Nayan, Rajiv

Abstract
In the middle of December 2015, the US-based Center for Public Integrity came out with a series of four articles on different aspects of India’s nuclear programme. Of the four articles, one is on Jaduguda, the second on the Kudankulam nuclear reactor, the third on the thermonuclear device and the fourth on India’s nuclear security. Adrian Levy, the journalist who co-authored The Deception in which he recorded known and unknown facts about Pakistan’s nuclear acquisitions, is either the sole or co-author of these articles.
Some of these articles have been partially or fully reproduced in other publications, including Foreign Policy. The tone or tenor of all the four articles is quite negative in terms of attempting to sensationalise the Indian nuclear science programme. The Center for Public Integrity is supposed to be an investigative news organisation, which has been apparently established to ‘serve democracy’.
Has this series of four articles been written to fulfil the objectives of the Center for Public Integrity? Unfortunately, both the main author and the organisation have failed to really fulfil the objectives. Moreover, there is the question of Levy’s own credibility as an investigative journalist. There is hardly any investigative journalism in the four articles. All are overwhelmingly written with the help of reports which have been published earlier or have been appearing in the news for years.
 
Read the article online here.