AUTHORIAL MASTERY IN JOURNALISTIC INVESTIGATION (ON THE MATERIAL OF THE PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE OF MUHAMMADJON OBIDOV)

The article examines the category of authorial mastery in the genre of journalistic investigation and tests an analytical model of this category on the professional practice of Muhammadjon Obidov, an Honoured Journalist of Uzbekistan and one of the recognised representatives of Uzbek investigative television journalism. The study proposes a three-component structure of authorial mastery — cognitive-analytical, ethical-legal and artistic-narrative — and a set of five operational criteria by which it can be observed in the text itself. The professional biography of the journalist is periodised into three stages, and the correspondence between institutional conditions and the dominant type of authorial activity in each stage is established. The article argues that authorial mastery is not an ornamental supplement to factual accuracy but the mechanism that converts verified facts into socially consequential discourse.