What do you think is going on? What do you hope to reveal?
The first, absolutely crucial step at the start of any investigation is to express your suspicion as a hypothesis. If you have a suspicion and want to examine whether it holds up, try to formulate it as concretely as possible. What do you think is happening? What do you hope to find? What do you want to reveal? By beginning your inquiry with an answer to these questions, you make the work easier and increase your chances of success.
The answer is a hypothesis. According to the dictionary, a hypothesis is an ‘assumption, based on limited evidence, serving as a starting point for an investigation’ (Oxford Dictionary). A hypothesis is therefore not a wild idea; it is a plausible explanation for a real phenomenon. You formulate your suspicion in a strong sentence and then ask: what do I need to demonstrate this? Which sources and which facts? By projecting the story, the path towards it becomes visible.
If you start with a hypothesis, you are more likely to succeed because from the outset you focus on facts that confirm or contradict your suspicion. The hypothesis tells you whether you are on the right track, need to adjust, or would be better off stopping. (Preventing failure is also a form of success.) It makes you sensitive to facts and events that support or undermine your theory. As you wade through the sources, your hypothesis naturally becomes sharper, more concrete, and more plausible. Without noticing, you are continually testing your expectation against reality. Investigative journalism is not about dropping a bomb, but about peeling away the layers slowly. It is not a sprint, but a marathon. ‘Truth is strengthened by inquiry and reflection,’ wrote the Roman historian Tacitus, ‘falsehood by haste and uncertainty.’
Doing research remains a little mad, but at least now you will be ‘mad’ in a controlled way. The hypothesis also offers guidance in the current debate about journalism versus activism: if you seriously verify a theory, it will become clear whether it holds or not — regardless of what you had fervently hoped. Instead of the word ‘hypothesis’, some newsrooms use other terms for a sentence that sums up their suspicion, for example line of inquiry, baseline or focus.
A hypothesis is your hope or expectation expressed in a single sentence. By formulating this sentence on paper or on your screen as concretely as possible, the sources and questions you need to start the investigation will reveal themselves. For a workable hypothesis you need: a subject, a verb and possibly nouns, all of which refer to things you can see, verify or prove with sources, such as people, objects and actions. Your first task is to formulate such a concrete, researchable hypothesis about your investigation. You can do this in the following six steps:
Every investigation begins with a question. First make a list of questions (plural) that come to mind in relation to the subject. Chapter 3 explained what you can do to arrive at original research questions (angles). Then choose from that list the one question that you think is the most important: the principal question. For example, the most important for your readers: what most affects their interests? Or the most urgent given current affairs: which question should be answered first? In any case, use the words ‘who’ and ‘what’ or ‘how’ in your principal question. For example: ‘Who are the largest methane emitters in the Netherlands and what are they doing to reduce their emissions?’
The hypothesis provides a goal, a focus. It makes you alert to facts and events that support or undermine your theory. As you work your way through your sources, your hypothesis naturally becomes sharper, more concrete, more plausible. Unconsciously, you keep testing your expectation against reality. Investigative journalism is not about dropping a bomb, but about peeling back the layers slowly. It is not a sprint but a marathon. ‘Truth is strengthened by enquiry and reflection,’ wrote the Roman historian Tacitus, ‘falsehood by haste and uncertainty.’
What do you think the answer is? What is probably going on? What do you hope to discover? Or what do others think is going on? (You can also ‘borrow’ a hypothesis from someone else.) Your answer is… a hypothesis!
The most effective way to make a hypothesis concrete is to begin the sentence with a person or organisation. Do not ask ‘what’ the problem is, but ‘who’.
This is not an obvious question; our first reflex is to tell what we want to investigate. ‘Whom will you investigate?’ makes you look at it differently. In a more direct way. Journalistic stories are about people. Not about abstract things such as problems, systems or policy. It is human decisions that cause things to happen as they do.
The question ‘Who is responsible?’ is often not straightforward to answer. Usually there are several parties, each bearing a share of responsibility. Whom should you choose? Choose the actor who has a direct influence on the outcome, who is in a position to change the situation directly, who holds the real power, who takes the key decisions.
Be as precise as you can at this early stage: do you only suspect which organisation is involved, or can you perhaps already imagine which department within that organisation is concerned, or what the official role of the responsible person is? Or do you even suspect which individual is involved and what their name is? For convenience we call the responsible party in the hypothesis ‘the perpetrator’.
Describe the hypothesis as a concrete action: someone does something that brings about a visible or noticeable change in the environment. A thought or feeling is not a concrete action because it has no effect on the environment. Why is it so important that something physical changes? Because you will want to try to demonstrate the hypothesis. And you can only show something if you can see it yourself. So keep asking: what can I see of this?
Consider the sentences below: which are concrete and which are not?