Introduction

For a long time rumors floated around the tight knit anti-tobacco community that international cigarette giant British American Tobacco （BAT） company was running a parallel cigarette smuggling racket alongside their legal，multi-billion dollar industry. What made this story news was not the fact that cigarettes were being smuggled into poor developing countries，but the fact that tobacco companies themselves were directly linked to the shady organized crime world associated with tobacco smuggling. Tobacco companies were smuggling to avoid paying billions of dollars in national taxes.

The whispers and conjectures remained uninvestigated until a tip came to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists （ICIJ），a unique network of the world’s top investigative journalists whose aim is to produce transnational，collaborative reports on critical issues that transcend national boundaries.

Several months of investigation exposing BAT’s illegal dealings became ICIJ’s maiden investigative project. It resulted in an investigative reporting project that covered China，North America，Latin America，Africa and the Mediterranean，involving the coordinated efforts of top watchdog journalists from the United States，Australia，Scotland，Canada，Italy，not to mention the unheralded contributions of numerous other ICIJ members.

The tobacco case started with U.S. smokers’ lawsuits against tobacco companies. The court case process made available entire rooms of tobacco industry documents to the press and public. Buried within these rooms of documents was an internal tobacco company memorandum discussing the smuggling of cigarettes. One especially sharp-eyed ICJC reporter spotted the smuggling memo and broke a major expose of international tobacco company involvement with organized crime.

Stories such as the Tobacco smuggling syndicate represent a new breed of independent，investigative reporting，that is making concerted efforts to respond to the new challenges of our globalizing world.

Globalization redefines nation-state borders

International businesses are globalizing at an unprecedented pace，posing newfound challenges to watchdog journalists who are trying to investigate multinational companies - companies with greater resources and power than most of the world’s governments.（Schechter 2001）

According to statistics from China’s Ministry of Commerce，the United States leads the world in attracting foreign capital，absorbing US＄50 billion in 1995 and US＄300 billion in 2000. About 80 percent of foreign direct investment in the world comes from transnational merging.

Similarly，China is also seeing an explosion of foreign direct investment by firms from the United States and other countries in the last decade. It is estimated that more than ＄270 billion has been invested in China by thousands of foreign firms in seven short years between 1992 and 1999. According to China’s Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation Year 2000 Report，over 40% of China’s more than ＄200 billion in exports in 1998 had their source in multinational firms operating in China.（Burke，2000）

This trend of globalization and foreign investment into China will only accelerate with China’s accession to the WTO. A 1999 U.S. International Trade Commission report stressed that China’s WTO entry would significantly increase investment by U.S. multinationals inside China. （Burke，2000）

Globalization poses newfound challenges to watchdog journalists A daunting array of difficulties globalization poses to watchdog journalists was summed up at the first international conference on investigative reporting in broadcasting sponsored by Shantou University Journalism and Communications Department and hosted by CCTV News Probe. （Lewis，2004）

These globalization-related obstacles confronting investigative journalists today include：trans-national corporation’s increased labor violation and money laundering activities，thousands of corporations with undisclosed owners，conglomeration of media organization，which have themselves become powerful interest groups that need to be watched，unfettered growth of trans-national agencies such as the United Nations，World Trade Organizations，International Monetary Funds，who are themselves under-monitored. Relentless restructuring and cut-backs in the newsroom have resulted in poor training，lack of access to basic information technologies，and the ever present fear of litigation by media management. （Lewis，2004）

Undoubtedly，investigative reporting in the era of globalization requires even more time，money，courage，independence，good management，and quality reporters with technological know-how who can dig deeper and more broadly into issues.

As globalization shows there is more and more need for fiercely independent watchdog journalism，study after study has shown the overall decline of multinational media’s s