Amman – The fourth annual conference for Arab Investigative journalists opens in Amman on Friday to debate the importance of in-depth reporting as media around the world is undergoing a revolution not just of tweets and Facebook postings but of data-driven journalism.
Over 250 Arab and international journalists, editors and media professors from 22 countries will discuss challenges facing investigative journalism, a rarity in the region’s new rooms for a variety of political, legal, social and religious taboos.
The three-day conference is organized by the Amman-based Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism (ARIJ), the only media support network promoting investigative journalism in nine countries through training, coaching, pre-publication legal screening and funding investigation costs.
‘The contribution of investigative journalism to accountability, development, and democracy is now well recognized, and it has never been more important. These are the stories that matter – in-depth reports on the issues that affect our lives”, said David Kaplan, one of three keynote speakers at the conference.
“I’m privileged to join my colleagues at ARIJ, who are part of a growing, global movement of investigative reporters embracing the latest tools and techniques,” explained Kaplan, a leader in today’s global investigative journalism movement.
Kaplan will share his experience in promoting accountability and social justice by tracking crime and corruption, a global malady. The other key note speaker will assess the future of Arab media in a region undergoing political change since the toppling of the Tunisian and Egyptian presidents early 2011.
They are Yosri Fouda (Egypt), editor and presenter of Egypt’s leading current affairs talk show “Last Word” on OnTv and Ahmed Benchamsi (Morocco), visiting scholar at Stanford University and former publisher, founder and editor of Morocco’s two best-selling weeklies: TelQuel (French) and Nishan (Arabic).
The conference is sponsored by the Copenhagen-based International Media Support (IMS), The Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA) and Foundations for Open Society (FOSI). Other sponsors include the embassies of the United States of America, Norway and the Netherlands, The Jordan Kuwait Bank, Aramex, the global transport and logistics services company and Zain, Jordan’s mobile telecommunications company.
Swedish Ambassador to Jordan, Charlotta Sparre, said that only countries that have a plural and free expression of opinions can truly be called democratic. “And investigative journalism with its questioning of established truths and exposure of wrong-doing, has a particularly important role in bringing about the core principle of a democracy: Accountability. [Or as someone has said: 'help to throw the rascals out']“.
Key trainers include award-winning journalists Tim Sebastian, chairman and presenter of the Doha Debates and former presenter of BBC’s “Hardtalk”, Dr. Mark Hunter, professor of media at INSEAD and author and editor of the ARIJ Manual for Investigative Journalists; “A Story-based Inquiry”, and Nils Hanson, chief editor of Swedish Television’s investigative team “Uppdrag Granskning”.
Other speakers include Britain’s author and journalist Heather Brooke and Rowan Bosworth-Davies, fraud and money-laundering expert and an accomplished author and broadcaster. Brooke exposed expense accounts of members of parliament that led to the forced resignation of the first House Speaker in 300 years.
The conference sessions will tackle Computer Assisted Reporting (CAR) tools, tracking information, digital source protection, crowd sourcing, using multimedia to tell the story, cross-border networking, questioning techniques, info-graphics, safety of investigative journalists, investigating nuclear power plants and uranium enrichment facilities, and closed militant groups.
The conference offers a rare opportunity for journalists who have worked through ARIJ in Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Iraq, Palestine, Bahrain, Yemen and Tunisia, to share tools of their trade to inspire their Arab and Western colleagues.
Next year’s conference will be held in Tunisia, and the sixth will be held in Egypt in 2013.
More than 300 journalists from Morocco to Iraq joined Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism for its fourth annual conference December 2-4 in Amman, Jordan. The inspiring gathering showed that investigative journalism is vibrant, expanding, and pushing the limits across the Arab world.
In the wake of the Arab Spring, panels and discussions focused on how to take investigative journalism in the region to the next level. Egyptian journalist Yosri Fouda, a former chief investigative correspondent for Al Jazeera, opened the conference by hailing a new era of freedom and free media. “Once you open this door, you cannot close it,” he told the crowd.
ARIJ Chairman Daoud Kuttab noted that while the network has successfully built up the investigative skills of Arab journalists, major challenges remain. “What matters now is implementation,” said Kuttab, founder of AmmanNet, the Arab world’s first Internet radio station.
