Peru’s IDL-Reporteros was facing pressure from the Peruvian judicial and legislative authorities to reveal its journalistic sources after publishing a report revealing alleged acts of corruption in the judicial system. But after a push back by journalists and civil society, prosecutors have rescinded their orders.
Traditionally, documentary films can be a hard sell and haven’t always enraptured audiences. However, these films are now rising to the top of the heap given the possibilities of reaching an ever growing audience in a new battleground — the streaming arena, with the likes of established giants Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu and Apple.
Memetic Media, a nonprofit organization in Paraguay, has brought together three journalistic projects — Kurtural, El Surtidor and Fotociclo — that bring innovative elements to the production and presentation of investigations,reporting and urban photojournalism to engage a young, neglected audience.
Safety, fake news and collaboration dominated Brazil’s 13th Abraji Congress, where more than 750 journalists gathered in São Paulo for 70 panels and 22 courses and workshops on investigative journalism.
With the opposition in power for the first time since independence in Malaysia, one of the oldest and most influential digital news sites in Asia, Malaysiakini, which was set up in 1999 to show people what the state-controlled media wouldn’t, is looking to the future.
Injunctions, lawsuits, intimidation and pressure to reveal anonymous sources are all well-known tactics to stop journalists around the world from doing their work. Iceland? Not so much. But that’s exactly what has been happening recently to fellow muckrakers at two media outlets there, writes Imad Alrawashdeh for GIJN.
While journalism funded by interest organizations is still something of a gray zone, the question on the table now is no longer whether, but rather how investigative reporters can collaborate with NGOs, writes GIJN founding member Mark Lee Hunter.
Investigative journalism is dangerous because it exposes those in power. In the past six months, it has taken the lives of two journalists working within the EU’s borders. Forbidden Stories is showing its strength in picking up where the slain journalists left off.
When the DIG Festival first launched in 2016, it focused largely on Italian documentaries firmly anchored in quality investigative journalism. Just three years and four festivals later, it has grown into an international destination for some of the world’s best investigative documentary filmmaking. Held this year in Riccione, Italy, from June 1 to 3, the jury handed out seven awards, taking viewers from Kyiv to the Congo.
Joris Luyendijk’s keynote speech at the European Investigative Journalism Conference posed an uncomfortable question for investigative journalists. Are we, in our pursuit of exposing wrongdoing, unwittingly putting ourselves at risk of becoming pawns or useful idiots for demagogues, protest parties and populists like Trump?
As protests grip Slovakia in the wake of the murder of investigative journalist Ján Kuciak and harassment of his colleague Pavla Holcova, the Global Reporting Centre’s Peter W. Klein writes this open letter to the Prime Minister of Slovakia urging him to respect press freedom and the rights of Holcova and all the journalists who are doing their jobs.
With a $5 million funding budget, the new platform is dreamily promising a new “canvas on which journalists can paint the future of their industry.” But it isn’t clear how the blockchain-based technology will generate the cold hard cash needed to sustain the industry’s revenue-starved publications, writes Rowan Philp for GIJN.
At a time when the news media is under unprecedented attack, and the need for watchdog reporting has never been greater, we hope you will join GIJN today in marking World Press Freedom Day (#WorldPressFreedomDay). This is the 25th celebration of WPFD, but despite the years of meetings and proclamations by its sponsors UNESCO and others, conditions are getting worse, not better, for journalists around the world.
The real heroes are reporters who are out there taking risks by reporting the truth, says US historian Timothy Snyder. Support them by subscribing to newspapers and reading and sharing good journalism. And next time you meet a journalist, try thanking them for their service.
OpenStreetMap is the self-proclaimed Wikipedia of maps. It’s a free and open-source sketch of the globe, created by a volunteer pool that essentially crowdsources the map, tracing parts of the world that haven’t yet been logged. But despite its democratic aims, it’s still much like the mapping world overall — overwhelmingly dominated by male cartographers. That’s starting to change.
Every year South African investigative journalists are recognized for their hard work when the winners of the Taco Kuiper Award for Investigative Journalism are announced. This year has provided a chance to assess the highs and the lows of our investigative reporting after an extraordinary year.
The Choqueyapu River investigation was initially intended for the Bolivian newspaper, Página Siete. A three-month reporting project resulted in the publication of two 16-page newspaper specials. But the challenge was to transform it into an innovative digital story.
The cold-blooded murder of Slovak investigative journalist Jan Kuciak was also a cold slap across the face of modern Europe. That the public watchdogs could be halted simply by a brutal act of violence seems to portend a further breakdown of European values. Is it possible to legislate better security? There could be.
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.
The murder of Slovakian journalist Ján Kuciak and his fiancee, Martina Kušnírová, both 27, have sparked protests since the killings on February 25. On Friday, tens of thousands gathered at the Slovak National Uprising Square in Bratislava to demand the resignation of Prime Minister Robert Fico’s government and a thorough investigation of Kuciak’s death. Feature image by Tomáš Benedikovič.
An arsonist attempted to burn down the Rivne Investigative Reporting Agency in western Ukraine on Thursday evening, according to staff members and associates. An unknown attacker entered the newsroom’s first floor office, doused it with a flammable liquid and set it ablaze. Fortunately, no injuries have been reported.
From uncovering Big Pharma’s influence on healthcare to investigating child rape in El Salvador or documenting Mexican families tracking their “disappeared” loved ones, Latin American muckrakers had a busy year in 2017.
Communications lecturer and former Columbus Dispatch business journalist James Breiner on how credibility works to the advantage of independent media.
The Middle East is one of the most dangerous places in the world to be an investigative journalist. Which makes this list of top stories from 2017 by GIJN’s Arabic editor, Majdoleen Hassan, that much more impressive.
From laundromats to propaganda factories, GIJN’s Russian-language editor, Olga Simanovych, rounds up some of the most outstanding investigations out of the Former Soviet Union countries in 2017.
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.”
Emerson College’s Catherine D’Ignazio says defining story “problem” — that is how to tell it and on what platform — from a systems perspective can help journalists and news organizations understand their role within those systems and what form their intervention might take.
