Global Investigative Journalism Network (https://archive.gijn.org/tag/press-freedom-2/page/8/)
This latest installment of the GIJN Bookshelf includes recommendations from our global editorial team, and features titles on uncovering COVID-19 corruption, tracking the assassination of a reporter, a historical look at a pioneering female investigative journalist, and unraveling the mystery of disappearing jumbo jet that shocked the world.
Meduza, one of Russia’s last remaining independent news sites, lost 30,000 donors after the government cut off subscriber payments from the country due to unflinching coverage of the war. In less than a week, two German reporters organized a crowdfunding campaign to replace those funds to try to save Meduza.
An editor from Novaya Gazeta and the chief executive of Meduza discussed ongoing censorship and other threats to independent media inside Russia, plus their plans for the future, during an International Press Institute webinar.
Throughout 2021, reporters from around the Arab world produced excellent investigative work, some as part of transnational reporting collaborations on human rights, financial investigations, and phone hacking. With a salute to our colleagues who work in this very tough neighborhood, we are proud to highlight some of the best investigative journalism from the past year.
In the aftermath of the repressive Taliban regime’s takeover of Afghanistan, some newsrooms fully relocated abroad — but some reporters remained behind, and leak critical stories about the government to their partners in exile.
Due to her tenacity in scrutinizing Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro’s family’s transactions, reporter Juliana Dal Piva is a constant target of attack by the president’s supporters. Here, she describes the security measures, collaboration, and persistence needed to keep the spotlight on autocrats in repressive environments.
Among the most frequently used forms of legal coercion against investigative journalists are SLAPPs (“strategic litigation against public participation”), which aim to intimidate reporters into abandoning their investigations. The practice of abusing legal systems by those in power to silence critics has reached global proportions. Its damage is far-reaching and curbing it is an imperative for democracy and maintaining peace.
The “dream” of Efecto Cocuyo began mid-2014, initially a discussion in cafes with colleagues and friends Laura Weffer and Josefina Ruggiero, as well as three young journalists. An incubator programme helped the team design an operational and business model and in January 2015 Efecto Cocuyo was born, launching first on Twitter and gaining 18,000 followers in its first week. At the time of writing, it had more than 724,000.
In 2021, as the mainstream Indian media continued to transform into the propaganda arm of the ruling party, intrepid digital platforms, mainly from the English-language press, have published some groundbreaking investigative stories and forced the rest of the legacy media to follow their lead.
Over the last 12 months investigative journalists in Bangladesh uncovered cases of corruption, abuse of power, money laundering, and institutional negligence. The biggest topic last year, as in previous years, was corruption. But in picking the top stories of 2021, we also considered significance and novelty, the diversity of issues covered, impact, and a focus on the vulnerable and marginalized sectors of society as much as the depth and techniques used in any investigation.