The Greek wiretapping story has become an international scandal. But for months, the only outlets covering the story were small independent ones like Reporters United, whose dogged reporting has shaken up the country’s media landscape.
The award-winning Guatemalan journalist José Rubén Zamora is the founder of elPeriódico, a publication known for its investigations focused on government corruption. When he was arrested last year, local and international organizations called for his immediate release amid concerns of rising hostility to the press in the Central American country.
Pavla Holcová is an investigative journalist and founder of the Czech Centre for Investigative Journalism, an independent outlet that does cross-border investigations on organized crime and its impact on the Czech Republic (Czechia) and Slovakia.
Hungarian investigative media outlet Átlátszó and its editor-in-chief, Tamás Bodoky, have become targets in the latest smear campaign by pro-government news outlets, aimed at discrediting what remains of the country’s independent media.
A recent Reuters Institute webinar dug into a highly embarrassing, retracted investigation by India’s The Wire and also laid out best practices for investigative newsrooms to avoid both deliberate and unintentional source errors.
To confront the ongoing legal threats to independent media around the world, the Vance Center and OCCRP are launching Reporters Shield, a multi-million dollar legal support program and defense fund for investigative journalism and newsrooms.
The Uğur Mumcu Investigative Journalism Foundation plays a unique role in Turkey. Decades after its creation, it is still training investigative journalists in the country’s increasingly polarized media environment.
Being an investigative journalist in the Middle East and North Africa was immensely challenging in 2022, thanks to the dramatic decline in press freedom in places once considered safer for journalists such as North Africa, the lack of human and financial resources, and the inability to access data and public information in most Arab countries.
Like spyware, forensic tools can access everything on a phone or computer, but unlike spyware, such tools are in widespread, open usage in democracies as well as more repressive regimes. Their use has accelerated threats to the press while protections and public awareness lag behind.
Censorship. Imprisonment. Threats and violence. Online harassment. Legal battles. Exile. The list of challenges facing investigative reporters in Latin America is extensive. But despite the difficulties, journalists across the region are doing incredible work and holding those in power to account with their reporting.
