Output details

Investigation of Lakanal House Fire

This output consists of a sustained (2009-2013), longitudinal, regional television news investigation (BBC London) in the wake of the fatal Lakanal House fire in Southwark, London.

The underpinning process is innovative as it demonstrates how investigative journalism can flourish at a time when the cost base across all platforms, especially local, is being severely eroded and the BBC’s own budgets for daily, regional news programmes are under tremendous strain, severely curtailing investigations.

There is a single narrative arc comprising 38 original broadcast stories, demonstrating how the use of collaborative networks to help facilitate frequent and habitual sharing of information within the context of a systematic use of ‘crowd-sourced’ or ‘citizen journalism’ helped to feed the story over time.

Uniquely, this investigation was given exposure over a four-year period and matured into an in-depth exposé of flawed decision-making processes in local government, compliance with the law, construction of the tower block, the building’s refurbishment, and the conduct of emergency services from reporting to fighting the fire. This story was widely ignored by other media outlets whilst Barling’s networked research and meticulous scrutiny of public records revealed for the first time the way public authorities were ignoring fire risks and laws governing their public responsibilities.

It considers whether this style of investigation could support television journalism’s ability to hold power to account irrespective of shrinking budgets, by identifying news processes that might help preserve quality in a downward cost-driven environment where both time and money are scarce.

This research is located within a large body of critical evaluations of the state of regional investigative broadcast journalism in the UK. (Barnett, 2010) The proposed methodologies will go some way towards plugging information gaps emerging in a resource-light news environment and help defray the affects of ‘churnalism’ in a 24-hour news culture. (Davies, 2008)