GIJN has created a multi-part guide on where to obtain data about the spread of COVID-19 and its consequences. The document links to official and unofficial international sources on health and economic data, links to information on government policy responses, and more than a dozen sites working on pandemic projection modelling.
Getting a grip on data is critical to reporting the pandemic – life and death decisions are being made on the basis of numbers. In this webinar, Visualizing COVID-19 Data — Tips and Traps, we bring together three leading experts who share their advice and tips on how to verify and present data.
Geospatial technologies and data can be used to contain and respond to the spread of a disease, but can also help in pre-empting and preventing them. Looking at outbreaks of malaria, SARS, H1N1 and Zika, among other viruses, Avneep Dhingra explores how maps and geospatial technology have helped during different outbreaks.
Which communities are most economically affected by the coronavirus pandemic? Our NodeXL #ddj mapping from May 25 to 31 finds the Toronto Star looking at the effects of Canada’s lockdown on different communities in the country, ProPublica sharing a tool that lets you explore United States federal government contracts related to the coronavirus, the Financial Times analyzing excess mortality in 19 countries, and the Knight Center for the Journalism in the Americas offering a free online course on ethics in data journalism.
The Global Investigative Journalism Network condemns attacks by law enforcement on journalists in the US covering protests of the police killing of George Floyd. “The attacks on, and intimidation of, journalists legitimately covering protests and social unrest in the US are unconstitutional and unlawful,” stated the executive committee of the GIJN Board of Directors. “These attacks… threaten the very core of a free and democratic society.”
In a GIJN masterclass webinar presented to 700 journalists from 94 countries, BBC internet research expert Paul Myers described the open source tools, syntax tricks, and search techniques that can help unearth elusive content, images, and social media posts. Myers cited searches for information on COVID-19 in numerous examples, and stressed the need for logical thought in order to unlock the power of advanced search tools.
Investigative journalism has had to adapt to the realities imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic. Around the world, newsrooms are having to respond to challenges such as social distancing while reporting on the pressure health systems are under. GIJN and the Instituto Prensa y Sociedad (IPYS), invited four journalists from some of the countries that have been the most affected by the pandemic to share what they’ve learned during this process.
Governments have already spent more than 40 billion dollars to fight the COVID-19 pandemic, so how can journalists investigate how the money is being used and who is getting the contracts? GIJN’s latest webinar, Tracking Billions in COVID-19 Contracts, focuses on how to investigate the contracting process, what red flags to look out for and how to find out where the money is going.
After the group that owned half of Quebec’s daily newspapers went bust, Canada’s Le Soleil newspaper was part of a group that created Canada’s largest newsroom cooperative, counting on the support of their readers and their own staff to ensure their survival. One year on, and despite the COVID-19 pandemic, they are thriving.
The devastating consequences of the coronavirus pandemic can get lost in the mass of numbers presented. Journalists are working hard to humanize the data. Our NodeXL #ddj mapping from May 18 to 24 finds The New York Times with a moving tribute to lives lost to COVID-19; Schema Design, the Google News Initiative, and Axios visualizing coronavirus-related Google searches; and The Atlantic revealing the US CDC conflated results of two types of coronavirus tests.
For our series about journalists’ favorite tools, we spoke with Katherine Eban, who has won awards for her work on gun trafficking, pharmaceutical counterfeits, and CIA interrogations. She described some of the low-tech tools and old-school strategies that have helped her break major stories on the COVID-19 pandemic.
Around the world, official death tolls from the pandemic have been compromised by data lags, lack of testing, and sometimes deliberate distortions, leading to significant undercounts. In response, investigative reporters are using new tools and creative approaches to provide a clearer picture of direct and indirect deaths associated with the pandemic, and to hold governments accountable for inadequate responses.
Investigative journalists can discover story leads from scrutinizing financial or asset disclosures. Data journalist Paul Bradshaw shares nine ways to find stories in companies’ accounts, including looking out for conflicts of interest, and mapping connections between companies and directors.
