GIJN Statement in Support of the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project

Questions were recently raised by a group of journalists about the amount and influence of US government funding for the nonprofit investigative newsroom, the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project.

GIJN continues to support the independent and transparent investigative work that OCCRP has produced since its founding in 2007 and notes that OCCRP and its associated newsrooms are GIJN members in good standing. (We also note that GIJN Board members who are associated with OCCRP recused themselves from the writing of this statement.)

OCCRP has done groundbreaking work that has revealed government and corporate corruption around the world and in the US. Its cross-border, award-winning investigations have tracked money laundering and other misdeeds by oligarchs, autocrats, banks, and corporations, sparking multiple regulatory reforms. OCCRP has been an active collaborator with other GIJN members.

OCCRP has consistently disclosed its sources of funds, which has included numerous foundations, individual donors, and US government money. It has remained an independent voice in investigative journalism. GIJN sees no evidence of influence or pressure from its funders on OCCRP’s work nor evidence that its editorial content has been guided or changed in any way.

We also note many nonprofit newsrooms throughout the world receive a combination of funding from government and private sources. GIJN members are expected to disclose their major funders.

While discussions and debate on funding can be enlightening and provocative, the key guidelines for investigative newsrooms, both for profit and nonprofit, are transparency and diversity of revenue and maintaining a firewall between the newsroom and funders, advertisers and investors. Those practices ensure editorial independence, accuracy, fairness, and context upon which newsrooms are ultimately judged.

At this time, GIJN calls for investigative journalists worldwide to unify and cooperate. Press freedom and journalists are increasingly under vicious attack for their truth-telling and threatened daily through regulation and legislation, prosecution, imprisonment, and physical violence.

During this critical moment, investigative journalists need to stand together and renew their efforts on behalf of citizens and democracy. Only through unassailable journalism and deep cooperation with one another they will be able to resist government and corporate forces that seek to destroy them and their work.