This investigation into the suspicious death of a Ukrainian immigrant while in police custody won Gazeta Wyborcza reporter Jacek Harłukowicz Poland’s top prize for journalism in 2021.
Attacks on reporters and a downward trend in transparency in Pakistan in recent years have had a notable impact on the press climate, but despite this, journalists are using the resources available to them to continue investigating. Using traditional shoe-leather reporting and relying on communities to access information and even, at times, for data, this year journalists have dug into rape statistics, alleged police brutality, and human smuggling, alongside other stories.
This summer a Swedish prosecutor announced that a 30-year probe into the killing of a Swedish prime minister would be closed since there was “reasonable evidence” that the assailant had been identified. The man now believed to have carried out the crime was identified two years ago by investigative journalist Thomas Pettersson, who spent 12 years investigating who killed Olof Palme.
In this global GIJN webinar, “Investigating the Police: Reporting Tips and Tools,” co-organized with the African Investigative Journalism Conference, we bring together four experienced journalists: two from Africa and two from outside the continent, who have investigated law enforcement. They will share their experience and reporting techniques ranging from source development to forensic analysis.
The investigative team behind a story in The Washington Post that focused on two military helicopters that roared over demonstrators in Washington, DC on June 1 shared the exploratory scripts used to analyze and visualize flight data for the aircraft which monitored protesters in the city that day.
After NJ Advance Media spent lots of time and money to find and clean up data for a police accountability project, it decided to sell this data, while still keeping its database free to the public. Reporter Stephen Stirling tells OpenNews’s Erika Owens how this works.
