ABSTRACT

On 5 April 2016, Iceland's prime minister became the first high-profile casualty of the Panama Papers investigations published around the world two days earlier, stepping down after reports of his family's hidden offshore wealth triggered massive public protests. The resignation was widely hailed as a demonstration of the power of investigative or “accountability” reporting to activate democratic citizens and effect real-world change. This paper reconstructs the Panama Papers reporting in Iceland as an important new case study in the growing literature on the impacts of journalistic revelations. Drawing on in-depth interviews, we ask what this dramatic case tells us about how major exposés produce political outcomes, as well as how the journalists involved understood the potential impacts of their work. We show that even in what looks like a clear-cut case of the so-called “mobilization model”—where change results from the public's response to a story—more complex dynamics are at work: Reporters worked actively to maximize the impact of their work, understanding these efforts in terms of its inherent newsworthiness, and the ultimate outcome of the revelations was shaped by a cycle of interactions between media and political actors that began well before publication.

摘要

2016年4月5日，冰岛总理成为两天前在世界各地发表的《巴拿马文件》调查中首位备受关注的受害者，在其家人隐匿的离岸财富报道引发大规模公众抗议后，冰岛总理辞职。辞职被广泛赞誉为证明调查或“问责”报告激活民主公民并实现现实世界变化的力量的证明。本文将冰岛的《巴拿马文件》报道重构为在新闻报道影响力日益增长的文献中的一个重要的新案例研究。通过深入的采访，我们问到这个戏剧性的案例告诉我们什么是大型展览如何产生政治成果，以及相关记者如何理解其工作的潜在影响。