Register for #GIJC25
November 20, 2025 • 09:00
-
day
days
-
hour
hours
-
min
mins
-
sec
secs
Donate

Accessibility Settings

reset all

text size

decrease increase

color options

monochrome muted color dark

reading tools

isolation ruler

other

no motion large cursor

Stories

909 posts Clear filters ×

News & Analysis

“Don’t Talk of Hanging” – A Week of Investigative Reporting in Pakistan

by David E. Kaplan • February 3, 2014

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.

News & Analysis

“In Order To Fight a Network, You Need To Create a Network”

by GIJN Staff • January 18, 2014

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

by David E. Kaplan • January 15, 2014

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

News & Analysis

Violence, Impunity Take No Holiday for Ukraine Journalists

by Brian Bonner • December 29, 2013

While most of the Christian West woke up on Christmas morning to messages of peace on earth and goodwill to mankind, events in Ukraine continued down a bloody and almost heathen, medieval path. The physical assaults in the last month on journalists, activists, and demonstrators are too numerous to keep track of without a scorecard and a timeline. But the trend is so clear that even the most witless criminal investigator can see the pattern.

News & Analysis

Should Investigative Journalists Partner with Business?

by Mark Lee Hunter, Kami Dar, Evelyn Groenink, and Mirjana Milosevic • December 20, 2013

The setting was a recent conference on “Business in Society” at INSEAD, the business school based outside of Paris, where the authors of this article were presenting their ideas on media development. Unexpectedly, an executive from a major shipping company stood up and said: “We just learned that one of our sub-contractors in a certain country is in organized crime. We want more investigative reporting, so we can avoid such issues.”

News & Analysis

ARIJ Awards Showcase Gutsy Reporting Across Middle East

by David E. Kaplan • December 17, 2013

Amid media crackdowns, civil war, and social unrest, 350 journalists from Tunisia to Iraq gathered in Jordan earlier this month for the annual conference of Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism (ARIJ). Despite arduous conditions across much of the Middle East and North Africa, the conference provided strong evidence that the region’s best journalists are continuing to fight the good fight — pushing hard against censorship and bringing world-class investigative reporting to the Arab world. The event, ARIJ’s sixth annual gathering, took place in Amman from December 6-8.

News & Analysis

Media’s Arab Spring Turns to Winter

by Rana Sabbagh • December 6, 2013

Let me tell you how I think it will go from here. Free speech – always a lonely and sickly child in the Arab world – is already back in intensive care throughout the region.

Street protests will gradually die out. Dissenters will continue to be arrested and given harsh sentences. Sustained government propaganda will convince any waverers that political stability and economic prosperity are far more important than personal freedoms, rule of law, universal human rights, and democratic values.

Despite the wishful thinking of the crowds, the final chapter of the Arab Spring is being written: it is about over.

News & Analysis

The Rise of Digital Repression: Interactive Infographic

by PEN America • December 3, 2013

Online is no refuge: The PEN American Center, an association of writers and others working to defend free expression, created this interactive report to showcase the global rise of digital repression, using data from its case files over the past 12 years.

News & Analysis

International Day To End Impunity Slated for Nov. 23

by GIJN Staff • November 5, 2013

Impunity is defined as “without punishment, without consequences.” It has become a shorthand way to describe the thousands of attacks on journalists and freedom of expression around the world each year. IFEX, the global network of 88 groups defending free expression, each year organizes an International Day to End Impunity. This year it takes place November 23, with events every day this month. Over the past ten years, more than 500 journalists have been killed, and in 9 of 10 cases their killers have escaped — with impunity.

News & Analysis

Why Investigative Journalism is Good News for News Business

by James Breiner • September 12, 2013

I may have misled people for the last few years by saying that investigative journalism is not a business but a public service. Investigative journalism does, in fact, have commercial value. While investigative journalism may not produce the web traffic of popular topics, a media organization reaps intangible but valuable benefits. Jeff Bezos, for one, seems to appreciate that value.

News & Analysis

IPYS Launches Travel Grants to Rio for Latin American Journos

by GIJN Staff • July 26, 2013

The Instituto Prensa y Sociedad (IPYS), one of the three partner organizations behind the Global Investigative Journalism Conference, has launched a fellowship program for journalists to attend the Latin American Conference on Investigative Journalism (COLPIN) in Rio de Janeiro (October 12-15). For the first time COLPIN will be held simultaneously with the Global Conference, as well as with the national congress of ABRAJI, Brazil’s investigative journalism association.

The fellowships are part of the 4th Advanced Course for Investigative Journalism, co-organized between IPYS and Transparency International. A group of 12 journalists from across Latin America will be selected after proposing projects on organized crime in the region.

