Drumroll Please! Our Global Shining Light Award Finalists Are…

Photomontage: Courtesy IDL-Reporteros

In the run-up to the 11th Global Investigative Journalism Conference in Hamburg this September 26 to 29, we’re featuring one Global Shining Light Award finalist per day for the next two weeks. The winners, chosen from 12 outstanding investigative projects, will be announced at the conference.

The Shining Light Award, first given out at our 2007 Global Conference, uniquely honors investigative journalists in developing or transitioning countries whose work was done under threat, duress, or in the direst of conditions.

The finalists were selected by an international panel of judges from a record 291 projects. All the stories were published in 2017 or 2018. The award is sponsored by the Global Investigative Journalism Network, an association of 182 organizations in 77 countries.

This year, given the broad range of work submitted, we divided the submissions into two categories: large outlets (with ten or more staff) and smaller outlets (with fewer than 10 staff). We hope you’ll agree that this year’s finalists showcase extraordinary journalism by some extraordinary journalists. Without further ado, here’s first on our list:

Small Outlets Category: “Car Wash” (“Lava Jato) and “White Collars” (“Lava Juez”), IDL-Reporteros (Peru+).

Team: For the “Car Wash” series: Gustavo Gorriti, Romina Mella, Hernán P. Floríndez, Rosa Laura, Margot Desautez. For “White Collars” series: Gustavo Gorriti, Romina Mella, Hernán P. Floríndez, Rosa Laura, Margot Desautez, Patricia Mayorga, Cruz Silva, Luis Miguel Purizaga.

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Peru’s IDL-Reporteros was one of the first media outlets to report on the bribes of Brazilian construction company Odebrecht and its complex corruption network — dubbed by prosecutors as “Operation Lava Jato” (Operation Car Wash in Portuguese) — that reached many other countries in Latin America, implicating presidents and other top government officials and politicians. As IDL-Reporteros doggedly continued reporting the case, its journalists uncovered another major story: corruption at the highest levels of Peru’s courts. Their “White Collars” series has prompted the state to make structural reforms to the justice system.