Journalists can increase people’s trust and create a loyal audience by engaging with their readers in the comments section. This guide by The Coral Project has tips on how journalists can best interact with their audience, deal with potential abuse and find real value in the comments.
Late last year, the number of official deaths during Hurricane Maria were at a surprising low. That’s when the journalists at Puerto Rico’s Centre de Periodismo Investigativo kicked into high gear, forcing government to be more transparent and accountable.
The recently published paper, Bridging the Gap, Rebuilding Citizen Trust in Media, probably offers the most complete list of the current projects around media and trust. But those interviewed for the project viewed trust — and the way publications can gain and sustain it — differently. However, all initiatives seem to rely on two principles to optimize trust: transparency and participation.
Launched in October 2010, Chequeado was among the first digital fact-checking projects in the world. Today it is considered one of the global leaders with continuously innovative formats, channels and approaches.
Authoritarian governments have cleverly used the liberal norm of transparency in order to shut down liberal groups in their countries, according to a new report “Distract, Divide, Detach: Using Transparency and Accountability to Justify Regulation of Civil Society Organizations.”
Freedom of information requests have fueled recent environmental stories around the world. GIJN’s Resource Center director, Toby McIntosh, put together a round-up of a few that might stimulate your investigative thinking.
In Malaysia, the Sinar Project has taken up the challenge of collating patchy government statistics to provide the public, and journalists, with useable data.
A team of Reuters reporters, editors and data analysts reviewed the results of hundreds of autopsies and filed hundreds of public records requests involving deaths by Taser in the US. The result? Not only did the investigation catalogue 1,005 deaths, but it ended up building the most comprehensive database ever on Taser-related deaths.
Non-transparent media ownership in Hungary has created a government-friendly and controlled media environment, but investigative journalists such as Hungarian-born Tamás Bodoky are increasingly going online to report on “sensitive” topics including corruption. Small investigative outlets in the country have so far survived with crowdfunding campaigns and institutional grants.
The job of journalists in Italy uncovering and reporting scandals about the Catholic Church has changed. The news media are dedicating more space to these stories, while internal factions within the Church have given an advantage to reporters on the Vatican beat. But dealing with the topic can still be quite tricky…
