For data journalists there is a balancing act between publishing information vital to a story and protecting the person behind that information. Vojtech Sedlak explains the pitfalls and offers tips on how journalists can protect the people that feature in the data without compromising the story.
Authoritarianism is on the rise around the world, from failing democracies to despotic regimes. In this global GIJN webinar, we bring together four extraordinary journalists from Russia, Egypt, South Africa, and the Philippines to share strategies for staying effective and true to the journalism profession’s highest standards.
The Peruvian investigative journalism association Ojo Público – a GIJN member — has created a new tool to investigate government contracts. In this piece, data journalist Romina Colman explores what the tool, which is called FUNES, can do and who can use it.
In week five of GIJN’s project to arm US reporters with tools for the toughest election stories, #gijnElectionWatchdog shared a tool to spot Twitter bots, a live dashboard to combat the hottest election disinformation efforts as they arise, a free cybersecurity toolkit for reporters, and tips for finding hard-to-access election sources.
For this week’s Friday 5, where GIJN rounds up key reads from around the world, we read about how researchers verified a chemical weapons attack in Syria, BBC News Labs’ new storytelling graphic for Facebook, and AP Stylebook’s latest election guide.
The advancement of technology and availability of complex data tools has been a real boon to society, but utilizing the wrong tools for the job can have dire consequences. Our NodeXL #ddj mapping from October 5 to 11 finds British media organizations the BBC and the Guardian reporting on a blunder by the English national health authority: it used the wrong Excel file format to store data, resulting in the loss of thousands of COVID-19 test data results. Meanwhile, German television news program ZDF heute highlighted how the Arctic has reached record high temperatures this year, DCist and Spotlight DC examined problems in the process of evictions, and we find Information is Beautiful offering a daily feed of uplifting news among the gloom of 2020’s news cycle.
In this edition of Document of the Day, we feature a new report out today from Freedom House, a US-based think tank, about how the coronavirus pandemic has affected digital freedoms around the world. The report includes details on governments’ actions that have curtailed citizens’ access to open information on the web, and the website features and interactive map where users can see which countries made the “free” list and which ones didn’t.
This summer a Swedish prosecutor announced that a 30-year probe into the killing of a Swedish prime minister would be closed since there was “reasonable evidence” that the assailant had been identified. The man now believed to have carried out the crime was identified two years ago by investigative journalist Thomas Pettersson, who spent 12 years investigating who killed Olof Palme.
From where to pitch to how to avoid being sued, and how much you should be getting paid for your work: a new, nine-part GIJN-resource covers the business side of doing investigative journalism. The guide covers a variety of subjects, aiming to help both individuals and media institutions by providing practical tips and advice.
In week four of GIJN’s project to arm reporters with tools for the toughest election stories, #gijnElectionWatchdog shared a dataset of individual swing state electors, tools for exposing deepfake videos, an app to push back against online harassment of female reporters, and key tips on impact in a low-trust landscape.
