marry that idea up with someone out there who's trying to do investigative reporting and they don't have the skillset they need.

Yeah.

And you see where I'm going with this?

Absolutely. Training is critical and, uh, and coaching is critical. Uh, education is critical. Experience is critical too. The quality of the internships that student journalists have is essential to their ability to learn the tools and the techniques or obtain the tools and the techniques to do good investigative journalism on a very basic, almost ephemeral level, to be inspired to do that kind of work and learn for themselves what is going to be quality investigative journalism. So it's one reason why I myself, and I know many people who've been in the industry for a while, have taken the time and felt it is so essential to mentor people. And to take young reporters under your wing to work with them. I mean, nothing excites me more in doing journalism when I put on my writer's hat than teaming up with somebody who is 20 years younger than me. Because number one, sure, yes, it's an opportunity for me to help them, but it's also a great opportunity for me to learn a lot from them too, because they are in the crucible of news as it is done in 2024. And when they went to journalism school, in the internships that they have, in the early career opportunities that they have, they're learning different things than I am learning at this moment. So we can help each other. And the readers win in that case. The news consumers win in that case because they're getting the best out of the journalists and the investigative journalists, if you want to put a title on it. And they'll get more than you would get otherwise. And I know at every stop in the way, when I've— in my work at Raw Story, at Business Insider, where I was previously before that, at the Center for Public Integrity, which was an investigative newsroom through and through and literally served the purpose to do long-form investigative journalism, young reporters are so critical to doing that good work if they get the right guidance. So I would encourage any newsroom out there to absolutely invest in your young reporters. In this respect and not just put them on the breaking news treadmill, never to get off. To not just think that, oh, well, the lowest common denominator news, this is stuff for the 23-year-old or the 22-year-old on staff. Sure, everyone needs an entry-level job. Sure, we need to do news of that sort all the time, 24 hours a day. And that pays the bills to a great degree. But If you are going to legitimately concern yourself with investigative journalism, having those young reporters get the opportunities, even in small fashion, to do quality, quality deep dive journalism is going to be a great investment in them. It's also going to be a great investment in the news organization when they get better and better and better at it and you start breaking big news that you would never break otherwise.

And I think part of the message here is also Not to be fooled by your baby face. You've been around for a while.

Thank you.

But I do want to touch on more about your career specifically, because, you know, you have really focused on the intersection of money, power, and politics. And that, to my mind, is advanced investigative reporting, to be able to pull that together and to be accurate about it and to be able to tell a story that is actually relevant as well as truthful, because it's very easy to form a narrative that is false if you put the facts together incorrectly. Right. Yeah. So tell me, how did this become the focus of your career?

