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.
Investigative journalists went all out last year in covering surveillance issues. From a deep-dive into the dark side of pandemic tech in Singapore’s techno-utopia to an in-depth look at how schools are spending thousands on unreliable “aggression detectors” in the name of student safety, global reporters have been holding Big Tech accountable for its role in fueling authoritarianism worldwide.
Throughout 2021, reporters from around the Arab world produced excellent investigative work, some as part of transnational reporting collaborations on human rights, financial investigations, and phone hacking. With a salute to our colleagues who work in this very tough neighborhood, we are proud to highlight some of the best investigative journalism from the past year.
In 2021, as the mainstream Indian media continued to transform into the propaganda arm of the ruling party, intrepid digital platforms, mainly from the English-language press, have published some groundbreaking investigative stories and forced the rest of the legacy media to follow their lead.
The year 2021 was a “grand cru” for the French-speaking investigative world. To make our selection of the top 12 investigations published in French in the past 12 months, we examined the techniques used, the stories’ impact in society, the risks taken, and geographic diversity. For sure — from Algeria to Canada, from the Comoros to Belgium — the journalists working on these investigations have shown courage and perseverance.
After 80 panels and workshops — presented by 200 speakers and attended by close to 1700 editors and reporters from 148 countries — the 12th Global Investigative Journalism Conference closed with renewed resolve for innovative investigations, and a broad invitation to an in-person conference in Sydney in 2022.
The digital security risk to investigative journalism was reaffirmed this month with the release of the Pegasus Project. This involved collaborative reporting by 17 global media outlets on a list of thousands of leaked phone numbers allegedly selected for possible surveillance by government clients of Israeli firm NSO Group. At least 180 journalists are implicated as targets. It also sheds light on four chilling cases profile here.
Our NodeXL mapping from July 19 to 25, which tracks the most popular data journalism stories on Twitter each week, found imaginative data-driven coverage of the Olympics by The Washington Post, The New York Times, and other major outlets. In this edition, we also feature a piece by Reuters Graphics on how a Chinese lake has been decimated by sand mining, a cross-border investigation into the billion Euro business of elder care, and a deep dive into TikTok’s secretive algorithm by The Wall Street Journal.
Our NodeXL mapping from July 12 to 18, which tracks the most popular data journalism stories on Twitter each week, found a series of articles resulting from the collaborative project that analyzed an unprecedented leak of more than 50,000 phone numbers selected for surveillance. In this edition, we also feature an insight into Facebook’s data wars by The New York Times, an interactive piece by Al Jazeera on how the holy city of Mecca has expanded, and a colorful project by the Washington Post on the rise of K-pop.
