Carlos Dada delivered the 2026 Reuters Memorial Lecture. As the leader of El Faro, he has edited and published dozens of investigations exposing corruption of governments of all colors.
In El Salvador, the government has increasingly failed to honor public access to Information laws, forcing journalists to obtain data through other channels to hold power to account.
Accusations of sexual harassment against the head of a state-owned bank, the transnational growth and influence of Salvadorian gang MS13, and the striking accumulation of wealth by the president and his family in one of the poorest countries in Central America. These were some of the investigative topics among the prize-winning stories featured at the 2022 Latin American Conference on Investigative Journalism.
A press freedom crisis is rippling across Latin America and in some places the technological, legal, and physical threats have grown so severe that investigative journalists feel compelled to flee their home countries to keep reporting.
Latin American journalists have faced threats, attacks, and court proceedings just for doing their work. In a GIJN webinar, three leading investigative reporters recounted their experiences and gave their tips on how to face up to these challenges.
Since 1998, El Faro has fought for accountability in El Salvador, a Central American country saddled with stubborn poverty, a history of civil conflict, and pervasive criminal gangs. But after decades of investigating criminal organizations, corruption, and illegal practices by security forces, the newspaper might be facing one of its greatest challenges yet.
How should journalists investigate what has happened to people who have disappeared? What is the best way of dealing with their families, the organized crime groups often involved in the cases, and corrupt officials? Mexican investigative journalist Marcela Turati and Óscar Martínez from El Salvador, both specialists on reporting on transnational organized crime, shared their tips during GIJN’s Spanish language webinar.
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.
The last time GIJN Spanish Editor Catalina Lobo-Guerrero was in El Salvador, she was so shaken up by stories of violence and sexism towards women there that she ended up writing an Op-Ed for The New York Times with the following opening line: “I don’t want to go back to El Salvador.” But last month she returned to the country to attend the ForoCAP, the Central American Journalism Forum.
From uncovering Big Pharma’s influence on healthcare to investigating child rape in El Salvador or documenting Mexican families tracking their “disappeared” loved ones, Latin American muckrakers had a busy year in 2017.
