This week’s Friday 5, where we round up our favorite reads from around the online world in English each week, includes the backstory to Ukraine’s YanukovychLeaks, how journalists around the world are using defamation laws to protect themselves against online harassment, and a new free tool that could help journalists spot doctored photographs.
Winners of the sixth Global Shining Light Award were announced at the Global Investigative Journalism Conference tonight in Lillehammer, Norway. The prize honors investigative journalism conducted in a developing or transitioning country, done under threat, duress, or in the direst of conditions. The award drew 76 submissions received from 34 countries, for stories published or broadcast between January 1, 2013 and December 31, 2014.
This compelling 15-minute documentary tells the inside story of Yanukovychleaks, the extraordinary team investigation that recovered thousands of documents left behind by Ukraine’s fleeing ex-president. Here’s how a group of young Ukrainian journalists from competing outlets banded together for one the great scoops of the decade. The video, sponsored by GIJN members OCCRP and Scoop, was released at last weekend’s Mezhyhirya Festival, in which more than 300 journalists, data experts, and activists gathered at Yanukovych’s former estate.
It’s been three months since ex-president Viktor Yanukovych fled in the dead of night, after a last, desperate attempt to cover his tracks by destroying documents. It’s not going to be that easy, Mr. President. For the past three years, Ukraine’s “Journalists Day” has been commemorated with an anti-censorship rally in front of his former Mezhyhirya residence. This year, the sprawling compound itself has been hacked. From June 6-8, the Mezhyhirya Festival on investigative journalism, digital activism, and leaks will celebrate a new era of freedom of expression with those who were on site to help usher it in.
The extraordinary story of how Ukrainian investigative reporters saved thousands of documents left by fleeing ex-president Viktor Yanokuvych has gone viral. YanukovychLeaks.org, the site thrown together by an impromptu team of journalists and hackers, has received more than 600,000 visitors since going live on Tuesday – and those documents have been viewed 3.8 million times. “That means people really do care about transparency. It is valued,” says Drew Sullivan of the nonprofit Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), which is helping provide resources for the project.
This is a great time to be an investigative journalist in Ukraine. It is a moment of big disclosures. We had been reporting on the ultra-luxurious style of Yanukovych’s life and his corrupt ties for a long period, when this information was very well-guarded and kept as a big secret. It’s like one was trying to get into a closed, dark room for a long time. And then suddenly the walls have fallen.