Reporting on the ground and interviewing people face-to-face have become high-risk activities during the COVID-19 pandemic. But there are ways to continue investigative work using your computer and cutting-edge online techniques – critical skills at all times. Join us for this GIJN webinar, Online Research with open source sleuth Paul Myers, part of GIJN’s series Investigating the Pandemic.
This week’s Friday 5, where we round up our favorite reads from around the online world in English, includes Abraji’s report on the investigation into the murder of journalist Léo Veras, a guide to decoding Chinese state propaganda on Twitter, a study into bot-generated coronavirus activity on Twitter, and Hostwriter’s tool to help connect editors to local journalists worldwide.
Throughout the coronavirus pandemic, we’ve seen heated debate on whether to best solve the health crisis through “herd immunity” — the indirect protection that occurs when much of a population becomes immune to infection. Our NodeXL #ddj mapping from May 11 to 17 finds FiveThirtyEight creating a simulation calculator which shows that getting to herd immunity without a vaccine isn’t quite that simple; The Marshall Project tracking COVID-19 cases and deaths in prisons across America; the BBC’s Media Show highlighting data journalists as the media’s latest rock stars; and Istories and MediaZona examining elder abuse in Russia, which experts fear may worsen during the pandemic with so many people staying home.
Outstanding investigative stories on subjects from land reform and roads to sexual abuse and corruption were among the finalists at this year’s Taco Kuiper Award for Investigative Journalism. Panel convener Anton Harber said the diversity of stories and media showed the core strength of South African investigative reporting, which was now being deployed to tackle the coronavirus pandemic fallout.
Following the 2011 Tunisian revolution, the loosening of free speech created a vibrant marketplace of ideas but investigative reporting still lagged. A group of Tunisian journalists set out to change this by founding independent media outlet Inkyfada, which has experimented with data and audio storytelling and worked hard to diversify its revenue in order to guard its independence. Layli Foroudi profiled Inkyfada for GIJN.
Africa’s investigative journalists are playing a critical role in unpacking the continent’s expanding pandemic and have already snapped some governments out of their early complacency on COVID-19 preparedness. However, amid warnings about the potential impact of the virus on the continent’s 1.1 billion citizens, four leading African journalists shared strategies for coverage in this critical time in a webinar attended by reporters from 57 countries.
A joint investigation by a historian and a journalist revealed that a number of US universities were beneficiaries from land expropriated from Indigenous communities. The authors, Robert Lee and Tristan Ahtone, reveal what tools helped them uncover the story. They built a geodatabase and traced the money to find out where the land had come from and how much was paid for it.
Entrepreneurship coach Phillip Smith explains how publishers who seek to grow their membership can invest in paid lead acquisition tactics and predict the rate of return on their investment.
This week’s Friday 5, where we round up our favorite reads from around the online world in English, includes Meduza’s report on Russian editor Roman Badanin’s Pulitzer-charged rant against The New York Times, ProPublica’s sober response to the “Plandemic” viral video, and Poynter’s point about an ethics policy that includes guidelines for pre-publication source review.
This webinar on COVID-19 Supply Chains, the ninth in GIJN’s series Investigating the Pandemic, focuses on how to follow vital products from their origin to where they are needed. Two extraordinary investigative journalists will share their strategies and tips on how to follow the supply chain trail, and explain why some of the most vulnerable people in society are at risk.
Economies around the world have taken a big hit as countries implement lockdown measures to curb the spread of the coronavirus. Our NodeXL #ddj mapping from May 4 to 10 finds The New York Times looking into businesses that could be potential infection super-spreaders, and the alarmingly high unemployment rate, while German news media NDR and ZDF heute have examined lost life expectancy due to COVID-19 and the importance of intensive care beds. While Reuters published an important analysis into the use of little-known law that is increasingly being used to grant immunity to police who have used excessive force.
An investigative journalism nonprofit based in Nigeria, the International Centre for Investigative Reporting, has pushed the envelope with its approach to investigating the country’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Executive Director Dayo Aiyetan talks about how the unit has carried out its investigations in the midst of the lockdown and how reporters are holding the government to account over its response.
