The 2023 edition of the Freedom in the World report, produced by US nonprofit Freedom House, was released today. This is the 50th year of the study, which tracks global trends and compiles individual country reports on political rights and liberties.
From birth control disinformation to cross-border surrogacy, from high-level sexual harassment to the brutality of “everyday” violence against women, 2022 was a year marked by a number of noteworthy investigations into stories with a gender angle.
From a film investigating the attempted murder of Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny to a stark cautionary tale about how climate change is playing out on the Arctic coast, see the Oscar-nominated documentary shortlists.
As co-founder and inaugural executive director of the Global Investigative Journalism Network, David Kaplan has led the organization from an initiative with a few hundred followers in 2012 to a “network of networks” spanning some 244 groups in 90 countries. WAN-IFRA sought his insights on the future of investigative journalism in a divided world.
The subject of sexual violence remains a sensitive if not taboo subject in much of the world and often goes unreported. Watchdog journalism has started digging deeper into sexual violence, but these investigations are still few relative to the estimated number of cases worldwide. GIJN has now updated its reporting guide for this hard-to-cover subject.
In the 12 months since Russia invaded Ukraine, investigative journalists have navigated enormous information challenges and personal risks to expose everything from war crimes and sanctions busting to hidden oligarch loot and Russian “filtration” camps.
Watchdog reporters should discard the idea that damage from natural disasters is simply due to “acts of nature,” and rather think of it as a mix of hazardous events and human actions.
When news outlets report that new research studies prove something, they’re almost certainly wrong. They find evidence — sometimes, extraordinarily strong evidence. It’s important journalists understand that science is an ongoing process of collecting and interrogating evidence, with each new discovery building on or raising questions about earlier discoveries.
GIJC23 will be the biggest-ever conference, with 150 technique-focused panels, practical workshops, and networking sessions, and 2,000 watchdog journalists expected. Here are seven other reasons you should attend.
The award-winning Guatemalan journalist José Rubén Zamora is the founder of elPeriódico, a publication known for its investigations focused on government corruption. When he was arrested last year, local and international organizations called for his immediate release amid concerns of rising hostility to the press in the Central American country.
Pavla Holcová is an investigative journalist and founder of the Czech Centre for Investigative Journalism, an independent outlet that does cross-border investigations on organized crime and its impact on the Czech Republic (Czechia) and Slovakia.
All news companies face challenges when it comes to retaining audiences and building revenue. But African independent media sites may find an even steeper hill to climb and must look for fresh solutions. During the final installment of INMA’s 2022 Africa Webinar series, two experts from the continent shared their advice.
GIJN’s Document of the Day: The 2022 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) from Transparency International concludes that 95% of countries have made little to no progress fighting corruption since 2017, and notes the link between corruption and increased violence around the world.
A recent Reuters Institute webinar dug into a highly embarrassing, retracted investigation by India’s The Wire and also laid out best practices for investigative newsrooms to avoid both deliberate and unintentional source errors.
To confront the ongoing legal threats to independent media around the world, the Vance Center and OCCRP are launching Reporters Shield, a multi-million dollar legal support program and defense fund for investigative journalism and newsrooms.
GIJN’s global team has reviewed some of our favorite investigative podcasts from 2022. Some dig into scandals and allegations of sexual assault. Others take a deep dive into the backgrounds of leading political figures or explore national scandals. There are tragedies, public interest stories, politics, crime, and corruption, with stories drawn from around the world.
Practicing good mental hygiene is a continuous process for investigators that requires active input at all times. Bellingcat offers these small steps to minimize and mitigate your exposure to distressing content, to possibly save you from burnout or worse.
Being an investigative journalist in the Middle East and North Africa was immensely challenging in 2022, thanks to the dramatic decline in press freedom in places once considered safer for journalists such as North Africa, the lack of human and financial resources, and the inability to access data and public information in most Arab countries.
Is measuring reach, attention, and engagement the same as measuring the impact of your journalism? The model and technology are not yet there to measure the real impact of a story on behavior and policy.
Like spyware, forensic tools can access everything on a phone or computer, but unlike spyware, such tools are in widespread, open usage in democracies as well as more repressive regimes. Their use has accelerated threats to the press while protections and public awareness lag behind.
Some of the most notable stories in German-language journalism this year revealed that many good guys in public life were, as it turned out, not so good. The following stories examine public figures from sports, the media, and far-right networks, and also show how big players — such as sportswear behemoth Nike, the fintech company Wirecard, or multinational energy giant RWE — behave when they think nobody’s watching.
Geographical diversity, the stories’ impact and uniqueness, the risks taken, and the techniques used were some of our criteria for selecting the strongest French language investigations of the year, selected by GIJN French Editor Alcyone Wemaëre, GIJN Francophone Africa Editor Maxime Domegni, GIJN French Assistant Editor Moran Kerinec, and Africa Assistant Editor Aïssatou Fofana.
In the past three years since the first known case of COVID-19 was identified, watchdog reporters around the world have taken on one of the most difficult and deadly investigative topics in modern history. Here, we look back at some of the most innovative and impactful stories written about the pandemic and its consequences.
Accusations of sexual harassment against the head of a state-owned bank, the transnational growth and influence of Salvadorian gang MS13, and the striking accumulation of wealth by the president and his family in one of the poorest countries in Central America. These were some of the investigative topics among the prize-winning stories featured at the 2022 Latin American Conference on Investigative Journalism.
Because of growing threats to democracy, and a recent series of ever more extreme societal and planetary crises, funders now see more clearly the pivotal, central role that independent public interest media play in keeping our societies and economies open. And what’s even more encouraging is to see this positive talk backed up with concrete measures and actions.
The year 2022 has seen a number of noteworthy books about investigative journalism, from going undercover to dig into corruption to investigating the underbelly of the global migration crisis, and from a deep dive into dodgy COVID contracts to a book from Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Ressa.
The Outlaw Ocean Project — a nonprofit journalism organization that reports on the “watery two-thirds” of our planet — used material from several years of investigations on the high seas to create a new, seven-part podcast.
Radio Zamaneh Executive Director Joris van Duijne discusses how his exile media site is reporting from afar on the widespread political protests reverberating across Iran.