The conference honored journalists from Jordan, Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine with the “Arab Spring Awards” for best investigative reporting. Among the winners: Raeda Hamra of Roya TV (Jordan) for uncovering financial violations by factories in the town of Hashemiyeh; Al Balad Radio’s Hanan Khandagji (Jordan) for a story on abuses against residents at care centres; and Marwa Yassin and Maha Bahnasawi (Egypt) for exposing how mortadella factories used expired meat in sandwiches.
Rana Sabbagh, ARIJ’s executive director, said that the network is expanding and strengthening its work in nine countries — Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Iraq, Bahrain, Palestine, Yemen and Tunisia. ARIJ’s plans include supporting some three dozen investigative projects and holding 26 workshops over the next three years.
The conference’s supporters included the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, International Media Support, and the Open Society Foundations.
The conference will take place at Plantijnhogeschool in Antwerp, Belgium on November 16th and 17th. Focus will be on European Investigative Journalism, datavisualisation and methodology.
Longtime GIJN member SCOOP, based in Denmark, is a cross-border network of investigative journalists who help fund projects, connect reporters for collaboration, and organize conferences and trainings. On SCOOP’s 10th anniversary, our colleagues there put together an impressive list of activities, awards, and events, which we’re reprinting here in full. You can subscribe to SCOOP’s newsletter here.
This year SCOOP celebrates its 10th anniversary. Since 2003, the network of investigative reporters has collaborated on projects spanning Eastern Europe, the Balkans and Russia, Central Asia and North Africa. Its first meeting was 10 years ago this month is a snow-covered Kyiv, where the team launched its pilot project.
SCOOP has supported more than 400 investigations, won numerous awards, and organized two regional and one global conference.Since then SCOOP has expanded from Ukraine to the Balkans, the Caucasus, Russia, Moldova, Belarus and Central Asia. It has supported and worked with sister operations Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism and the Programme for African Investigative Reporting.
At that first meeting reporters discussed how to publish stories that would expose corruption, organized crime and abuse of power. They thought news outlets would back away.
But to their surprise, that was rarely the case. Over the years the team found most editors willing to run stories developed with financial support from SCOOP. The idea had been a sound one – support journalists who had good ideas but no resources.
SCOOP will spend little time celebrating. The nonprofit, funded by the Danish and Swedish foreign ministries and by private foundations, is struggling to continue supporting operations in core regions - the Balkans, Ukraine, Caucasus, Moldova and Belarus. This year the group, with help from the Danish funder International Media Support, will focus on raising money while continuing to help reporters dig into important stories that need its support.
In Other News
Russia bars Ukrainian journalist for 5 years
The Russian Federation has denied the Ukrainian journalist Oleg Khomenok entry into the country for the next five years.
Oleg Khomenok is the national coordinator for SCOOP in Ukraine and has also assisted colleagues in Belarus, where he was refused entry at the border in March 2012. Mr. Khomenok was also refused admission into the Russian enclave Kaliningrad in September, where SCOOP was holding as seminar.
A short notice from the “Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation” refers to an article 27 which states that “Entry into the Russian Federation for a foreign citizen or a stateless person is not allowed in the following cases: 1) it is necessary in order to ensure the defense or national security, or public order, or the protection of public health”.
The Danish Association for Investigative Journalism has protested to the Russian authorities, stating that investigative reporting is no threat to Russian “national security, public order or public health”.
Awards
Chief Doctor Exposed
Just a few days before the Ukrainian conference mentioned above, the Ukrainian reporter Oleg Peretyaka was awarded the “Silver Pen” by the National Union of Journalists in Ukraine for his investigation of a criminal hospital manager/doctor. He was nominated by the union’s branch in Crimea. Read the investigation
Several Awards for SCOOP Russia-supported Reporters
One of the newest SCOOP regions, Russia, can boast of several awards for the stories, which were supported by the first round of SCOOP grants.
