Once a $30 billion global bluechip financial services and tech company, Germany’s Wirecard filed for insolvency in 2021 in what is one of the biggest corporate frauds of the modern era. The tenacious and prolonged investigative reporting by the Financial Times, helped to uncover widespread fraud, malpractice and negligence. Dan McCrum, a senior Financial Times […]
This edition of the GIJN Toolbox explores global databases and remote sensing resources that reporters can use to investigate local environmental threats.
Telegram is an invaluable research tool, helping journalists mine for information, investigate groups of people whose content is otherwise banned or limited on social media, and track protests and political movements in authoritarian countries. Here’s how to get started using it.
Bellingcat’s Logan Williams, who presented a panel on digital forensic reporting labs at the 2022 International Journalism Festival 2022 in Perugia, Italy, gives his top tips for journalists interested in open source digital investigations.
The state of democracy is at its lowest point in decades. Around the world, free and fair elections face growing threats from disinformation campaigns, foreign interference, voter suppression, campaign corruption, violence, intimidation, and more. Covering elections as a political “horse race” has never been enough. This approach to campaign reporting is even more inadequate today, […]
Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, GIJN has published a series of stories and tipsheets for investigative journalists covering the war.
With Facebook blocked and Twitter restricted, Telegram is one of the last social network applications fully accessible to internet users in Russia. Archiving Telegram reports of military engagements from on the ground in Ukraine ensures any evidence can still be used by researchers if a user deletes a post, if a channel is removed, or if an entire platform becomes inaccessible.
Satellite imagery provides information that can enhance the ability to write compelling narratives about the state of our planet, cutting across multiple beats. But such a tool tends to be complex and out of the reach for many journalists, so this guide offers a process that reporters interested in covering the climate crisis can use for story projects.
Bulletproofing your story demands much more than getting the facts right. It requires a meticulous approach from the start in order to pass quality control.
Cybercrime is any criminal activity perpetrated in a digital realm. While we often think of cybercrime as defined by “hacking,” there are many other types of crimes that are part of this world, and everything from trafficking in child pornography, to withdrawing illicit funds, to the theft of source code, falls into the category of “cyber” crimes.
GIJN has updated our popular step-by-step guide on verifying images to help find out whether the photo you saw on social media is the real thing. Try out some simple-to-use free tools — including TinEye, Google Reverse Image Search, Photo Sherlock, and Fake Image Detector — to check the source of a picture and whether it has been manipulated.
The illegal trafficking of wild animals and plants is damaging biodiversity worldwide and spreading diseases. It’s an international story, with great opportunities for investigations in virtually every country. GIJN’s new guide encourages deep reporting about the subject with tips and tools for covering a global trade.
The Internet Archive is a nonprofit library that is best known for the Wayback Machine, a staple for investigative journalists around the world. Launched 20 years ago, the Wayback Machine now archives much of the public web at the rate of more than 1 billion archived URLs per day.
Updated in March 2022 GIJN hosted two webinars in 2021 with Paul Myers, a leading international expert in online investigation. Myers, who works for the BBC and is a popular speaker at GIJN conferences, shared his tips on the best tools and strategies for digging up information about people online. Check out his tipsheet below. […]
In a GIJN webinar three journalists who have experience reporting on the #MeToo movement and sexual abuse told reporters how to investigate an often-hidden crime. Among their tips are preparing interviewees for the process, investigating the story doggedly, and using alternative forms of evidence to verify your story. Read these and other tips for investigating sexual abuse allegations in GIJN’s latest tipsheet.
The excessive force used against anti-racism protesters around the world, in the wake of the killing of George Floyd in the US, reveals the need for more visual forensic skills in newsrooms to hold police to account. GIJN identified 12 tools and 12 methods that proved effective in several recent investigations that exposed harm done by security forces.
More than 115 countries worldwide have laws that require officials to turn over public records.
Finding out who owns land can be tough. While property registration systems exist in almost all countries, the quality and availability of the information vary widely. World Bank experts estimate that only 30% of the world’s population has a legally registered title to their land, a widely quoted figure that Bank officials stress is a […]
More than 90,000 commercial ships make up the world’s commercial fleet, their locations closely tracked and the resulting data available for free. GIJN has compiled a comprehensive list of resources to track ships (including big yachts and fishing boats). We link to four dozen valuable sources of information. At the 2023 Global Investigative Journalism Conference, […]
Bellingcat’s Online Investigation Toolkit with resources on image and video verification, social media search, searching people, maps and satellites, and more. Updated 2023. GIJN’s Guide to Fact-Checking Investigative Stories by Nils Hanson (2021) GIJN’s Four Quick Ways to Verify Images on a Smartphone by Raymond Joseph. (2021) Making Stories Ironclad & Bulletproof Line-by-Line, by Nils […]
Online Research Tools and Investigative Techniques by the BBC’s ace online sleuth Paul Myers has long been a starting point for online research by GIJN readers. His website, Research Clinic, is rich in research links and “study materials.” Here’s a tipsheet about finding people online that Myers presented at a 2019 GIJN webinar. And a […]
Verifying video materials should be a routine part of reporting, but knowing how to use the digital tools to verify fake content is just one part of the skill. The creative techniques behind video verification are even more important.
