Stories of the Week: A Global Selection of Investigative Reports
Here are some of the best investigative stories of the week, compiled by the Global Investigative Journalism Network (GIJN). Today’s links include stories from Expressen.se, Tehelka, The Sochi Project, the New York Times, CBC, and Foreign Policy.
Reporting Tools & Tips
Holding Big Fish Accountable: How to Uncover Corruption
In a 2011 Transparency International survey, more than 3,000 business executives from around the world were asked to assess the effectiveness of various approaches to weeding out corruption. The result: nearly half (49%) indicated that investigative journalism played a critical role. Respondents from Pakistan (73%) and Brazil (79%), countries where the press reports fiercely on suspected acts of corruption, placed particular faith in the media’s ability to uncover wrongdoing. Why did the participants feel so strongly that journalists can help?
Reporting Tools & Tips
The Art of the Interview
The interview is one of the—if not the—most important tools we as journalists have to obtain information, to expand on information we may have from other sources, and to clarify facts and see things from different perspectives. We use the interview to expand upon the basic “who, what, where, how, when and why” of newsgathering. This is true whatever beat we may be covering: health, economics, politics, or issues having to do with the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
Data Journalism
Top Ten #ddj: The Week’s Most Popular Data Journalism Links
What’s the data driven journalism (#ddj) crowd tweeting about? Here are the week’s Top Data Journalism Links on Twitter (for January 30-February 5). This week our links include items from HybLab, the Verification Handbook, and GIJN, among others. Thanks to Marc Smith of Connected Action for gathering the links and graphing them.
News & Analysis
On the Trail: How To Request Information from Authorities
Power sets barriers and the reporter pushes back against them—it’s an unwritten rule on which Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez believed all journalistic work is based. Some governments, however, have begun to voluntarily lower these barriers by approving legislation designed to make information more accessible to their citizens. To date, approximately 90 countries globally have freedom of information laws, which establish rules and deadlines for facilitating the collection of data.
News & Analysis
Resources: A Guide to Investigative Books and Films
In June 2013, we invited our colleagues in the Global Investigative Journalism Network to name the book-length works of journalism, scholarship, and even fiction that had influenced their practice as investigators. The resultant list isn’t comprehensive – though we invite you to help complete it by sending us your favorites, including full title, authors, publication or broadcast date, a one-line bio to identify yourself so we can give you credit, and two or three lines that explain why you find a given work special. (Let someone else recommend your own stuff, please.)
Resource
Covering the Money behind the Millennium Development Goals
There are the two essential questions a reporter covering business, the economy, or just about any topic should always ask: ‘How much does it cost?’ and ‘Where will you get the money from?’. These simple questions are not only key to gaining information about your current story’s topic, but they offer greater insight into reasons for decisions that have a direct impact on a country and its citizens.
News & Analysis
A Dose of Advice: Tips on Covering Healthcare
In his 1999 book Development as Freedom, renowned economist and Noble laureate Amartya Sen stated that investment in healthcare can lead to success in meeting a wide range of development targets, such as those identified by the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Indeed, good healthcare improves quality of life, reduces morbidity and mortality, and raises economic productivity. As such, the World Health Organization (WHO) has recognised the importance of universal health coverage (UHC) and urged its member states to adopt programmes providing essential health packages.
News & Analysis
“Don’t Talk of Hanging” – A Week of Investigative Reporting in Pakistan
How do you cover corruption in Pakistan’s national security agencies? With caution and plenty of guts. Such reporting got investigative journalist Umar Cheema kidnapped, tortured, and nearly killed in 2010, but the founder of the Center for Investigative Reporting in Pakistan hasn’t backed down. Check out the latest from the Islamabad-based Cheema, who this week revealed that elite counter-terrorism officials used a secret agency fund to buy wedding gifts, luxury carpets, and gold jewelry for relatives of ministers and visiting dignitaries.
Resource
Global Is Local, Local Is Global: Tips on Covering the Environment
The environment is the overarching issue of the 21st century for two reasons:
1. The environment includes and touches everything: air, water, food, health, climate, energy, development, poverty, economics—the list could go on without end.
2. Nearly every major environmental indicator is in decline.
We are pushing up against the limits of the Earth’s ability to support us. Climate change, biodiversity loss, and nitrogen pollution are moving toward crisis levels, according to recent studies. There is little public awareness of this reality, which means journalists covering the environment have a plethora of important stories to cover.
Data Journalism
Top 10 #ddj: The Week’s Most Popular Data Journalism Links
What’s the data driven journalism (#ddj) crowd tweeting about? Here are the week’s Top Data Journalism Links on Twitter (for January 23-29). If you click on an image, you’ll be redirected to GIJN’s new Pinterest board, where you can find links to the stories.
This week our links include items from the Global Editors Network, Journalism.co.uk, Askmedia.fr (and GIJN’s own data resource page in Spanish. Thanks to Marc Smith of Connected Action for gathering the links and graphing them.
Resource
Two Million Dead in 2013: The HIV/AIDS Story Today
When a story on a particular topic is told over and over again, it leads to what is known as media fatigue—a situation where journalists and editors find the topic no longer newsworthy. However, the worst is when audiences become fatigued—when general readers are fed up with the subject as well. This problem is one that bedevils HIV/AIDS reporting despite the fact that many people—especially the affected and the infected—still want to learn more.
Resource
For Whom Does the Flag Wave? Tips on Covering Gender Equality
Although egalitarian societies with a pattern of matriarchy still exist in Asia, Africa, the Americas, and Oceania, the decline of matriarchal societies in the world has made way for patriarchal domination. Gender discrimination has become rampant. World history is, indeed, “his-story” and not “her-story”. The way we live today is influenced by, and based on, male-derived principles, which bring about male dominance and universal patriarchy. No matter where women live, they do not share equal rights with men. Sensitive and justice-seeking journalists should expose this social malady at every opportunity, so that the lives of women can improve.
