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News & Analysis

937 posts

News & Analysis

Media’s Arab Spring Turns to Winter

Let me tell you how I think it will go from here. Free speech – always a lonely and sickly child in the Arab world – is already back in intensive care throughout the region.

Street protests will gradually die out. Dissenters will continue to be arrested and given harsh sentences. Sustained government propaganda will convince any waverers that political stability and economic prosperity are far more important than personal freedoms, rule of law, universal human rights, and democratic values.

Despite the wishful thinking of the crowds, the final chapter of the Arab Spring is being written: it is about over.

News & Analysis

The Rise of Digital Repression: Interactive Infographic

Online is no refuge: The PEN American Center, an association of writers and others working to defend free expression, created this interactive report to showcase the global rise of digital repression, using data from its case files over the past 12 years.

News & Analysis

International Day To End Impunity Slated for Nov. 23

Impunity is defined as “without punishment, without consequences.” It has become a shorthand way to describe the thousands of attacks on journalists and freedom of expression around the world each year. IFEX, the global network of 88 groups defending free expression, each year organizes an International Day to End Impunity. This year it takes place November 23, with events every day this month. Over the past ten years, more than 500 journalists have been killed, and in 9 of 10 cases their killers have escaped — with impunity.

News & Analysis

Why Investigative Journalism is Good News for News Business

I may have misled people for the last few years by saying that investigative journalism is not a business but a public service. Investigative journalism does, in fact, have commercial value. While investigative journalism may not produce the web traffic of popular topics, a media organization reaps intangible but valuable benefits. Jeff Bezos, for one, seems to appreciate that value.

News & Analysis

IPYS Launches Travel Grants to Rio for Latin American Journos

The Instituto Prensa y Sociedad (IPYS), one of the three partner organizations behind the Global Investigative Journalism Conference, has launched a fellowship program for journalists to attend the Latin American Conference on Investigative Journalism (COLPIN) in Rio de Janeiro (October 12-15). For the first time COLPIN will be held simultaneously with the Global Conference, as well as with the national congress of ABRAJI, Brazil’s investigative journalism association.

The fellowships are part of the 4th Advanced Course for Investigative Journalism, co-organized between IPYS and Transparency International. A group of 12 journalists from across Latin America will be selected after proposing projects on organized crime in the region.

News & Analysis

Nonprofit News Model is Fragile

Nonprofits have been touted as a possible alternative to the collapsing business models of for-profit news. But a study released last week by the Pew Research Center points to the fragility of that model and also to the need for a more concerted effort to shore it up. The study identified 172 nonprofit news outlets throughout the U.S. – two-thirds of these were launched only since the 2008 financial crisis. While the recession has accelerated the closure of newspapers and the downsizing of news staffs throughout the country, it has given rise to a boom in nonprofit news.

News & Analysis

“We Are Our Worst Enemies”

As I am speaking to you today, our profession is under serious threat. Journalists are under siege because politicians have realized that we have become a bunch of cowards. We have become our own worst enemies because we want to make a living instead of making a difference in our communities, our countries, and our people. The pen is no longer mightier than a sword because the person holding it doesn’t have courage, guts, and zeal to use it as a weapon to defend the truth, justice, democracy, and our constitution.

News & Analysis

Where Angels Fear To Tread

Last week, author Bob Ellis wrote: “Kate McClymont ruined my life and I do not like her. She is going after Craig Thomson lately, and she had better watch it.”

Jockey Jim Cassidy once spat on my back — or, given his size — the back of my knees.

“You fucking bitch, you’ve ruined my life,” he said.

Tom Domican, charged with murder, attempted murder and conspiracy to murder (then acquitted of the lot) once sent me this message: If I were a man he would have broken my jaw by now.

News & Analysis

Latin American Investigative Journalism Awards Now Open

Applications are open for the coveted Latin American Investigative Journalism Awards. Organized by the Instituto Prensa y Sociedad (IPYS) and Transparency International, the competition offers US$30,000 in awards, including a grand prize of $15,000. Deadline to apply is June 14. The awards will be presented at the Global Investigative Journalism Conference in Rio this October.

News & Analysis

Are Wealth Disclosures Dangerous?

