Investigations into water exploitation, government spying, and paramilitary murders were among the stories honored with awards at the annual Latin American Conference on Investigative Journalism (COLPIN), which drew hundreds of journalists from more than 20 countries in an online forum.
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.
For our series on journalists’ favorite tools, we spoke to award-winning Mexican journalist Marcela Turati, co-founder of Quinto Elemento Lab, about the resources she uses to investigate disappearances in Mexico’s drug war. While information from victims’ families is paramount, she also shared insights on the value of open source tools, bank records, social media mining, and collaboration with nonprofit forensic teams in tracking the patterns behind the crisis.
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.
A group of independent reporters and photographers, working in different parts of Mexico, decided to come together and try to answer a fundamental question: Where do the disappeared of the drug war end up? GIJN’s Spanish editor Catalina Lobo-Guerrero spoke with the team of journalists to find out how they did it.
The award-winning Mexican journalist and author Marcela Turati was recognized with the 2019 Maria Moors Cabot Prize. In this Q&A, she talks about how Mexican journalists are organizing and collaborating to better protect themselves against threats of violence and death.
This past week, the Pen Chapter of San Miguel de Allende honored the 16 journalists murdered this year with an offering typical for Día de Muertos celebration in Mexico. In each home, those who have passed away are remembered with an altar, decorated with flowers, candles, objects, and food that those who have passed away liked when they were alive.
Mexican journalist Miroslava Breach had been investigating the alleged relationship between drug traffickers and politicians in northern Mexico for years when she was shot eight times in front of her home in 2016. However, several of her colleagues would not be silenced and, more than two years after her murder, published a series of reports on the case and the loose ends left by the official investigation of the crime.
In the run-up to the 2019 Global Investigative Journalism Conference in Hamburg this September 26 to 29, we’re featuring one Global Shining Light Award finalist per day. Check out “The Country With 2,000 Graves,” by the collective “A donde van los desaparecidos” and Quinto Elemento Lab.
