Some of the most significant progress in newsroom information security over the past decade has been in smaller, more recently-formed digital startups — many of them investigative outlets. They are proving they can effectively incorporate strong information security strategies into their highly adaptive and responsive workflows.
Intrepid journalists are still conducting investigations on countries within the Arab Gulf region, but due to political repression and other press freedom issues, they’ve had to report from afar or build and operate their independent media sites while in exile.
Mediapart’s co-director of investigations, self-taught journalist Fabrice Arfi, offers his tips and best practices for educating oneself, cultivating sources, confronting targets fairly, and avoiding legal trouble.
How do you tackle a fraudulent blue-chip corporation that has the means to deploy teams of lawyers, private investigators, hackers, and even foreign spies to stop your investigation? Dan McCrum, an investigative reporter at the Financial Times, told GIJN how he took down a fraudulent $30 billion company, and offered tips on how reporters can tackle bad actors with almost unlimited resources.
Many autocracy-displaced media have managed to navigate surviving outside their home country with varying degrees of success. In a series of interviews with GIJN, exiled news leaders from around the world offer some best practices and lessons learned from their own experiences.
In an era when an investigative reporter’s contacts are often all stored on their smartphone or in the cloud, digital security best practices are paramount to protect your sources.
There is no way for investigative journalists to completely eliminate the risk of being tracked through metadata, but in an interview with Reporters Without Borders, technology expert Benjamin Finn offers a series of tips on how to protect both your sources and yourself.
GIJN has partnered with the London-based Centre for Investigative Journalism and the Freedom of the Press Foundation to offer a unique safety and security training program specifically tailored for investigative journalists and others in watchdog newsrooms. It will be delivered online through hands-on practical training sessions with some of the world’s leading journalism safety trainers.
Increasingly, investigative journalists are being hacked, doxxed, harassed, and assaulted by external threats, so GIJN — with generous support from the Ford Foundation — is proud to launch a first-of-its-kind safety guide for newsrooms at GIJC21: the Journalist Security Assessment Tool (JSAT).
GIJN is publishing a new business tools guide focused on helping news outlets solve their administrative needs. Written by Talya Cooper and illustrated by Chafiq Faiz, the guide includes useful software and applications – many of which are free – for small newsrooms. Tools included cover administration, management, communication, file sharing, accounting, SEO, audience engagement, audiovisual, content management, subscriber management, design and data visualization, social media and email marketing, site security, and password management.