When I was working at the Daily Orange at Syracuse University. So when I was a college student myself, and I should note too, that I just had a conversation, a wonderful one with the staff of the Daily Orange about investigative journalism techniques over the weekend. And I couldn't be more impressed with a group of journalists than in the conversation that I had with those who are working for the independent Daily Orange at my alma mater. And they're ready to go. So I think the old adage, the kids are all right. I mean, these are journalists who are going to do some really great stuff in their future. But for me, You know, oftentimes it was just a matter of curiosity and seeing something or hearing something or observing something that just didn't quite seem right. Worked on a story, for example, very— when I was at the Daily Orange about the investments that the Environmental Sciences College was making and had little, you know, rumors and innuendo about, oh, you know, are they investing in oil stocks or, you know, Chevron and ExxonMobil and whatnot? And One thing led to another and, you know, freedom of information requests and a lot of deep reporting. And myself and another reporter ended up producing this big investigation into sort of the hypocrisy of, on one hand, the environmentalist school and where they were putting student tuition money and investing it in places that the students and the parents of those students were sometimes aghast to hear that that was the case. So that really sparked my interest going forward. And at every step in my career, no matter what I did, whether I was covering the State House in New Hampshire for the Eagle Tribune or Dallas City Hall and politics at the Dallas Morning News. And then in my 15 years here in Washington, DC, where I'm coming from today and where I've lived, that has always been a thread in my career, which is that something in government just doesn't quite add up. Or I'm hearing something, I'm seeing something, and that doesn't seem like it's the best use of public money, or that doesn't seem like it really adds up with what a candidate said during the election season. And now that they're in power, maybe they're doing something else. So that has, of course, manifested itself journalistically in a whole variety of ways. I think, you know, one conceptual project, much more recent, that I'm very, very proud of was one that I did when I was at Business Insider, and that was called Conflicted Congress. And it was all about the personal financial investments that members of Congress were themselves making, and how oftentimes those investments conflicted with their official duties as members of, for example, the Armed Services Committee. But yet they were investing personally in stock from Lockheed Martin and Raytheon and Boeing and defense contractors that literally would mark billions of dollars more or less on their ledger depending on outcomes that they got in the congressional appropriations process. So you can kind of see how that would add up, say nothing of lots and lots of lawmakers, dozens in fact, who have just simply not followed the laws of the land for how they are supposed to disclose this kind of activity in the first place. And even more recent than that, a series of articles with a fabulous reporter, Jordan Green, he's based in North Carolina, about extremism in this country. And how oftentimes extremists not only fly below the radar, but are known to the government and not necessarily punished when they do illegal and very dangerous things in a way that most people would expect that they would be, including those who serve in the US military. So it's powerful work. It can be dangerous work when you're talking about something like extremism, and it's work that is essential and necessary, in my opinion, to having a free and a functioning society that is as removed from danger that can be avoided as possible. And that holds to account people who are in positions of power in the first place and in positions of power because we put them there and had expectations that they were going to follow the law and not betray the public trust and, and do what's right more often than not and take account and accountability for when they screw up and when they make a mistake. Journalism is the way to obviously check all of those boxes when done right.

You touched on the dangers of doing certain stories, extremism being one of them. But when you're actually looking at someone who is abusing their power, no matter what element it is, and you start getting the pushback, because I'm sure you're asking people questions they don't want to answer. How do you handle that? Let the, let the public know what, what are some of the techniques that are used so that they can actually trust the news that you're putting out?

On the most ground floor level, you, you have to go into an investigation, or you just have to have a sensibility as a reporter to be relentless and to Not be willing to, it sounds so cliché and it is, but take no for an answer, especially if it's coming from somebody who you believe is not telling you the truth or is not telling you the full truth. And oftentimes, you know that they're not telling you the full truth or all of the truth because you already have information in hand that perhaps you have been able to glean from public documents. From data that you've analyzed, government data, from records that you've obtained through state or federal open records laws, or just shoe leather journalism work, talking to people and figuring out if you're getting sold a bill of goods or a line from a public official or somebody else who just simply isn't being truthful. I can think of one prime example that's played itself out in dramatic fashion. This was when I was working at the Center for Public Integrity, and Sarah Kleiner and Chris Zubackskis were the 2 reporters on this particular story. It was about telemarketing and about how a network of telemarketers led by one man in particular, his name is Richard Zeitlin. We found him pretty much through and through as being at the nexus, the core of This ring that was scamming people out of their money because they were misrepresenting themselves as charitable operations or political committees. But yet, if you donated $100 to them under the false pretenses that they were putting forward, almost every last red cent, and sometimes every red last cent, was going into the pockets of the telemarketer network and not going toward Helping kids who have cancer or the families of police officers who lost mom or dad because of being killed in the line of duty. I mean, talk about tugging at the heartstrings. I mean, this is what was going on here. And I would read the investigations if you're interested, but spoiler alert here, Richard Zeitlin is going to go to prison for a very, very long time. He's been sitting in a jail cell in New York City for the better part of a year and a half right now. And it's largely because of the investigative journalism that Sarah and Chris did back in 2019. And here we are in 2024 and were able to reveal in an investigation, and I should say series of investigations, that this network existed. And they were able to, over the course of 18 months, unravel the network and report on exactly what was going on there. The FBI got interested, federal officials got interested, and ultimately Richard Zeitlin, who has now officially pleaded guilty, is awaiting sentencing, which will happen in December. So to your point about investigative journalism, it's expensive, it is slow, it is not for the faint of heart. That is about as prime example as I can offer you about how that works in reality. But what's the bottom line? The bottom line is if that work doesn't get done, Richard Zeidelin right now almost certainly is a free man with his private jet and his multimillion-dollar home in Las Vegas. He is a very free man and enjoying the lap of luxury. Instead, he's going to be going to federal federal prison facility because he broke the law. And he broke the law in a way that hurt tens and tens of thousands of people who lost money as a result of him. And even beyond that, the lost opportunity costs of people who were trying to help other people, but instead sent their money to somebody who was only trying to help himself. Investigative journalism is the reason that it went one way. And it didn't go the other way.

