Global Investigative Journalism Network (https://archive.gijn.org/category/profiles/page/6/)
“Synopsis,” “soundtrack,” “episode,” “mood”… This is the language used daily within the Parisian offices of Les Jours. But don’t let its vocabulary fool you: While the 3-year old media company borrows many of the codes of fiction producers for television, it actually runs a hard-hitting investigative news site.
FOIA is the solar-powered flashlight of the journalism world — it offers direct access to primary source material which sometimes leads to a big scoop. MuckRock executive editor JPat Brown shares the compelling, and sometimes hilarious, stories that results from MuckRock’s FOIA requests.
Last month, an international group of investigative journalists launched the Tax Disclosure Project – a global initiative requesting politicians in 20 countries to publicly disclose their tax returns. The project, coordinated by Finance Uncovered, aims to ensure transparency, accountability and an avoidance of wrongdoing and potential conflicts of interest among lawmakers. In this piece, Finance Uncovered co-director Nick Mathiason shares with GIJN the process of setting up this cross-border collaboration.
During the height of the “Red Scare,” the FBI built an elaborate case alleging America’s favorite newsman was a Communist. MuckRock sifted through 700 pages of Bureau documents that tracked Murrow’s acquaintances, movements and alleged involvement with Communist-front organizations.
Anuška Delić is not someone who goes unnoticed. Opinionated, brazen and bold, her tenacity and relentlessness has made her the foremost investigative reporter in Slovenia and among the most influential in Europe. This week, she’s made the POLITICO 28 Class of 2018, “the list of doers, disrupters and dreamers who will transform European life, politics and ideas.”
In 2007, Jordan became the first country in the Middle East to enact freedom of information laws — and Musab Al-Shawabkeh is the award-winning journalist who has been taking full advantage of it.
Doing good journalism in the Middle East and North African region is no easy feat. But since 2014, the journalists at Tunisia’s Inkyfada have been doing crucial investigative stories, supported by compelling visual storytelling and interactive reading experiences.
Journalism has never been easy in Kazakhstan. The outspoken newspaper Uralskaya Nedelya has rarely known a moment’s peace. But it is usually the lawmaker’s pen and the judge’s gavel that are the main enemies of the independent press.
Public records sometimes say the darnedest things. One example: A declassified memo from 1977 shows that the NSA wondered if psychics could nuke cities so that they became lost in time and space (yes, like in the post-apocalyptic anime Akira). Other times, it’s what they don’t say — like when the FBI found it necessary to redact the name of Superman’s alter-ego, Clark Kent.
In 2014, Hungarian investigative journalist András Pethő wrote an exposé about a series of expensive overseas business trips taken by the chief of staff to Prime Minister Viktor Orban for the popular website Origo.hu. Within days of the story’s publication, Origo’s editor in chief, Gergo Saling, resigned – apparently due to political pressure on Origo’s parent company, Magyar Telecom. Pethő and much of the rest of the site’s news staff quit soon afterwards in solidarity. The walkout led to much scrutiny of Origo and Hungary’s press freedom climate, both in Hungary and internationally.