Investigative journalists and whistleblowers must be cherished and protected if there is to be any chance of maintaining our fragile democratic system.

It was shocking to read in the note from The Age Editor, 7 November, of the threat to investigative reporter Nick McKenzie in an act of apparent sabotage and intimidation in his home.

The aim of such bullying and violence is of course to silence someone who is working assiduously, tirelessly and courageously to bring to public attention issues of corruption and rot in our democracy. Nick McKenzie is an award-winning journalist who along with Chris Masters spent years tracking down the truth behind the war crimes of Ben Roberts-Smith VC, a story of one of the biggest military, murder and media scandals Australia has ever seen; a story many did not want revealed.

The Nick McKenzies of this world are exceptional contributors; they make the world a better place. Through their laborious efforts our social system functions more fairly. Theirs is a profession to be appreciated in our contemporary world, where truth has become almost impossible to discern from lies and self-serving propaganda at the highest levels of society.

The work such journalists do is exemplified in the documentary  _Cover Up_ about investigative journalist  Seymour Hersh which was released on Netflix on September 25, 2025. It becomes a political thriller as Hersh reveals his fight to uncover and report institutional violence.

Seymour Hersh is possibly a name few remember now, but he is a legendary reporter who exposed the corruption by the US Government in its conduct of its wars and foreign policy across decades, from Vietnam to Iraq and Afghanistan.

Hersh rose to fame in the late 70s when he reported the My Lai Massacre in Vietnam, where Officer William Calley Jnr. led his platoon to slaughter hundreds of villagers indiscriminately - the men, the women, the children and the babies. The coverage helped fuel anti-war activists in the USA and stir public opinion which ultimately led to US withdrawal from Vietnam. Although Calley was found guilty, he was placed under house arrest by President Nixon three days after his conviction.

Hersh was dogged. He was tenacious. He paid his own way to talk to people, taking notes, following tips, hounding sources, poring over records and accepting rejection after rejection in his search for evidence and building his case for truth.

Alongside Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, he helped uncover the corruption that led to the Watergate scandal and the resignation of President Richard Nixon, a story well told in the film All the President’s Men. He exposed the role of the US in the coup which installed the fascist Augusto Pinochet as the President in Chile.

As Hersh’s name became known, people would come to him with tip offs, including the photographs which exposed the military police engaged in killing, abuse, torture, and other inhumane treatment in Abu Ghraib in 2003. There was public outrage at the images and of the exposure which revealed torture was being condoned at the highest level in the USA.

Hersh protected his sources fiercely and bravely, as the political establishment sought to intimidate him, undermine and discredit both his sources and his journalism.

When Hersh did overreach in pursuing a source for letters purported to be between JFK and Marilyn Monroe exposing an affair, he had to conclude publicly, he had been duped. That mistake blotted an otherwise impeccable record and was used to try to discredit all Hersh’s reporting, particularly focusing on the role of sources, or whistleblowers, as people with their own agenda and not to be trusted.

It took 20 years for the Directors of Cover Up, Laura Poitras and Mark Obenhaus, to persuade Hersh to tell his own story. He emerges in the documentary as a sometimes mercurial, courageous character, utterly dedicated to the pursuit of truth, and as a hero for our times.

Investigative journalists’ role and the personal cost involved in their pursuit, for the public good, of such important stories such as Watergate, chronicled in All the president’s Men, stories make gripping cinema.

Spotlight, which won the Academy Award for best film in 2016, tells the story of the Boston Globe’s Pulitzer Prize-winning investigation into widespread pedophilia scandals and cover-ups within the Catholic Church. The film documents the team’s measured and meticulous sifting through a daunting pile of evidence, the slow and steady gathering of information, the painstaking corroboration of hunches and leads, followed by the gradual dawning horror as the sheer scale of the abuse comes into focus with more than eighty boys abused.

Kill the Messenger, 2015, is the true story of journalist Gary Webb who happened across a story that leads to the origins of America’s crack epidemic and alleges the CIA was aware of the dealers who were smuggling cocaine into the USA and using the profits to arm Nicaraguan rebels. As Webb keeps digging his life and family come under threat.

The complex relationship between a journalist and a whistle blower source is dramatized in The Insider (1999), a harrowing story about a research biologist Jeff Wigand whose research for a major tobacco company had confirmed the serious health effects of nicotine and the way tobacco companies were enhancing the addictive effects. A 60 Minutes’ producer, Lowell Bergman tries to persuade Wigand to speak on air about his findings in the public interest. This story reveals the extreme lengths of harassment, threat and intimidation the tobacco company was willing to go to gag this man, by exposing and amplifying every action from his past – from parking tickets to spousal dispute – harassing and terrifying his family. Ultimately Wigand is left with nothing, but he decides to speak out.

CBS then decides to shelve the story as it may provoke a lawsuit from Westinghouse, the company owner. Wigand is hung out to dry and Lowell quits his role of 14 years. saying: “What do I tell the source on our next top story? What we have broken here does not get back together again.”

These are pertinent films to view as we see Donald Trump sue and attempt to intimidate every media organisation that challenges him. His claims are becoming more frantic and bizarre.  In October 1984 it was Trump vs The Chicago Tribune for $500 million. He lost. In October 2022 it was Trump vs CNN Broadcasting Inc for $475 million. He lost. In March 2024, it was Trump, (now President), vs American Broadcasting Corporation, owned by Disney. The case was settled for $15 million. In October 2024 it was Trump vs CBS for the absurd sum if $10 billion. (CBS’ parent media group Paramount, which needed the Trump administration’s approval for a  planned merger, agreed to pay $16 million to settle the lawsuit). Both media giants caved.

In July 2025 it was Trump vs The Dow Jones Company and The Wall Street Journal for another laughable amount of $10 billion. That is Rupert Murdoch and his journalists, who helped put Trump where he is, with support from Fox News. Dow Jones has said the Journal stands by its reporting and will vigorously fight the lawsuit. In October 2025 it’s Trump v _New York Times Co & Others_ seeking $15 billion in damages. The case continues.

The latest target is the BBC. A  letter sent to the BBC by one of the President’s lawyers demanded a full retraction of a Panorama documentary, an apology and payments that “appropriately compensate President Trump for the harm caused”.$US1 billion ($1.53 billion, now rising) in damages. The BBC acknowledged and apologised for the poor editing of a sequence and rejected the damages claim. But what this reveals is that the most trusted news organisation in the world is mismanaged and now in chaos with the resignation of its Managing Director and Head of News.

As Trump has taken over the Department of Justice as his legal team, he has a bottomless pit of resources to throw his weight around. It will be a brave, well-heeled media organisation or journalist who will take him on to challenge the flow of lies and distortions that he spews forth. ABC journalist John Lyons was told he was ‘hurting Australia’ by asking a question Trump did not want to answer during a press conference.

The Washington Post owned by Jeff Bezos – the founder of Amazon – has endorsed Trump’s big ballroom build and Amazon is donating to the building fund, as is Meta/ Facebook founded by Mark Zukerberg. The obscenely wealthy are pulling the strings in America.

This situation is farcical, ludicrous and preposterous at the same time as it is sinister, chilling and ominous. The films discussed are not simply entertaining thrillers about interesting historical events or intriguing personalities; they are prescient for our times.

Print journalism is in its death throes, struggling for attention in a world where the information flow is out of control and manipulated by unprincipled. unscrupulous, megalomaniacal leadership.

Are we already living in a world which has become uncontrollable and ungovernable? The democratic world that’s left must protect our investigative journalists and our whistleblowers if there is to be any chance of maintaining what has become a fragile democratic system.

The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.