I have been involved in politics and policy-making for over 50 years, and as you can imagine I hold strong feelings about reporters and the media. They’re not what you might think, however. Far from considering journalists to be irritating pains in the neck — though I’ve known a few who qualified — I believe them to be indispensable to our democracy.
Burma is one of the world’s champions of media censorship. The Committee to Protect Journalists recently ranked my country as No. 9, while listing Eritrea and North Korea as the most censored countries worldwide. Should I be proud of this? Ironically, yes. Burma, also known as Myanmar, was ranked No. 2 in 2006 when I started working as a journalist, so this ranking is an improvement.
For the second time, organizers of MezhyhiryaFest are going to bring together more than 300 journalists and public activists on June 6-7, establishing a tradition of celebrating the Journalist’s Day in the former billion-dollar estate of runaway President Viktor Yanukovych, who continues to hide out from murder and corruption charges in Russia.
Over the past few years we have seen the huge potential of data and document mining in investigative journalism. Tech savvy networks of journalists such as the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) have teamed together for astounding cross-border investigations. OCCRP has even incubated its own tools, such as VIS, Investigative Dashboard and Overview. But we need to do better. There is enormous duplication and missed opportunity in investigative journalism software.
As the glittering PEN awards ceremony came to a close on Tuesday, a set of cartoons flashed onto the screen. At the end of the night, postcards were handed out to members of the audience bearing the same cartoons. The pictures all told aspects of the story of a journalist from Azerbaijan. Khadija Ismayilova had just been presented with PEN’s Barbara Goldsmith Freedom to Write award – in absentia, since she was unable to attend the ceremony herself.
DataHarvest, the European Investigative Journalism Conference, opened Friday, May 7, in Brussels with more than 300 participants coming from across Europe, and some from outside, as well. There was special emphasis on sharing methods and techniques — as well as failures — at the conference. The keynote speech came from Marina Walker Guevara, deputy director of GIJN member International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. Guevara stressed how ICIJ chooses people to be part of its projects, including its award-winning series on offshore tax scams.
Everyone must be free to seek, receive and impart knowledge and information on all media, online and offline. Quality journalism enables citizens to make informed decisions about their society’s development. It also works to expose injustice, corruption, and the abuse of power. For this, journalism must be able to thrive, in an enabling environment in which they can work independently and without undue interference and in conditions of safety.
As we mark this year’s World Press Freedom Day, the memory of the attack at the Charlie Hebdo office in Paris hangs in the air. So, too, do the shootings in Copenhagen, where a cartoonist was again among the targets. So far 2015 has not been much of a friend to freedom of expression. I’m afraid that I do not have good news: across the full length of our continent, media freedom is now under threat.
Every year, 3 May is a date which celebrates the fundamental principles of press freedom; to evaluate press freedom around the world, to defend the media from attacks on their independence and to pay tribute to journalists who have lost their lives in the exercise of their profession. It is World Press Freedom Day. Over 100 national celebrations take place each year to commemorate this Day.
The annual report on freedom of the press by Freedom House is out, and the results are grim: Freedom of the Press 2015 finds that harsh laws and violence have driven press freedom to its lowest level in over a decade. “Conditions for the media deteriorated sharply in 2014 to reach their lowest point in more than 10 years, as journalists around the world encountered more restrictions from governments, militants, criminals, and media owners,” states the report.
One of the most common things you hear people say when you tell them what you do for a living is “Oh, I hate fundraising! I could NEVER do that for living!” Nice. Yes, there are all kinds of fun responses we can think of. But what it tells us over and over again is that fundraising is widely perceived as something dirty, ethically challenged, or at least uncomfortable. People think that talking to someone about their own money is akin to talking to them about sex, politics, or religion. It’s not.
The annual awards are out from Investigative Reporters and Editors, the world’s largest and oldest association of investigative journalists. Each year the organization honors “outstanding investigative work” with its highly regarded IRE Awards. The prizes are given in 16 categories that include small to large markets, broadcast and multimedia, books, FOI, students and more. A GIJN founding member, IRE began in 1975 and is based at the University of Missouri Journalism School.