About a third of all countries in the world now require officials to publicly disclose their assets. Institutions like the World Bank and the OECD see this as a good thing. Asset declarations, they say, are crucial tools for fighting corruption and holding officials accountable. As an investigative journalist in the Philippines, I found asset statements vital to digging into conflicts of interest and the illegal accumulation of wealth by those in public office. But pushback on official disclosures is coming from an unlikely quarter.

News & Analysis

Why We Need To Tell Stories

So you’ve amassed terabytes of data, reams of documents and hours of expert testimony, all backing up your conclusions. What’s the best way to convince people you’re right?

Tell them a story.

Ideally, a compelling, colorful tale weaving in memorable anecdotes and striking details. Printed in a clear, legible font. Oh, and it helps – no kidding – if it rhymes.

At least according to Nobel-prizewinning economist Daniel Kahneman, author of the outstanding Thinking, Fast and Slow, who’s made a career out of understanding – experimentally – how our brains take in information and make decisions. It isn’t always pretty, but it does help explain why storytelling is a centuries-old means of passing on information.

News & Analysis

South African Awards Highlight World Class Reporting

High quality investigative journalism is spreading around the world. One country where it has put down strong roots, despite an often hostile environment, is South Africa. The depth of reporting can be seen in the just announced Taco Kuiper Awards, that country’s highest prize for investigative journalism. In the awards announcement speech last weekend, which GIJN is pleased to reprint here, Wits University Journalism Professor Anton Harber salutes the finalists for work on extraordinary stories ranging from police death squads to government waste, fraud, and abuse of the public trust.

Methodology News & Analysis

ICIJ’s Offshore Exposé: Bigger than Wikileaks’ ‘Cablegate’

It’s certainly one of the single biggest leaks of documents in the history of investigative reporting. Over the last 15 months, 86 journalists in 46 countries have been poring over a cache of 2.5 million documents on offshore holdings obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. ICIJ coordinated the investigation from DC, using a secure messaging system to communicate with a worldwide team of journalists and free-text retrieval software and programmers on three continents to mine the information from the documents.

News & Analysis

Why Open Data Isn’t Enough

Hacks and hackers meetups. Open government initiatives. Hackathons and datafests. The media development world has discovered big data, and it is embracing it big time. Donors like the Knight and Omidyar foundations are focused almost exclusively on tech fixes to what ails the media. As one prominent donor told a nonprofit newsroom executive, “We no longer fund content.”

News & Analysis

Business People: Investigative Journalism Best Against Corruption

In a never-ending fight for resources – with editors, owners, donors, and developers – we investigative journalists need to make our case more effectively than ever before. Despite knowing that what we do makes a difference, we often don’t marshal the data and arguments that show why investigative reporting is worth the investment.

News & Analysis

Is Investigative Reporting in ICU?

Hit by the twin blows of economic crisis and collapsing business models, newspapers and TV stations eliminated or downsized their investigative units. Yet at the same time, the muckraking spirit remains alive.

News & Analysis

SCOOP Celebrates 10 Years

Longtime GIJN member SCOOP, based in Denmark, is a cross-border network of investigative journalists who help fund projects, connect reporters for collaboration, and organize conferences and trainings. On SCOOP’s 10th anniversary, our colleagues there put together an impressive list of activities, awards, and events, which we’re reprinting here in full.

News & Analysis

Disclosing Tax Data

Around the world, many governments are proposing painful solutions to the problem of public debt and imposing heavier tax burdens on citizens. As government services are cut because public coffers are bare, public attention is shifting to the taxes paid – or not paid – by the wealthy and the privileged.

News & Analysis

ARIJ honors investigations from Mideast, North Africa

Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism (ARIJ) honored reporters from across the region during its annual congress in November, attended by a record 300 journalists from 24 countries.

News & Analysis

How To Do Investigative Reporting in Pakistan

When journalist Umar Cheema launched the Center for Investigative Reporting in Pakistan (CIRP) last week, he did so with a bang: A blockbuster story that hit the headlines around the world. Two-thirds of Pakistani MPs, his report said, do not pay their taxes. Neither did President Asif Ali Zardari – famous for his spending sprees, polo games and luxurious country estates – and more than half the Cabinet.