As part of GIJN’s new series, Making Investigative Journalism Sustainable: Best Business Practices, we are featuring a set of key tips from 10 leading journalists and experts from around the world who are either working to build viable organizations around investigative journalism or work as experts to support these enterprises. Here is Govindraj Ethiraj, Founder, IndiaSpend and factchecker.in (India)
Filing right to information requests can be a very frustrating process, but the reward can be a valuable exclusive article. Here are four examples from India, Northern Ireland and the U.S., in which journalists successfully developed stories using national freedom of information and right to information laws.
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.
How can media make sense of a country that has over 1.2 billion people (about 17 percent of the global population), close to 800 languages, an electorate of 814 million, and the largest urban agglomeration in the world? How does one plan for a country where, at the end of 2012, about 22 per cent of the population lived below the poverty line (with a daily spending of less than about US45 cents in rural India and US55 cents in urban India), but which also has 89 billionaires and features fifth in the Global Rich List?