Resource
A Right, Not a Privilege: Tips on Covering Education
Education is the path to development. It creates choices and opportunities for people in terms of access to employment, reduces the twin burdens of poverty and disease, and empowers people. For nations as a whole, education produces a more skilled and competitive workforce that can attract better quality foreign investment, thus opening the doors to economic and social prosperity for society as a whole.
However, people often do not see how these global goals can be translated to local realities. The media plays a key role in forming opinion, helping to ensure that citizens and politicians alike recognise that there is no room for complacency in tackling the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) related to education.
Data Journalism
Data Journalism Project Maps Drilling Profits and Aid in Kenya
In Kenya’s poor, dry Turkana region, recent discoveries of water and oil could change the lives of residents who depend on food aid for survival. In March 2012, the country’s President Mwai Kibaki announced that oil had been discovered in Turkana after exploratory drilling by an Anglo-Irish oil firm. And last year, UNESCO announced that large reserves of groundwater had been discovered in the drought-ridden area. How much will the new resources help Kenyans, and how much of the new wealth will flow back to European investors? The answer is complex, but a team of data journalists is working to make it more clear. Land Quest, a cross-border investigative journalism experiment which launched last week in beta, is using data to illuminate the competing financial interests in Kenya. It maps the flow of aid money from Europe to Kenya, and the flow of profits from Kenya back to Europe.
Resource
Food for Thought: Tips on Covering Hunger
When stories of a food crisis emerge, it is tempting to ask if the problem stems from the lack of grain. I followed this lead during my early years as a reporter until I read about an event that took place in 1970. That year, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Norman Borlaug. The American agronomist was recognised for his work that combined science and new agriculture techniques to help save millions from hunger. His research—heralding the Green Revolution—paved the way for agriculture built on high-yield outputs.
News & Analysis
Infographic: Mexican Journalists Face Worst Dangers
Recursos
Investigative Journalism: It’s All About Cross-Border Cooperation
Investigative journalists and other citizens interested in uncovering the organised crime and corruption that affect the lives of billions of people worldwide gain, with each passing day, unprecedented access to information. Huge volumes of information are being made available online by governments and other organisations, and it seems that the much-needed information is in everyone’s grasp. However, corrupt officials in governments and organised crime groups are doing their best to conceal information and to hide their wrongdoings.
Resource
One Problem, Many Dimensions: Tips on Covering Poverty
There are many different concepts and definitions of poverty. According to the Oxford University Poverty and Human Development Initiative, ‘Poverty is often defined by one-dimensional measures, such as income. But no one indicator alone can capture the multiple aspects that constitute poverty. Multidimensional poverty is made up of several factors that constitute poor people’s experience of deprivation–such as poor health, lack of education, inadequate living standard, lack of income (as one of several factors considered), disempowerment, poor quality of work and threat from violence.’
Data Journalism
Mapping Data Journalism on Twitter
This intriguing graph depicts a network of 989 Twitter users whose tweets from January 13 to 24 contained the hashtag “#ddj” (data-driven journalism). We’re pleased to see that our site gijn.org was among the top domains and our data journalism resource page among the top URLs that appeared. This work is the brainchild of Marc Smith (@marc_smith), a sociologist of “computer-mediated collective action” who, among his varied activities, maps social media networks that reveal “the key people, groups, and topics discussed in a public conversation.”
Resource
“All Readers Now Are Global” — Busting Myths on Int’l Reporting
With two and a half years to go until 2015, the deadline to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), progress has been mixed. The spread of some diseases, such as HIV/AIDS, is being brought under control. In China, the proportion of people living on under a dollar a day has been halved. At the same time, though, the number of those living on under a dollar a day in sub-Saharan Africa has dropped by a measly one percent. Why such uneven progress?
Resource
Reporter’s Guide: A Millennium Development Goal Primer
To Hermilio, a working day is no less than 12 hours. In return, he receives a wage that does not guarantee that his two children, who are six and seven years old, have food three times a day, nor does it prevent them having to walk miles to reach the nearest school. This is the reality in the Cusarare community in Chihuahua, northern Mexico, and in many other parts of the world. The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)—which underpin an alliance between governments and society geared at eradicating marginalisation—were created up in response to the suffering of Hermilio and the billions of others like him around the world.
Resource
Intro: Reporter’s Guide to Millennium Development Goals
Editor’s Note: For the next two weeks, GIJN is running a series drawn from the newly released Reporter’s Guide to the Millennium Development Goals: Covering Development Commitments for 2015 and Beyond, published by the International Press Institute. Agreed to in 2000, the UN Millennium Goals comprise an ambitious agenda to improve quality of life around the world, focusing on such issues as poverty, gender equality, and education.
News & Analysis
“In Order To Fight a Network, You Need To Create a Network”
Paul Radu of the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project gave an engaging talk at the recent TEDxBucharest gathering, looking at the globalization of crime and how investigation reporters and public-interest hackers can push back. Among the topics he covers: Russian money laundering, European horse meat, and Azerbaijan corruption. Says Radu: “In order to fight a network, you need to create a network.”
News & Analysis
Shining Light Winners Donate Prize Money to Jailed Journalist
Winners of the Global Shining Light Award have donated their US$1000 in prize money to the family of imprisoned Azerbaijani journalist Avaz Zeynalli. The Shining Light Award honors investigative journalism in a developing or transitioning country, done under threat or duress. Zeynalli was editor in chief of the daily newspaper Khural, one of a handful of independent media voices in the repressive, oil-rich nation of Azerbaijan, which lies at the borders of Russia, Iran, and Turkey