Svetlana Sinitsyna from Archangelsk has won several prizes for her investigation “The Kaninsky Deadlock”. The story is about the Nenets, a small people who live in the tundra and have their own lifestyle. But alcoholism is taking a heavy toll on the small societies. The film was awarded a prize from the Archangelsk Union of Journalists called “Zolotoe pero Severa” (Gold Feather of the North) and won the first prize in the category “Television Program” of the Northern Character Festival 2012.
Reporter Lina Zernova received the Artyom Borovik prize for investigative journalism, which is awarded annually in Moscow.
The jury decided to give the award to Lina Zernova for her investigation “The Gulf of Finland: Who Will Solve the Mystery of the Cesium Anomaly?”. It was published on the web-site of the environmental NGO Bellona and in the Gorod magazine.
UN Prize to Armenian Reporter
Marianna Grigoryan’s story “Home Abortions Destroy Young Women”, which was supported by SCOOP, has been awarded a special prize by the UN Armenian office. Though the article did not cover the topic of the UN Journalism Award contest, namely, the UN activities, the jury decided to grant a special encouraging prize to the article.
The same story won second prize the Eastern European Journalism Awards on December 1 in Warsaw. Another SCOOP-supported story was among the finalists in the contest. The investigation ”Business in the name of God” by Moldovan journalists Nicolae Cuschevici, Victor Mosneag and Tatiana Etco was among 11 finalists and revealed how Moldovan priests are taking advantage of the people’s trust and getting directly involved in business or turning priesthood into trade.
Awards to PAIR investigation in Burkina Faso
The big winner of Galian 2012 in Burkina Faso is Rachelle Somé from Radio Pulsar. At this competition the best works of journalists in Burkina Faso in 2011 were awarded.
Her work “Schools without school girls in the Sourou” won the Galian in the radio broadcast category. It also won the price Samuel Tiendrébéogo of APAC (Association of professional information and communication ) and the price of the ministry of national education and literacy.The investigation was supported by PAIR and was first broadcasted September 16, 2011 on Radio Pulsare. Read more
Upcoming events
March 15-17: SKUP Conference, Norway, with Scandinavian and international speakers
October 12-15: Global Investigative Journalism Conference, Rio, Brazil. Contact your local investigative journalism organization for further info and travel grants.
From the World of Investigative Reporting
Investigations on Youtube
The Center for Investigative Reporting has launched an investigative news channel, The I Files, on YouTube. The channel’s goal is to become the hub of the best investigative reporting from around the world.
CIR director of digital media Sharon Tiller has partnerships with media outlets such as the New York Times, ABC News, BBC, Al-Jazeera, and the Investigative News Network, which consists of 60 nonprofit news organizations including the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, the Investigative Reporting Workshop, ProPublica, and the Center for Public Integrity. Independent filmmakers and makers of documentary clips are welcome to contribute. (Source: Editor and Publisher)
SCOOP Veteran in New Investigative Center
SCOOP veteran Brigitte Alfter has founded the Danish Center for Investigative Reporting – called Investigative Reporting Denmark – together with journalists Bruno Ingemann and Nils Mulvad. The center is independent and non-profit and will focus on investigative reporting and access to information.
Interest for Investigative Grants Doubled
A total of 41 applications were filed for Journalismfund.eu’s September 2012 application round, more than double the average number of applications that were filed in previous rounds. A total of 77 journalists applied individually or as a team. Now for the first time, significantly more men than women applied: 50 versus 27.
A Study of Investigations
UNESCO (The United Nations Education, Science and Culture Organization) released the “Global Casebook of Investigative Journalism” in September. The publication contains 20 investigative reports on topics ranging from the environment, social issues and health to drug trafficking and the War on Terror. The investigations come from around the world, and the articles are supplemented by comments and experiences from the authors.
The book is free and can be found at the Unesco website.
Learn to Code – Write your Own Programs
Many journalists would be more efficient and able to make a new kind of stories, if they knew how to code. Lisa Williams has made a list of programs for self-study – especially with journalists in mind.
More Support Needed for European Investigations
Can investigative journalism help to detect fraud and corruption with EU funds? That is the focus of a new study presented at the European Parliament on 9 October 2012. It was requested by the Parliament’s Committee on Budgetary Control and executed by Margo Smit for the Belgian Pascal Decroos Fund.
