Investigative journalism and the cycle of arrests: Every arrested journalist is proof of how much the government fears the truth and how helpless it is

Investigative journalism, by its nature, enters areas that the government wants to keep hidden. For example, it attempts to uncover how public resources are used, whose interests decisions are made for, and the network of invisible relationships. For this reason, governments are often afraid of journalists who ask the right questions. Because for the government, information is a property area that must be controlled. Because the right question makes many wrongs, instances of corruption, and poverty visible.

“Who benefits? Who decided this? Who decided who would decide?”

This chain of questions shatters the boundaries of the official narrative. And beyond those boundaries, there is often an unaccountable space. A journalist who documents corruption, backroom deals, and the permeability in capital-politics relations actually shakes the ontological security of the government. Detentions and arrests are an asymmetric response to this tremor. As Max Weber emphasized, every bureaucracy wants to increase its influence by keeping its knowledge and intentions secret. By entering the government's information space, the journalist is effectively making a public denunciation. Therefore, a structure that cannot debate the content of the news chooses to neutralize the source. And it does this by citing the disinformation law as a justification.

In Turkey, the relationship between investigative journalism and detentions and arrests has turned into a litmus test that shows the country's level of transparency and capacity for accountability. In this context, we cannot view the detention and rapid arrest of İsmail Arı, an investigative journalist for Birgün Newspaper, during a family visit on a holiday as an isolated judicial process. It is necessary to read the arrest as the continuity of an order where the truth is systematically suppressed and where those who ask the question—not those who cause the problem—are criminalized. This is not a simple violation of press freedom either. It is a conscious usurpation of the truth and the public's right to access information.

The Message is Clear: “Do Not Ask, Do Not Investigate, Do Not Announce”

The arrest of journalist İsmail Arı, who holds many awards including the Uğur Mumcu Investigative Journalism Award, is due to his touching upon that dirty intersection of government and capital. The extremely clear political message given to other journalists through detentions and arrests is this: “If you cross the lines, you will face the consequences.” Because governments fear the “moment of enlightenment” that the information a journalist reaches will create in the public. Data that contradicts the government's rhetoric can create questioning in public opinion and damage the absoluteness of the official narrative. The construction of consent can be destroyed by a single real document. If corruption has been documented, it becomes difficult to voluntarily support that government. The government's reaction to such situations is mostly to neutralize the source rather than discuss the content. Because when the right questions are asked, the lack of transparent and convincing answers to these questions will become visible. That is why those who do not provide the right answers to the right questions try to escape the obligation to answer by silencing the one who asks. In the architecture of fear created in this way, society is also made to accept knowing less and less. In a kind of Huxleyan numbness that emerges, while the truth is drowned in a sea of fear and oppression, society is invited to the peace of not knowing.

If journalists are being targeted today, it is because of the impact of the accuracy and magnitude of the truth they will uncover. Every arrested journalist is actually proof of the government's helplessness in the face of the truth. The arrests show not how powerful the government is, but how much it fears the truth. As a result, if a government is this afraid of a journalist's investigation, it is actually admitting how fragile the universe of lies it has created is. If a system is this disturbed by a question, a news report, or a file, the problem is not with the one asking the question, but with the place that question points to.

Lest we forget, there are also closed-circuit broadcast “journalists” in the politics-capital relationship; those who travel from plane to plane, drift from fund to fund, and are never touched. The gilded veneers of these pseudo-opposition figures have recently been fully exposed by the US and Israel's attack on Iran.