Guide Resource
GIJN’s Guide to Undercover Reporting
In countries without public record transparency rules or strong source protection laws, going undercover can be one of the few tools reporters have to reveal public interest stories.
In countries without public record transparency rules or strong source protection laws, going undercover can be one of the few tools reporters have to reveal public interest stories.
To investigate what the Russian invasion looked like to TikTok users in Russia and Ukraine, and how the content available differed from one side of the border to the other, a team of journalists from the Norwegian broadcasting company NRK set out to investigate the social networking site’s algorithms and how a user’s location provides differing digital narratives about the war.
Meera Jatav, the co-founder of the award-winning, grassroots feminist media organization Khabar Lahariya, has won admiration for her courageous investigations into gender-based violence and caste in India. Here is the keynote speech she delivered at the Centre for Investigative Journalism’s summer conference in London.
The Uber Files leak contains reams of data and documents that detail the inner workings of the ride-hailing company, and has led to a global investigation into the firm’s practices. Also in this week’s edition of the top 10 stories in data journalism, we look at the dubious legacy of the UK’s scandal-hit leader Boris Johnson, the reconstruction of Notre-Dame cathedral, and the widespread epidemic of US gun violence.
This week’s Top 10 in Data Journalism digs into noise pollution in megacities, the trade in stolen Ukrainian grain, Russian state propaganda about its invasion, abortion access in the United States, and devastating floods in Australia.
The renowned Sri Lankan journalist was driving to his office when motorcycle riders stopped his car and bludgeoned him to death in broad daylight on the streets of Colombo in 2009. Now, a former detective who ran an official probe into the attack has given new testimony, raising questions about who may have been complicit in the killing.
How do you tackle a fraudulent blue-chip corporation that has the means to deploy teams of lawyers, private investigators, hackers, and even foreign spies to stop your investigation? Dan McCrum, an investigative reporter at the Financial Times, told GIJN how he took down a fraudulent $30 billion company, and offered tips on how reporters can tackle bad actors with almost unlimited resources.
From respecting that different journalists have different styles of reporting to using voices from the field to tell the story, and from keeping it simple with clear language to just ‘getting started,’ here are tips from two experienced reporters for the write-up stage of an investigation.
While food is often covered from a cultural lens, it is increasingly garnering the attention of investigative journalists, who are bringing new scrutiny to the environmental impacts of supply chains, labor conditions, and political influence linked to food.