"Investigative reporting is about uncovering the wrongdoings of the powerful"
Maurizio Guerrero
Maurizio Guerrero is an award-winning journalist who for 10 years was the bureau chief in New York City and the United Nations of the largest news-wire service in Latin America, the Mexican-based Notimex. He now covers immigration, social justice movements, and multilateral negotiations for several media outlets in the United States, Europe, and Mexico. A graduate journalist of the Escuela de Periodismo Carlos Septién in Mexico City, he holds an M.A. in Latin American, Caribbean and Latino Studies from the City University of New York (CUNY).
In your opinion, what are the major principles of investigative reporting?
Investigative reporting is about uncovering the wrongdoings of the powerful —individuals, government agencies, and, mainly, corporations. The goal is to shed light on a previously unknown issue and, luckily, trigger some measure of justice and accountability.
What are the three most important lessons you've learned from your career in investigative reporting?
An investigative reporter has to dedicate a lot of time going through databases, documents, and public information. One needs to be patient and sort of obsessive. It is also crucial to talk with as many people as possible, especially advocates working on the same issues we are interested in. Advocates and nonprofits are critical sources for an investigative reporter.
Investigative reporting can be pursued in many ways. What are the most important ones that a prospective investigative reporter should know before diving into an investigation?
One needs a strong lead and a clear idea that something is not right —not only illegal but immoral or unjust, like the policies that punish people who help migrants in the Mediterranean or at the U.S.-Mexico border. Justice is not simply about the rule of law but about what is humane and moral.
What are one or two of the most important investigative stories you pursued in your career?
One was published by Documented NY, a news website that covers immigration in New York. I uncovered the death of a construction worker who was toiling in what was planned to be one of the most exclusive residences and hotels in New York. Fatalities in construction, especially of workers who are not unionized and are undocumented immigrants, are not registered in any public record until several months afterward. This is a way to hide the severity of the costs in human lives that immigrants have to pay to sustain the construction industry in New York and its real estate market, one of the most lucrative in the world.
Another important article I did was for the progressive magazine In These Times, which will run it as its cover story in February. It is about a rebellion staged by workers at factories known as maquiladoras in the Mexican border city of Mexicali. Some of these maquiladoras operate as contractors for the U.S. Department of Defense. Workers in these maquiladoras, many of them migrant women, staged work stoppages to protect their lives at the start of the pandemic in April 2020. Their resistance was nothing short of heroic, in my opinion. These low-wage workers managed to disrupt the supply of the U.S. war machine for a couple of weeks.
Do media organizations invest enough in investigative reporting?
You know my answer, right? Many media outlets simply reflect the dynamic among powerful entities: what this or that government official said about this and that issue. Or what a corporation or the United Nations plans to do about something. Media, in general, do not focus enough on portraying life from the bottom up. They do not carry enough stories centered on workers.
What do you think will be the greatest challenge for the next generation of investigative reporters?
It would be commonplace to mention as big challenges the adaption to new technologies or in combating misinformation. Yes, those threats will probably intensify in the coming years. However, the real challenge for journalists, often working for privately-owned media, is how to criticize a world dominated by powerful private interests. This is not an ideological position. The world as we know it will disappear, thanks to climate change. Humanity will have to radically alter its consumption patterns to fight this threat. And this goes for the major challenges of our time, like the growing economic inequality in the world. Based on corporate profits and capitalist logic, our economic system has to be challenged fundamentally. How will privately-owned media do that? That's the question.
If aspiring foreign correspondents from around the world wish to work in the United States, what advice would you give them?
Read Marxist theory! Class analysis is a fantastic tool to analyze the world, especially the United States, which is the epicenter of the global capitalist order. This may sound radical, but Marxist analyses are at the root of social democratic policies prevalent in Europe and Latin America. Correspondents must be critical of capitalism if they come to the U.S. as correspondents. Otherwise, they may end up repeating the official lines and defending the status quo.
What message would you like to share with the rest of the foreign correspondent community in America
Go back to graduate school and take classes, not in journalism, but sociology, anthropology, political theory, etc. To me, that was key. It is essential to have a critical perspective on the material conditions of the world.
