Books as Retroactive Oversight

When investigative books reveal patterns that newsrooms missed in real time, they function as retroactive accountability mechanisms rather than substitutes for live reporting. Relying on post‑hoc narrative correction risks leaving the public exposed to governance failures during the period of omission. — If major failures in media oversight are corrected primarily by later books, democratic accountability and crisis resilience suffer; policymakers and newsrooms must establish protocols for ongoing vetting of leaders’ fitness.