Effectiveness of Investigative Journalism in Combating Corruption: Evidence from Emerging Democracies in the Context of Ghana

Across the developing world, Africa in particular, corruption poses much devasting impact as it continues to serve as counterproductive to achieving sustainable development. Indeed, corruption has grave consequences on society. It can be argued that every facet of development including social, economic, and political development is hampered by it. It is the greatest enemy in the fight against poverty in developing countries. Democratic principles built on the commitment to upholding the rule of law, transparency, and accountability are expected to circumvent the ills of society, including fighting corruption. Ghana, on one hand, has experienced uninterrupted growth by consolidating its democracy since 1992. As a result, it has been flaunted as one of the most successful democracies in Africa. In contrast, corruption continues to be the bane despite the several proclaimed measures by successive governments including the establishment of anti-corruption agencies. Prior studies show Ghana loses over $3 billion (USD) annually to corruption. Certainly, corruption poses a heavy toll on Ghana’s development. It can be argued that any critical attempt to analyse the development problems in developing countries, Ghana inclusive, must first tackle unbridled forms of corruption and economic mismanagement. When Ghana resumed its democratic rebirth status in 1992, governments were required to respect democratic principles and ideals, including the rule of law and respect for due process. These compelled leaders to adopt an institutional approach to fighting political corruption. Additionally, the efforts to fight corruption have not been left to the government only. Under the rubric of investigative journalism, the media and some individual journalists have made significant strides in fighting corruption. There is an agreement in the scholarship that investigative journalism has an important impact on fighting corruption. For instance, in the last two decades, the activities of a private investigative journalist against corruption, have resulted in the arrest, conviction, and incarceration of corrupt officials and have exposed corruption in several branches of government leading to public demand for transparency and accountability in government-established institutions. The overall purpose of the study seeks to examine the effectiveness of investigative journalism in fighting corruption in Ghana’s democratic dispensation. This study is mixed-method research. Specifically, the convergent parallel mixed method research design would be employed. The target population for the study would be Investigative Journalists, Heads of departments of Journalism Institutions, and Heads of Media Houses (Both electronic and print media). Based on the research objective, questionnaires and interviews would be developed to solicit data from respondents. Descriptive and inferential statistics would be used for the quantitative data analysis. While themes would be used for the qualitative data analysis. Hence, the results from both the qualitative and the quantitative analysis will be triangulated. This study is the first novelty of its kind. As the first country to have been democratically consolidated in the subregion, the findings of the study could help solve similar problems in the subregion.