The recommendations it eventually makes are multifaceted but clear-cut: both European and national policymakers should do more to support and facilitate investigative journalism if they want to enlarge its role in tracing irregularities and fraud. Read more
SCOOP/PAIR Investigations
Croatia’s Richest Man under Scrutiny
How did Ivica Todorić become so powerful? He is the richest man in Croatia, but seldom in the public eye and very rarely critized. He is the owner of the Agrokor Group, the biggest manufacturer and retail vendor of food in Croatioa. The group also has a big influence on gas companies, mobile operators and publishing. Croatian journalist Saša Paparella measured his reach. Read more
EU Countries Sell Banned Asbestos to Croatia
Asbestos is called “the silent killer”. It has been strictly banned in the EU since 2005 - to produce it, to sell it, to use it. Croatia adopted the same regulations a year later. But since then, asbestos has been imported to Croatia at least 275 times, and most of it came from EU countries. Read more
Pulling out of the Balkans Media Market
The German media company WAZ is one of the strongest in Europe. But its entry in the Balkans was not so easy. The work of WAZ in Serbia and Croatia is marked with media companies in debts, nontransparent business practice, ties to tycoons close to the state, tight connection with the governments, obsolete editorial policies and partially fulfilled contractual obligations. Reporters Ilko Ćimić and Žarka Radoja researched the issue. Read more
The FAIRTRADE chocolate rip-off
The pictures of happy African farmers on the FAIRTRADE chocolate are designed to make the consumer believe that the broad smiles are a result of actual fair trade: support and a better income. But this impression is false. In a six-month transnational investigation by journalists from Ivory Coast, Ghana, Cameroon, Nigeria and the Netherlands investigated the alleged benefits received by cocoa farmers in West Africa via the FAIRTRADE label.
Their conclusions: whilst the chocolate consumer in the West pays a significant mark-up for ‘honest’ chocolate, these benefits amount to little or no improvement in the lives of cocoa farmers. In some case, because of FAIRTRADE cooperatives’ increasing dominance, farmers were even worse off than before. Read more
A transnational investigation – Deadly borders of West Africa
Increasingly, West African borders have become notorious for all sorts of crime from almost every corner of the sub-regional borders; extortion racketeering and corruption are the order of the day at all the borders in the ECOWAS region. The borders of West Africa have been turned into illegal money-making ventures which rake in thousands of Ghana cedis, Nigerian naira and CFA francs for the security agents positioned there. The issues was investigated by Kwabena Adu Koranteng (Ghana) and Ouamar Abdulai (Burkina Faso). Read more
Death in the quest for gold
Thousands of nationals of the West African sub-region (Malians, Ivoirians, Guineans, Burkinabes) all converge in large numbers daily at the Côte d’Ivoire-Mali border in search of gold, with the aim of making a fortune. While some of those “illegals” manage to succeed, it is not always the case for many of them, who return empty-handed. Worse, unlucky ones sometimes lose their lives there when mudslides occur. Read more
And the winners are: Msindisi Fengu and Yandisa Monakali of the Daily Dispatch, for “Hostels of Shame.” Credit: TJ Lemon
High quality investigative journalism is spreading around the world. One country where it has put down strong roots, despite an often hostile environment, is South Africa. The depth of reporting can be seen in the just announced Taco Kuiper Awards, that country’s highest prize for investigative journalism. In the awards announcement speech last weekend, which GIJN is pleased to reprint here, Wits University Journalism Professor Anton Harber salutes the finalists for work on extraordinary stories ranging from police death squads to government waste, fraud, and abuse of the public trust.
Judging the Taco Kuiper Awards is one of the highlights of my year. I get to survey some of the most interesting reporting of the previous 12 months, and it reinvigorates my faith in our journalism.
I am reminded of how good, by any international standards, is the best of our journalism and how misinformed are those who make sweeping generalisations and quick and easy criticisms of the work of our reporters and editors.
