In concert with GIJC21’s panel on the “New Organized Crime,” GIJN has released a comprehensive, multi-part reporting guide to investigating organized crime around the world, looking at nine key areas: criminal finance, narcotics, arms trade, environmental crime, forced disappearances, cybercrime, mafia states, human trafficking, and art and antiquities.
For details on this guide’s chapter authors, see the Acknowledgments page. Illustrations are by Ann Kiernan. Editing by Laura Dixon, Tanya Pampalone, and Reed Richardson. Andrea Arzaba was the project manager.
As we prepare to gather for the 12th Global Investigative Journalism Conference in early November — our first, online-only event — it seems a good time to share again with our colleagues where the Global Investigative Journalism Network and its conferences come from. It was a simple idea at the end of the 20th century — to gather the world’s investigative journalists to share their knowledge with each other — that gave birth to GIJN, which has now grown to 211 member organizations in 82 countries.
Cybercrime is any criminal activity perpetrated in a digital realm. While we often think of cybercrime as defined by “hacking,” there are many other types of crimes that are part of this world, and everything from trafficking in child pornography, to withdrawing illicit funds, to the theft of source code, falls into the category of “cyber” crimes.
Since the start of the pandemic in early 2020, data-driven reporting on COVID-19 has gone through several phases, including infection trends and vaccination rates. Here, a leading Malaysia-based data journalism trainer shares five post-pandemic coverage areas where data reporting can be equally effective.
In this excerpt, the executive editor of a regional US news outlet reveals the tactics that worked — and didn’t work — in their innovative campaign to raise $1 million to fund investigations. Among the key tips that emerged: one-on-one meetings, direct reach-outs, and published “what it cost” boxes are effective, and framing the pitch around benefits for the community, rather than the outlet, causes donors to dig deeper.
Disappearing people benefits the perpetrators in several ways: it considerably complicates any investigation, the person — dead or alive — remains hidden most of the time, and it can be mixed or confused with other crimes, such as kidnapping, child abduction, human trafficking, forced recruitment, murder, or desecration of a human corpse.
Andrew Lehren believes in the power of curiosity, and learning-by-doing. Here, he and some of his former students describe a method of journalism instruction that emphasizes collaboration, new tools, and innovative story pitching.
State-embedded actors are the most dominant criminal actor type in the world. The degree to which criminality permeates state institutions varies, from low-level corruption to full state capture, but across the spectrum this involvement has implications for countries’ capacity to respond to organized crime.
National laws that govern arms dealing are uneven, contradictory, influenced by corrupted leadership, and rife with loopholes. Other barriers to exposing the weapons trade range from maritime and aviation secrecy concealing the transportation of arms; corporate entities that shield dealers and operators; the role of neighboring countries as conduits, and a barter system that allows one illicit commodity, such as ivory, to be exchanged for another.
