How to point your fingers at people

Why do reporters always congratulate each other for having managed "not to point their fingers at anyone" in a piece of journalism? This was posed as a rhetorical question from Mads Brügger who visited the department today and spoke in favour of subjective and, yes, well, moralizing journalism. You investigate a story and find fault with particular people - so why not explicitly blame them?

Well, blaming as such ought not to be a controversial aspect of investigative journalism, so it's surely the manner of blaming which can be controversial.

How do you usually point your fingers at people in writing?

One award winning way is described well by James Etthema and Theodore Glasser in their Custodians of Conscience (1998):

"For journalists who must honor objectivity yet evoke outrage, ironist rhetoric holds great stylistic appeal."

In a chapter on 'The Irony of Irony-in-Journalism' they show how investigative reporters simply quote people and then, just as simply, present facts that contradict or undermine the quoted statements. Alongside each other, those words and deeds/facts create an ironic contrast and appeals to ironic knowingness among the readers. We're put in a position to shake our heads at the liars or hypocrites and say: Yeah right!

Brügger, I believe, was basically pulling away from such subtle yet well-known montage techniques and encouraging reporters to show as well as tell (by saying that, well, "at least it has worked for me").