This year we had 44 entries from 20 different outlets in all media types: print, radio, television and online. Apart from the regular big-hitters, such as the Sunday Times, City Press, MNet’s Carte Blanche programme and Mail &Guardian, it included small community papers, like The Eye News of the Batlhabine Community of Tzaneen, and the Lowvelder; a freelance photographer; the student team known as Roving Reporters based at the Durban Institute of Technology; and our first ever entry from the SA Medical Journal.
From “Hostels of Shame”: School dwellings “worse than prison.” Credit: Yandisa Monakali / Daily Dispatch
We were presented with a diverse array of stories. Apart from the high-profile ones about corruption – both in the state and private sector – there were investigations into social and educational conditions, health services, the abuse of the drug tik, fights over conservation and the environment, including one over turtles, police death squads, internet scammers; the Boeremag trial, the Marikana massacre, the earnings of municipal managers, farmworker conditions and child prostitution. Our watchdogs have their eye on corruption and abuse of power, for sure, but also on almost every aspect of South African society. The range and depth of stories we looked at was truly inspiring. This is a festival of muckraking.
Many school hostels on a government list were “ghost” facilities. Credit: Yandisa Monakali/Daily Dispatch.
Today we celebrate the quality of the best of South African journalism. We salute the journalists who show dogged determination and enormous courage to reveal what some try to hide, to unnerve the complacent, to challenge those with impunity, to ensure that those with power and authority are held to public account, often swimming against the public tide. We hail those editors and publishers who invest in, support and protect the reporters on the frontline. And let us not forget the sub-editors, designers and illustrators who bring it to life. We challenge those who have little good to say about our journalism to study our shortlist and tell us this is not up there with the finest in the world.
This is particularly pertinent at a time when there are direct threats to the freedom we enjoy to do this important work. It is true that investigative journalists can be persistent and pesky, and their close scrutiny can sometimes make it uncomfortable for those who have to tackle the difficult tasks of government, but – as you will from the stories we highlight today – the value of this kind of work far outweighs the cost and irritation. And we are here today to celebrate the contribution these journalists make to our society.
We have a two-stage judging process. First, a distinguished panel vets the entries, nominates any obvious candidates who have not come forward, and draws up a shortlist.
This panel consisted of:
Former editor Paula Fray
Sarah Carter of CBS’ renowned 60 Minutes programme
Ed Linington, for many years editor of SAPA
and my colleague Prof Franz Kruger, also an editor and journalist of many year’s experience.
They produced a shortlist of 9, so that the second panel could focus their discussion on the top contenders. These judges were:
Former editor and writer, analyst and commentator Justice Malala
Paul Fray again
Margaret Renn, another international representative and our holder of the Taco Kuiper Chair in Investigative Journalism
Tom Cloete, judge of the Supreme Court of Appeal and representative of our funders, the Valley Trust
and myself, as convenor of the panel.
It is a formidable bunch of people who take their task seriously, leading to hours of intense debate and discussion, and they have our special thanks.
The initial panel shortlisted 9 of the entries, and they are, in the order in which they arrived:
Malcolm Rees of Moneyweb for Garnishee and Unsecured Lending Abuse
A strong and original story that exposed the loan and debt systems which plague workers and contributed to conflicts like the one in Marikana. This work was thoroughly researched and impactful: it led to banks changing their handling of these issues and talk of legislation to outlaw garnishee orders.
Students get exposed to unhygienic conditions at state-run hostels; some must use pit toilets. Credit: Yandisa Monakali/Daily Dispatch.
East London’s newsp3aper has identified a way of taking one small item – in this case a remark by an MEC that prisons were “far better” than the Eastern Cape’s rural school hostels – and turning it into a major investigation. Msindisi set out to visit 70 school hostels. Forty of them turned out be ghost hostels, and did not even exist, and those they saw over two months allowed them to document horrifying conditions. Powerful, original, relentless slog-work, strongly presented in paper and online.
The judges in this case also wanted to mention the photographer Yandisa Monakali, who took brilliant photographs that brought this story to life.
Joy Summers and Susan Comrie of MNet’s Carte Blanche for Aurora
This was a running story on BEE abuse and exploitation which t4his team took to a new level, putting the Bhana family at the centre of the crookery and using court action to secure exclusive access to liquidation hearings. Everyone got a voice in the piece – from mineworkers to liquidators – and the result was effective storytelling of a well-executed investigation.
