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The Bureau of Economics in the Federal Trade Commission has a three-part role in the Agency and the strength of its functions changed over time depending on the preferences and ideology of the FTC’s leaders, developments in the field of economics, and the tenor of the times. The over-riding current role is to provide well considered, unbiased economic advice regarding antitrust and consumer protection law enforcement cases to the legal staff and the Commission. The second role, which long ago was primary, is to provide reports on investigations of various industries to the public and public officials. This role was more recently called research or “policy R&D”. A third role is to advocate for competition and markets both domestically and internationally. As a practical matter, the provision of economic advice to the FTC and to the legal staff has required that the economists wear “two hats,” helping the legal staff investigate cases and provide evidence to support law enforcement cases while also providing advice to the legal bureaus and to the Commission on which cases to pursue (thus providing “a second set of eyes” to evaluate cases). There is sometimes a tension in those functions because building a case is not the same as evaluating a case. Economists and the Bureau of Economics have provided such services to the FTC for over 100 years proving that a sub-organization can survive while playing roles that sometimes conflict. Such a life is not, however, always easy or fun.

Project Censored/Media Freedom Foundation, a 35-year old media research group originally based at Sonoma State University, now operates in cooperation with over 30 college and universities worldwide. The Project encourages college instructors to use and validate independent news stories as part of student classroom research assignments. The 25 most important validated news stories are published annually in the Censored yearbooks from Seven Stories Press (see www.projectcensored.org/ for more details).

Purpose: This chapter explores the current hybridization between true crime and nonfiction investigative documentaries on Video on Demand (VOD) platforms. It would seem necessary to distinguish true crime productions from long-form journalistic documentaries in order to avoid confusion between different products that do not pursue the same ends, such as audiovisual products with highly emotive and engaging components versus a journalistic approach to the truth about what happened. Methodology/approach: The analysis is based on the specific theory of true crime developed by Punnett, who provides genuine narrative codes (Justice, Subversive, Geographic, Forensic, Vocative, and Folkloric) for true crime to distinguish it from the formal conventions and social objectives of journalistic documentaries. The case study (El crimen de Alcàsser) was selected because of its potential to drive a detailed and in-depth study on one of the most traumatic crimes in the country’s recent history: the kidnapping, rape, torture, and killing of three teenagers in 1992. Findings: Several scholars have identified journalistic elements in true crime productions in the digital context, adopted in an attempt to distance them from the true crime tradition of appealing to primitive instincts. Although it has been perceived also as a renewed formula for journalism to reach a wide audience and mainstream success, it banishes journalism from its origin and goals: to guarantee the citizenship’s right to be truly informed about crime. In this way, journalistic documentaries inspired by real crimes may play a crucial role in a democratic society, while true crime only exploits the empathy of viewers and places them in the active participation of determining the suspect-protagonist’s guilt as a mode of “clickable” entertainment in the digital culture. Research limitations: This is the first in a series of studies within a broader research project on true crime documentaries released on the VOD platforms in Spain. The findings are, in this case, preliminary. The analysis needs additional testing before its utility can be reasonably determined and a theory about true crime made in Spain could be developed. Originality: First, there is no specific research in the field of true crime in Spain, although crime stories already enjoyed a prominent place in Spain’s conventional TV programming. Second, the Punnett analysis model introduces an interesting way to complement existing theoretical references about the connections between true crime and journalism.

The leadership of the Iraq and Afghanistan war has been criticized for reported cases of contractor corruption. This chapter examines the extent to which these wars have played out in the political agendas of candidates for President. The hypothesis is that while the two wars continue to be a key campaign issue in election cycles, the corruption narrative is a neglected part of the discourse. There are possible reasons for the disjuncture between United States (U.S.) positions against corruption by foreign governments and contractor behaviors within the defense industry, namely the impact of corruption on voters, candidates and other stakeholders. The chapter closes with lessons about the effects of corruption on agenda setting while also contributing to research on evaluation of private-public partnerships in public policy implementation and governance.

This chapter focuses on data journalism, a relatively new brand of journalistic practices that take advantage of the growing availability and application of digital data and computational tools for news production. Although this brand of journalism has been on in some advanced democracies, it is still a relatively new development in Africa, especially Nigeria. Journalists still rely mostly on eyewitness reports and interviews to write their stories, thus leading to lack of depth in media reportage of critical issues. This chapter explores the nature of data journalism conceptualised as a social science pragmatic approach to news gathering and reporting, tracing its history and inherent strengths and weaknesses. It examines the windows of opportunities it provides towards guaranteeing transparency and accountability in Nigeria's nascent democracy. It concludes that, though data journalism complements the conventional investigative reporting to enhance good governance system in Nigeria, strengthening other institutions of government such as the police, judiciary, Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), and Independent Corrupt Practices and other related offences Commission (ICPC) becomes imperative in entrenching accountability and transparency in Nigeria.