Okay. But the story you're telling is dramatically different from what, if you log on to social media, what the public has to say about news today. And I'm sure you see it, that it's untrustworthy or it's fake news or it's propaganda. It's either partisan on one side or the other. What advice do you have for people in terms of how to find trustworthy news? Or at least to start questioning where they are with their own beliefs before they get into using news as a way to improve their life.

So 2 things, uh, just to focus on off the bat. And one is at the resource level. Okay. So if you are a news consumer, if you're a reader, a viewer, a listener, and you're not sure and you're just not, you know, you're not familiar with a news site, you don't know if what you're reading is true, you want to know more about the source. There are a number of really high-quality resources out there that will basically help you out with those questions. There's a website called AllSides, which will grade different political partisan ideological leanings Of different news sites all across the board. And there's also very good media journalism that's been done on news sources that are truly legitimately illegitimate, if you will, that are fake news. And fake news, not in the sense that, ah, that's fake news, because that's the easiest 2 words to say in media or politics right now is that's fake news. And it's so knee-jerk because people, if they just don't want to believe something, So easy to say those 2 words, but there is actual real fake news. Those are organizations that literally exist to bamboozle you. They literally exist to push an agenda that is not transparent. That could be liberal, that could be conservative.

Yeah.

That could be from a malign entity, that could be from a foreign government. And I think that's where we get into the responsibility part of all of this. And I don't want to lecture readers or viewers any more than I absolutely have to, but indulge me for a moment here to say that if something seems too good to be true, if something seems completely ridiculous, if something seems to be brand new to you that you've never heard of before, and it's coming from a website that is unfamiliar to you, And it might have a strange name or a particularly provocative name. You're getting these little red flags, right? Well, you need to pause. And before you share that post that says that space aliens have landed on the National Mall, or that a candidate who you particularly dislike has done something completely awful and egregious, Or a candidate that you absolutely love is, you know, out saving children from despair, saving puppy dogs. And, you know, I mean, if it in essence is playing to your most deeply seated views on the world, there's a good chance that this is not news that you can trust. It's propaganda. It's something that is designed to push an agenda in a direction, frankly, that you may agree with, but doing so with information that is disinformation, information that is misinformation, information that is not information at all. So if you, if you want to be more than just a shill for somebody who has an agenda and wants to get power, if you want to be more than somebody who is, is basically a patsy for a party and you view yourself as an independent thinker and somebody who wants to get proper information that is real and that is verified, or that's going to be the best version that we can get as journalists in the moment that news is happening, then just taking that little step, that little step at first to pause, to assess, to see it with a critical eye, to read it with a critical voice in your head, that is essential. And it also too helps stop the spread of garbage and it helps stop the spread of nonsense. And, you know, everyone can be a journalist now in a certain way. Everyone can definitely be an amplifier and definitely can be a megaphone of news, even if it's just to your own friends. In your own family. So if you want to be a force for truth, then there are very basic steps that you can take along the lines that we just discussed. If you don't care and you want to be something else and don't care so much about truth, then that's up to you. But I suspect that most people, regardless of your politics, generally want to tell the truth and they want to be told the truth. So it is a two-way street in that regard. So do your homework. But also to take responsibility for what you're seeing. And don't be somebody who is going to be a menace to other people by disseminating stuff that should not be disseminated because it's wrong.

