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.
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.
In the first of three GIJN webinars focusing on the US 2020 election, Sarah Blaskey of the Miami Herald, Pulitzer-winning reporter David Cay Johnston, and AP’s race and ethnicity writer Kat Stafford set out the shocking stakes of the election, and offering key tips on how to tackle, and “land”, the stories that really need telling.
In week three of GIJN’s project to arm reporters with tools to tackle the toughest US election stories, #gijnElectionWatchdog includes three little-known election “killer apps” – one to zero in on coordination behind disinformation; one to assess foreign interference; and one to dig into far right groups bent on intimidating voters.
In week two of #gijnElectionWatchdog, GIJN’s project to arm US reporters with effective tools for election accountability coverage included a comprehensive election equipment database, campaign finance deep access, daily time-saving tools, and the rules for all 50 states in a single spreadsheet.
In its first week, #gijnElectionWatchdog showed reporters how to quickly flag campaign finance abuses; listed Twitter handles for nearly all US secretaries of state; explained America’s wildly different vote recount rules by state; and found a pioneering tool to dig into dark money ad spending on Facebook.
For our series on journalists’ favorite tools, we spoke to award-winning Mexican journalist Marcela Turati, co-founder of Quinto Elemento Lab, about the resources she uses to investigate disappearances in Mexico’s drug war. While information from victims’ families is paramount, she also shared insights on the value of open source tools, bank records, social media mining, and collaboration with nonprofit forensic teams in tracking the patterns behind the crisis.
Toxic negative partisanship between Democrats and Republicans is causing media audiences to selectively discount or exaggerate facts presented by reporters ahead of America’s November 3 election. From interviews with audience engagement editors and a survey of research, GIJN identified a dozen techniques that journalists can use to increase the chances that audiences across the divide will at least “hear” the facts they unearth.
Investigative reporters around the world are tightening their digital safety habits, out of concern that emergency pandemic laws, new spy technologies, and the lockdown itself have exposed journalists to even greater threats of surveillance and harassment. A dozen reporters and experts interviewed by GIJN agreed that sound digital hygiene was no longer optional for journalists in the COVID-19 world — and offered 10 security tips, including threat modelling, encrypted document transfer, and virtual burner phones.
To help reporters make sense of what’s known and yet to be learned about COVID-19 vaccines, Journalist’s Resource asked for insights from several people with expertise studying or reporting on vaccines.
