To expose the massive, cross-border corruption scandal that came to be known as Operação Lava Jato, or Operation Car Wash, journalists from across Latin America had to find ways to work together. In the process, they transformed investigative journalism in the region. GIJN Spanish Editor Catalina Lobo-Guerrero wrote the story of their epic collaboration.
Looking for a data journalist working in Spanish? Periodistas de Datos aggregates up-to-date information on data journalists working across Spain and Latin America. The platform’s creators explained to Maria Crosas Batista how they built it.
It’s been a big year for investigative reporters in Latin America, from unveiling high-level corruption to collaborating across countries. They’ve chased down leads on colleagues murdered at the border between Colombia and Ecuador, and covered the biggest migratory crisis in years. The reporters have demonstrated, once again, the importance of coming together to hold those in power to account — often doing it under very difficult conditions. Erika Lozano, editor of GIJN en Español, has gathered some of the best investigative stories published in Spanish during 2018.
Winners of the Javier Valdez Latin American Award for Investigative Journalism were honored during the 2018 Latin American Conference of Investigative Journalism (Colpin), which was held from November 8 – 11 in Bogota, Colombia.
Peru’s IDL-Reporteros was facing pressure from the Peruvian judicial and legislative authorities to reveal its journalistic sources after publishing a report revealing alleged acts of corruption in the judicial system. But after a push back by journalists and civil society, prosecutors have rescinded their orders.
Since its creation five years ago, Agência Pública has promoted a revolution not only in Brazil, but around Latin America. It is one of the main drivers of a regional scene that brings together digital native-media founded and led by journalists.
The Institute for Press and Society and Transparency International for Latin America and the Caribbean awarded the Latin American Prize for Investigative Journalism to the Salvadoran newspaper El Faro for its work “Why Do 90% of Child Rapes Go Unpunished?”
More than 20 journalists worked across four countries to uncover the hidden abuses behind the production of sugar, cacao, bananas, coffee and African palm with slave-like conditions for workers, illegal business practices and sustained environmental damage. Here’s how they did it.
Twenty journalists, 11 media outlets, 11 countries, two continents and one massive corruption scheme. Investiga Lava Jato, a high-stakes, complex investigation, launched in June as a collaborative effort to develop and disseminate in-depth reports on corruption with tentacles in Latin America and Africa.
Four years of work and 8,000 judicial rulings later, the team at Univision Data shows how in Costa Rica, a person is more likely to be convicted of a crime if they are assigned a public defense attorney than if they have a private one. Their methodology included web scraping, R and logistic regression — a statistical method common in social sciences but practically unexplored in newsrooms.