The just announced 9th Taco Kuiper Award for Investigative Journalism is South Africa’s highest prize for investigative journalism. The award recognizes “outstanding examples of journalism, that reveal untold stories, hold the powerful to account and question those in public life.” GIJN is pleased to reprint below the awards speech by Wits University Journalism Professor Anton Harber, given March 27 in Johannesburg.
Statistics collected by state governments across India can be and are easily fudged. GIJN Member IndiaSpend–India’s first data-driven journalism initiative–analyzes reported data on disease outbreaks, crime, and traffic accidents in the country’s most populous state and compares it to better governed and richer neighbors. What unfolds is a story of lies and statistics.
The 103-minute documentary on pollution that has taken China by storm — Under the Dome — has proven too much for officials in Beijing, who have removed the film from popular Chinese video sites. After the video’s online release on February 28, Under the Dome garnered an extraordinary 100 million views in under 24 hours.
Khadija Ismayilova is an internationally recognized investigative journalist known for her work digging into the hidden financial dealings of Azerbaijan’s first family. In jail and facing up to 12 years in prison, Ismayilova released her closing statement at her most recent trial through her lawyer. It’s published here.
Project Word asked about the challenges and opportunities facing contemporary freelance investigative reporters. The organization surveyed more than 250 journalists in 36 states in the U.S. and 26 countries. Among its key findings: increasingly dire conditions in the freelance economy are forcing many journalists to abandon public-interest stories.
During the first decade of the 21st century, a transformation in journalism began in Europe and spread to other continents. A movement in the use of data for investigations has helped lead to a resurgence of investigative reporting and has spurred the creation of small online newsrooms, as well as non-profit journalism. As ever, the conundrum of paying for it remains.
Despite concerns over government surveillance, a recent survey by the Pew Research Center of investigative journalists found that few have let those worries prevent them from pursuing a story or reaching out to a source. The survey also found a more pressing concern–decreasing newsroom resources.
Think tanks are no less susceptible than any other institution to the temptations of money and power. There is a real need to address the single most important ingredient of a think tank’s quality: the integrity of its research. Journalists can do their part by treating claims of impartiality more skeptically and providing context about possible conflicts of interest.
A growing number of reports of self-censorship, hacked websites, and intimidation and arrest of writers in Serbia has prompted public warnings by the U.S. government, EU and OSCE. One of the country’s top journalists, Branko Čečen, is firing back with a hard-hitting critique on the sorry state of the nation’s media. He asks: Who’s really interested in accountability and real reporting in Serbia today?
As Japan imposes new laws that threaten to restrict the freedom of the press, some Japanese reporters and activists are seeking new ways to conduct investigative journalism. The problem for Japan now is finding its own sustainable business models, as happened in other Asian countries such as South Korea or the Philippines, where there are now thriving investigative reporting centres.
Online FOI tools have gone global, but how well do they really work? UK-based nonprofit mySociety, which makes the Alaveteli FOI platforms came to some surprising conclusions about the sites’ impact and who uses them. Read the reports’ highlights to find out.
As I write, the news coverage of the massacre at Charlie Hebdo’s offices has been remarkably good, detailing the weekly’s provocations of Islam over the years. Less has been said about Charlie’s running battle with the French extreme right, and its role in widening the space for investigative reporting in France… This assassination has failed, stupidly and massively. It has created a bigger public than Charlie ever created on its own.
More than 320 journalists from the Middle East, North Africa, and the Gulf met in Amman in early December for the 7th annual Forum for Arab investigative journalists, the largest ever. The ARIJ annual meeting has become the main networking forum for investigative journalists across the Arab world. In spite of an increasingly hostile media environment, many Arab journalists are still engaged in in-depth reporting, pushing against the narrowing borders of free reporting, and raising standards for documentation.
In today’s globalized, interconnected world, free and unfettered information is more essential than ever. It’s essential for markets and for trade. And it’s essential to empowering the emerging community of global citizens and ensuring that they are able to participate in a meaningful way in the decisions that affect their lives. Likewise, those who are deprived of information are essentially disempowered. We live in a world in which the abundance of information obscures the enormous gaps in our knowledge
From the Global Investigative Journalism Conference in 2011 to the groundbreaking YanukovychLeaks project this year, Ukraine has become a key link in international investigative reporting. So it should be no surprise that the annual Ukrainian investigative journalism conference is growing into a regional event.
