On this day in 1969, journalist Seymour Hersh broke the story of the Mai Lai massacre in Vietnam, which changed world opinion about the war there. This week’s quiz is about investigative stories and the people who write them.
1. Upton Sinclair’s 1906 work, The Jungle exposed the ugly underside of which American industry, mostly based in and around Chicago at the time
2. In an article published online in May, 2005, which secret was finally revealed by Vanity Fair’s website in an article by John D O’Connor?
3. In 1959 for what award winning and controversial story did novelist John Griffin shave his head and take sustained doses of the drug Oxsoralen?
4. Fiction. Which organization did freelance journalist Peter Miller discover about while investigating the death of a certain Saloman Tauber in a bestselling seventies novel?
5. In a column in the Times Of India in April, 1992, whose illegal use of the Ready Forward loan process was exposed by journalist Sucheta Dalal?
6. Which fictional arms manufacturing entity which shares its name with a posh South Delhi colony was created by journalists from Tehelka to expose senior defence ministry and BJP officials?
7. Which award winning novel investigates the murder of four members of the Herbert Clutter family in a small community in Texas?
8. A radio programme of the alleged deals between a European company and a certain Svenska Incorporated started a chain of events that resulted in a change of government in 1989. Who was proved to be the principal beneficiary behind Svenska Incorporated?
9. In the Academy award winning film, Spotlight, the spotlight investigative team worked for which American newspaper?
10. Scott Carney’s pathbreaking ‘The Red Market,’ researched in India and around the world exposed the financial trail of which specific prohibited activity?
Answers
1. The meat processing and packing industry. He worked in the plants for six weeks to research his story which caused two new acts to be implemented by the Us government.
2. The identity of Deep Throat. Mark Felt was the person who provided Woodward and Bernstein with the inside information about the Watergate scandal.
3. Caucasian by birth, he changed his skin colour to write about what it meant to be a black man in the Deep South. His book, Black Like Me create d a huge uproar at the time
4. The ODESSA, the secret post war Nazi organization in Fredrick Forsyth’s ‘The ODESSA FILE.’
5. Harshad Mehta. He was soon arrested and the entire scam collapsed
6. West End International, the sting operation was known as Operation West End and resulted in the resignation and subsequent imprisonment of BJP President Bangaru Laxman
7. In Cold Blood, written by Truman Capote. Author and close friend Harper Lee also helped with the interviews and investigation
8. Win Chadha, this was the Bofors scandal, in which Chitra Subramanium and N Ram exposed the trail of kickbacks for the purchase of the FH-177 howitzer.
9. The Boston Globe
10. Organ Donation. Carney visited a Tsunami survivors camp known as ‘kidneyville’ because of the number of women who sell their kidneys there
Joy Bhattacharjyais a quizmaster and Project Director, FIFA U-17 World Cup
Follow Joy on Twitter @joybhattacharj