This is a form of journalism that holds people and institutions accountable for their actions. The Columbia Journalism Review (2014) noted that the difference between accountability journalism and access reporting is that the latter tells you “what the powerful said, while accountability reporting tells you what they did.”
A good example of accountability journalism is Brock Yates’ (1983) book, The Decline and Fall of the American Automobile Industry.
A big reason that accountability journalism is so rare is that it can threaten a reporter’s career. Yates noted that when he wrote the original essay his book was based upon, an auto executive went as far as to argue that he “was worse for the industry than Ralph Nader” (1983, preface). Yates appeared to survive such attacks, but even the more aggressive auto buff magazines like Car and Driver have published little accountability journalism in recent decades (go here for further discussion).
A more visible example of industry retaliation was General Motors’ advertising boycott against the Los Angeles Times. GM was upset about critical reviews of its vehicles that were written by Dan Neil (go here for further discussion).
Accountability journalism is good for the auto industry
Instead of attacking a reporter who was the first automotive journalist to receive a Pulitzer Prize, GM should have used his feedback to improve its cars. This is a good metaphor for the short-sightedness of attempts to squelch accountability journalism.
This raises an auto history question: Does the relative lack of accountability journalism — particularly by the industry’s leading media outlet, Automotive News — at least partly explain why U.S. automakers were so slow and half-hearted in their response to increasingly popular foreign cars? Go here for further discussion.
The contemporary equivalent of the above question is this: Has the dominance of access journalism given cover to the auto industry’s slow and half-hearted response to climate change? Go here and here for further discussion.
RE:SOURCES
- Columbia Journalism Review; 2014. “The right debate: Access vs. accountability is what matters.” Posted Jan. 2; accessed February 26, 2019.
- Yates, Brock; 1983. The Decline and Fall of the American Automobile Industry.Empire Books, New York, NY.
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