The death of investigative journalism
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John Kiriakou rates investigative journalism among the most important professions there is, "there are very few professions in my humble view that are more important", and says the version of it practised by the American mainstream press is finished. "What we're seeing right now is the death of investigative journalism in the mainstream media."

Joby Warrick's resignation

His evidence is a single departure. Joby Warrick, a friend of his and a long-time Washington Post investigative reporter, resigned two weeks before Kiriakou spoke. Kiriakou places him at the top of the trade, "the kind of guy who is on the level of Woodward and Bernstein. Multiple Pulitzer Prize winner. You can bet your bottom dollar that whatever Joby writes is the truth."

The reason he gives for the resignation is categorical: "because investigative journalism at the Washington Post is dead. This is the newspaper of record that brought down a president with the Watergate investigation. And it's done."

He assigns responsibility to the owner and supplies a figure: "Jeff Bezos killed it. Did you know that since Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post, 80% of the employees at the Washington Post have been let go?"

Where the work went

Kiriakou's position is that the work continues, but not where it used to. He names ProPublica, "they're amazing", the Brennan Center, Dropsite News and Max Blumenthal at The Grayzone. "This is real investigative journalism. So it's still being done. It's just not necessarily being done at the Post, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the LA Times, the places where it used to be done."

The advice

Asked by an incoming journalism student whether to pursue it, Kiriakou did not discourage him but reset the expectation: "You're not going to get rich being an investigative journalist. But getting rich should not be your goal. Seeking the truth should be your goal. So I say go for it."

The practical instruction is to go to the best school available, "by God, if you can get into Columbia School of Journalism, go to Columbia", and then to publish relentlessly, at the school paper or at outlets like Consortium News, The Grayzone, Covert Action Magazine or Reader-Supported News, "and then set your sights on the big time."

Bias, and what he reads to get around it

Kiriakou's account of mainstream bias is that it is largely unconscious, "I believe that the mainstream media is biased even if they don't even realize that they're biased."

His illustration is a Washington Post front page during the 2026 Iran war: a photograph of a dud Iranian missile lying in a school playground, captioned with Israeli children walking past it. His question is about the picture that did not run, "where's your picture of the Iranian school that was actually blown up by the American missile" and the nine-, ten-, eleven- and twelve-year-olds killed in it, and about the framing that did not appear: that a threat to destroy Iranian infrastructure is "the definition of a war crime. You cannot attack civilian infrastructure. It is against the law."

He indicts the field broadly, "the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, MS Now, Fox, they're all guilty", while excepting two wire services: "the Associated Press is generally okay. And Reuters is pretty good."

His own answer is volume, and he is careful to distinguish reading from believing, "I'm telling you what I read every morning, not what I believe every morning." The list: the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette ("just for the sports, and they're going out of business in a couple of weeks"), CNN, AP, Politico, The Hill, the New York Post, "just because they're just so awful. You have to know what the other side's saying", the Greek papers, the Telegraph, the Times of London, the Guardian, the London Evening Standard, the BBC, Dropsite News, Al Jazeera, Al Monitor, Electronic Intifada, Consortium News, RealClearPolitics and Axios, plus Covert Action Magazine, for which he writes.

Beyond the papers he buys single articles when something unusual appears, a good Miami Herald piece on Venezuela or Cuba, and follows a deliberately short list of reporters on Twitter, naming Ryan Grim, Max Blumenthal and Elizabeth Lane. The method he recommends is delegation to people with a record: "you can't just rely on one or two or 10 sources. You have to find people who have been proven correct in their reporting, who have been proven diligent in their reporting. Follow them, and then let them do the heavy lifting."

See also

- John Kiriakou
- CovertAction Magazine
- Congressional intelligence oversight
