When the COVID-19 pandemic first hit Brazil, a team of data journalists set out to illustrate what the death toll looked like by creating a data visualization that presented something beyond the numbers. The team considered various ways of displaying the story. Here’s a behind-the-scenes look at how they created At the Epicenter.
WhatsApp’s popularity in Latin America and Africa presents an opportunity for emerging, digital-first titles and smaller newsrooms. Laura Oliver explains how newspapers and startups from Zimbabwe to Brazil and South Africa are using the platform in innovative ways to share their stories.
For our “My Favorite Tools” series, we spoke with Brazilian journalist Gustavo Faleiros, editor of environmental investigations at the Pulitzer Center where he leads the Rainforest Investigations Network (RIN), about mapping deforestation and using data to chart what is happening in global forests.
At least 860 journalists have died from COVID-19 in the last 12 months, according to a European nonprofit that has been tracking cases among media professionals since the start of the pandemic. Latin American countries account for more than half of the tally.
The pandemic has seen film festivals around the world go virtual, including Transparency International’s Films For Transparency. Here are five of our favorites from the anti-corruption documentaries that made it onto their shortlist.
From the global coronavirus pandemic to the soul-searching that has come as a result of the Black Lives Matter protests, 2020 has cracked open society’s fault lines. Organizations are questioning their role, and journalism has not been spared this moment of introspection.
For our series on journalists’ favorite tools, we spoke with Sérgio Spagnuolo, founder and editor of the Brazilian data journalism agency Volt Data Lab. He has worked on disinformation and data verification before founding Volt, an independent journalism agency focused on investigating, analyzing, and visualizing data.
With the help of two former students, Brazilian data journalist Marcelo Soares collected data showing that deaths from COVID-19 in Brazil’s cities were far higher than authorities claimed. Check out how he did it.
Governments around the world, some which have sent workers home, are announcing interruptions in responding to freedom of information requests. Journalists are being told to expect delays in more than a dozen countries. But press freedom advocates warn that countries are taking big steps backward just when the free flow of information is most needed. GIJN’s Toby McIntosh rounds up some of the nations which have been affected.
Reporters Sans Frontieres published, for the first time, a list of press freedom’s 20 worst digital predators in 2020. Whether state offshoots, private-sector companies, or informal entities, they reflect a reality of power at the end of the 21st century’s second decade, in which investigative reporters and other journalists who cause displeasure risk being the targets of predatory activity by often hidden actors.
