Global Investigative Journalism Network (https://archive.gijn.org/tag/whistleblowers/)
For every human source who assists investigative journalists, there are dozens of officials, victims, and potential whistleblowers with vital information whom reporters never engage.
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Whistleblowers – insiders who expose corrupt or illegal activities – are an important source of information for journalists everywhere. From their position inside governments, companies, and other organizations, they can provide crucial leads, evidence, and sometimes “smoking guns” that expose everything from fraud and waste to criminal conspiracies and war crimes.
This guide is created to encourage Indigenous investigative journalists and to provide empowering tips and tools. Developed collaboratively by the Global Investigative Journalism Network (GIJN) and the Native American Journalists Association (NAJA), the guide explores eight key topics.
In a session on high-level corruption at #GIJC21, a panel of reporters from Liberia, Ukraine, Sudan, Russia, and Lebanon suggested a series of strategies that can pry facts from obstinate government agencies, find whistleblowers, and deliver alternate forms of accountability for officials seemingly above the law.
It is vital for journalists to shield their sources, and at a dedicated workshop at GIJC21, two security experts gave practical examples of how reporters can reach out to sources in a way that protects the individuals and wins trust for both journalists and their organization.
In this excerpt from his new book on protecting democracy, Larry Diamond, founding co-editor of the Journal of Democracy, outlines 10 steps to combat kleptocracy around the world. Among them is the need to end the use of anonymous shell companies and “increase international support for investigative journalism.”
For this week’s Friday 5, where GIJN rounds up journalism news in English from around the world, we’re reading about the new Corruption Tracker for the international arms trade, dodgy deals in personal protective equipment procurement, and a recently launched organization to support whistleblowers legally, as well as financially.
As whistleblowers continue to feature in the news, GIJN has expanded our resource guide: Working with Whistleblowers. Updates include 10 tips from presentations made at the GIJC 2019 conference in Hamburg, and includes a round-up of other valuable materials, including the 2019 Perugia Principles developed by international journalists and experts, subtitled “Working with Whistleblowers in the Digital Age.”
This week, I moderated a discussion that followed the screening of Silenced, a new documentary that tells the stories of three whistleblowers who exposed torture, mass surveillance and government waste. What Silenced brought to the screen was the humanity of the whistleblowers and the patriotic idealism that compelled them to work in government agencies like the NSA and the CIA and then to speak out against the excesses they saw there. If anything, Silenced dramatizes how the landscape of government secrecy has changed dramatically since 9/11 and the war on terror.
Getting information from official or unofficial sources lies at the heart of investigative journalism. This section of the GIJN/NAJA guide covers:
How to make official requests for information
How to work with whistleblowers
How to protect yourself
Using Access Laws to Get Information
Information laws are key prying devices in the investigative toolkit.