Global Investigative Journalism Network (https://archive.gijn.org/tag/latin-america/page/4/)
For our series on journalists’ favorite tools, we spoke with Sérgio Spagnuolo, founder and editor of the Brazilian data journalism agency Volt Data Lab. He has worked on disinformation and data verification before founding Volt, an independent journalism agency focused on investigating, analyzing, and visualizing data.
Media organizations across Latin America are working together to investigate how the COVID-19 pandemic is playing out in the region. Reporters say that cross-border collaboration is helping them report the story of a lifetime so that jointly they can work to “connect the dots.”
More than 20 journalists worked across four countries to uncover the hidden abuses behind the production of sugar, cacao, bananas, coffee and African palm with slave-like conditions for workers, illegal business practices and sustained environmental damage. Here’s how they did it.
El Instituto Prensa y Sociedad y Transparencia Internacional para Latinoamérica y el Caribe otorgaron el Premio Latinoamericano de Periodismo de Investigación al periódico salvadoreño El Faro, por su trabajo “¿Por qué queda impune el 90% de violaciones a menores?”.
Four years of work and 8,000 judicial rulings later, the team at Univision Data shows how in Costa Rica, a person is more likely to be convicted of a crime if they are assigned a public defense attorney than if they have a private one. Their methodology included web scraping, R and logistic regression — a statistical method common in social sciences but practically unexplored in newsrooms.
Twenty journalists, 11 media outlets, 11 countries, two continents and one massive corruption scheme. Investiga Lava Jato, a high-stakes, complex investigation, launched in June as a collaborative effort to develop and disseminate in-depth reports on corruption with tentacles in Latin America and Africa.
It’s been a big year for investigative reporters in Latin America, from unveiling high-level corruption to collaborating across countries. They’ve chased down leads on colleagues murdered at the border between Colombia and Ecuador, and covered the biggest migratory crisis in years. The reporters have demonstrated, once again, the importance of coming together to hold those in power to account — often doing it under very difficult conditions. Erika Lozano, editor of GIJN en Español, has gathered some of the best investigative stories published in Spanish during 2018.
Since its creation five years ago, Agência Pública has promoted a revolution not only in Brazil, but around Latin America. It is one of the main drivers of a regional scene that brings together digital native-media founded and led by journalists.
More than 115 countries worldwide have laws that require officials to turn over public records. Variously called freedom of information, access to information, right to information and right to know laws, they all can help journalists access public records. We’ve lined up GIJN’s Complete Global Guide to Freedom of Information to help you navigate the terrain.
Peru’s IDL-Reporteros was facing pressure from the Peruvian judicial and legislative authorities to reveal its journalistic sources after publishing a report revealing alleged acts of corruption in the judicial system. But after a push back by journalists and civil society, prosecutors have rescinded their orders.