Well, that's great advice, and it goes a long way toward helping them break out of their own echo chamber.

It really does. I would challenge everyone to quite literally go and read and watch What you would consider to be news that you would never associate yourself with, even if just to get a flavor of it, to get a sense of what is being talked about, to understand it. But if all you watch is Fox News and all you are reading is Breitbart, well, you may want to help yourself by at least understanding what's going on on the left and what's happening there. And it does help you break out of your echo chamber. And it doesn't have to be even sources that you would expect or the obvious sources. There are definitely, I think, both on the right and the left today, news sources that, of course, are coming from an ideological perspective but are high quality. Even if the perspective is one that you vehemently disagree with, you can appreciate and understand. And if I learned anything from my political philosophy courses at Syracuse University, It was to gain an appreciation for the farthest of the far left and the farthest of the far right and understanding in philosophical terms at least what they were saying or trying to convey. Again, agree with it, disagree with it, doesn't matter in this particular line of inquiry. It's just exposing yourself to that information and those perspectives so that if anything, you can just make better arguments on your own behalf when it comes down to it, but doing so In an informed way where you understand what the other guy is trying to argue.

So it all comes down to, you are entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts.

You could not have said it better. Yep.

I wish I had said that originally. I did not. So let's actually bring this home now because you are in a relatively new position. Congratulations. Tell me, what about this job excites you? What are you looking to do? What can we expect from you?

That's great. It's a relatively new organization and it's called CenterClip. It's an audio-only format at this point where myself and several dozen other folks who are kind of on the ground floor here are talking about issues of the day in an audio format where we're providing some commentary, others analyses that really try to break the news down in a way that makes it understandable to people. And at least for me, what I'm trying to do with this platform is take everything from polling to the presidential election to money in politics, as we discussed earlier, and provide context, provide data, provide real facts, provide information that's going to be useful, and put the latest campaign finance report or big money dollar figure that you've seen from Kamala Harris or Donald Trump into some perspective, to look at a poll and really make sense of it and get out of a poll what you can get, and also to understand the limitations of polling. And every day there's a new topic that comes up. So I think it's a really exciting platform, especially with as pivotal a time as we find ourselves in right now with not only Election Day, but all the overtime that may come after Election Day if ultimately we don't necessarily know who the president is. Who is controlling Congress? This is as tight an election as we could possibly imagine, and that's all going to play itself out in real time. And truth and real facts and information and verifiable information and context, that's all going to be king over those next few weeks.

That's a great way to put it and a great way to wrap up. But one more question, which is our basic closing fast chat question. What's the best thing about being Dave Leventhal?

That I was born in Buffalo, New York, and I'm a Bills fan. That's my glib answer, but I'm only half joking here. I've been incredibly fortunate during my career to be able to write about and communicate about some of the most important events that are facing this country and beyond. And I'll tell you that it is so gratifying when I can write an article or edit an article and is able to give people something that they desperately need, even if they didn't know that they needed it in the first place, in terms of information that is going to help better them, better their lives, better their family lives. So from a professional standpoint, that is absolutely the thing that got me into this business 25 years ago. It's the thing that sustains me and drives me today. more than it ever has. I, I would be, I would be lying to you if I said I wasn't as excited about journalism today, despite all of its turbulence, than I ever have been in my career. But I would be remiss if I didn't say the best part about being me is my awesome family and circle of friends who have been just absolutely incredible. I feel very fortunate in that regard.

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