Given the chop, investigators turned on journalist (5)
I believe the answer is:
diced
'given the chop' is the definition.
The answer and definition can be both to do with contact as well as being past participle verbs.
Perhaps you can see a link between them that I don't see?
'investigators turned on journalist' is the wordplay.
'investigators' becomes 'CID' (Criminal Investigation Department).
'turned' says the letters should be written backwards.
'on' means one lot of letters go next to another.
'journalist' becomes 'ed' (short for editor).
'cid' in reverse letter order is 'dic'.
'dic'+'ed'='DICED'
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for diced that I've seen before include "Cubed" , "Played with small cubes" , "Chopped into cubes" , "getting the chop!" , "cut into little pieces?" .)