News & Analysis

Nonprofit News Model is Fragile

by Sheila Coronel • June 17, 2013

Nonprofits have been touted as a possible alternative to the collapsing business models of for-profit news. But a study released last week by the Pew Research Center points to the fragility of that model and also to the need for a more concerted effort to shore it up. The study identified 172 nonprofit news outlets throughout the U.S. – two-thirds of these were launched only since the 2008 financial crisis. While the recession has accelerated the closure of newspapers and the downsizing of news staffs throughout the country, it has given rise to a boom in nonprofit news.

News & Analysis

“We Are Our Worst Enemies”

by Mzilikazi wa Afrika • May 27, 2013

As I am speaking to you today, our profession is under serious threat. Journalists are under siege because politicians have realized that we have become a bunch of cowards. We have become our own worst enemies because we want to make a living instead of making a difference in our communities, our countries, and our people. The pen is no longer mightier than a sword because the person holding it doesn’t have courage, guts, and zeal to use it as a weapon to defend the truth, justice, democracy, and our constitution.

News & Analysis

Where Angels Fear To Tread

by Kate McClymont • May 20, 2013

Last week, author Bob Ellis wrote: “Kate McClymont ruined my life and I do not like her. She is going after Craig Thomson lately, and she had better watch it.”

Jockey Jim Cassidy once spat on my back — or, given his size — the back of my knees.

“You fucking bitch, you’ve ruined my life,” he said.

Tom Domican, charged with murder, attempted murder and conspiracy to murder (then acquitted of the lot) once sent me this message: If I were a man he would have broken my jaw by now.

News & Analysis

Latin American Investigative Journalism Awards Now Open

by GIJN Staff • May 9, 2013

Applications are open for the coveted Latin American Investigative Journalism Awards. Organized by the Instituto Prensa y Sociedad (IPYS) and Transparency International, the competition offers US$30,000 in awards, including a grand prize of $15,000. Deadline to apply is June 14. The awards will be presented at the Global Investigative Journalism Conference in Rio this October.

News & Analysis

Are Wealth Disclosures Dangerous?

by Sheila Coronel • May 6, 2013

About a third of all countries in the world now require officials to publicly disclose their assets. Institutions like the World Bank and the OECD see this as a good thing. Asset declarations, they say, are crucial tools for fighting corruption and holding officials accountable. As an investigative journalist in the Philippines, I found asset statements vital to digging into conflicts of interest and the illegal accumulation of wealth by those in public office. But pushback on official disclosures is coming from an unlikely quarter.

News & Analysis

Why We Need To Tell Stories

by Reg Chua • April 22, 2013

So you’ve amassed terabytes of data, reams of documents and hours of expert testimony, all backing up your conclusions. What’s the best way to convince people you’re right?

Tell them a story.

Ideally, a compelling, colorful tale weaving in memorable anecdotes and striking details. Printed in a clear, legible font. Oh, and it helps – no kidding – if it rhymes.

At least according to Nobel-prizewinning economist Daniel Kahneman, author of the outstanding Thinking, Fast and Slow, who’s made a career out of understanding – experimentally – how our brains take in information and make decisions. It isn’t always pretty, but it does help explain why storytelling is a centuries-old means of passing on information.

News & Analysis

South African Awards Highlight World Class Reporting

by Anton Harber • April 11, 2013

High quality investigative journalism is spreading around the world. One country where it has put down strong roots, despite an often hostile environment, is South Africa. The depth of reporting can be seen in the just announced Taco Kuiper Awards, that country’s highest prize for investigative journalism. In the awards announcement speech last weekend, which GIJN is pleased to reprint here, Wits University Journalism Professor Anton Harber salutes the finalists for work on extraordinary stories ranging from police death squads to government waste, fraud, and abuse of the public trust.

Methodology News & Analysis

ICIJ’s Offshore Exposé: Bigger than Wikileaks’ ‘Cablegate’

by Sheila Coronel • April 5, 2013

It’s certainly one of the single biggest leaks of documents in the history of investigative reporting. Over the last 15 months, 86 journalists in 46 countries have been poring over a cache of 2.5 million documents on offshore holdings obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. ICIJ coordinated the investigation from DC, using a secure messaging system to communicate with a worldwide team of journalists and free-text retrieval software and programmers on three continents to mine the information from the documents.

News & Analysis

Why Open Data Isn’t Enough

by David E. Kaplan • April 2, 2013

Hacks and hackers meetups. Open government initiatives. Hackathons and datafests. The media development world has discovered big data, and it is embracing it big time. Donors like the Knight and Omidyar foundations are focused almost exclusively on tech fixes to what ails the media. As one prominent donor told a nonprofit newsroom executive, “We no longer fund content.”

© Copyright 2025, Global Investigative Journalism Network
Site by Rectangle