Phillip de Wet and Matuma Letsoalo and the Mail & Guardian’s AmaBhungane team for Nkandla
M&G broke the first story of what would evolve into a national scandal around the presidential home. Their focus at this stage was on what they called Zumaville, the development of the surrounding area, but it was the story that launched a thousand stories. A multi-facetted report involving strong on-the-ground reporting, with follow-up on what President Zuma knew and the abuse of the Key Points Act to try and cover it up. It stands alongside the next on the shortlist:
Adriaan Basson and Paddy Harper of City Press for Nkandlagate
City Press is commended for breaking the story of the cost of the presidential home upgrade, a well-researched and strongly presented story with high impact. Certainly, it is the story that hung over the Mangaung conference and seems likely to feature in the coming elections. The City Press team carried the story over five strong front page leads.
Stephan Hofstatter, Rob Rose and Mzilikazi waAfrika of the Sunday Times for Nothing for Mahala
The complex and detailed story of the dubious dealings of the deputy president’s partner was well-researched and well-told, and cast the first doubts on the clean image of the man who was then a presidential candidate.
The same Sunday Times team again – Hofstatter, Rose and waAfrika – for It’s Just Not Ayoba
This story homed in on a sensational misuse of public power and private money by Minister of Communications Dina Pule. They drew on a number of sources to show how her alleged boyfriend had been given free access to money raised for a summit, and used it to her and his benefit, including buying her a pair of red-soled shoes, hilariously highlighted in a front-page picture. Establishing the critical link between Pule and her boyfriend was not easy, but they dealt with it thoroughly and carefully.
This story of a rogue police squad carried over from the previous year but again it mixed well-researched fresh evidence with effective storytelling. This horrifying story is of particular importance because it provides the backdrop to the current concerns over police violence.
The 9th and final story on the shortlist is from Greg Marinovich of Daily Maverick for Marikana.
It is not often that a photographer makes an investigative breakthrough but Marinovich’s determination and passion led him to find evidence that everyone else was missing, and pointing to an entirely new explanation of what happened on that fateful day that claimed the lives of 34 miners. The writing and editing was unconventional, but the strength, originality and importance of the story shone through.
What a range of stories, and what a powerful demonstration of the richness of our investigative reporting. Sunday Times has three stories in the shortlist; Adriaan Basson, who has featured in two previous winners, and one runner-up, is again in the running. And it is notable that print, television and an online story are among the final candidates. There is not one on that list that is not a contender for high recognition and reward.
This is the hardest part. Everyone on this list has done excellent work and all would be worthy prize winners. We want to encourage and recognise them all, and urge them to keep going, but in the end we have to get to just one winner and one runner-up.
After much deliberation, the judges settled on four on the short shortlist, the final finalists. But first, they have asked me to make special mention of some outstanding pieces of work of the sort they wish to encourage:
City Press’ Faces of Marikana, in which they sent a team around the country to find the real faces, families and feelings of all the victims of Marikana . It was a fine example of enterprising and creative work to drive home the brutal human impact of those terrible events.
Neels Jackson of Beeld went undercover to get a first-hand account of shelters set up to exploit the needy and divert assistance for themselves.
So, it is the final four. They are:
Hostels of Shame from the Daily Dispatch’s Msindisi Fengu and photographer Yandisa Monakali
Ndandlagate from City Press’s Adriaan Basson and Paddy Harper
Cato Manor Death Squad from the Sunday Times’s trio Stephan Hofstatter, Rob Rose and Mzilikazi waAfrika
Marikana, from Greg Marinovitch, published on Daily Maverick
So, 44 entries, 10 shortlisted, four finalists – and we have to settle on a winner and runner up.
In fact, we could not choose between two runners-up, so we split this prize. Sharing the R100 000 are:
Greg Marinovitch for his Marikana expose
and
Stephan Hofstatter, Rob Rose and Mzilikazi waAfrika for Cato Manor Death Squad
And finally, the 7th Taco Kuper Award for an outstanding example of investigative journalism – and the R200 000 that goes with it – goes to:
This was not a story that arrived in an envelope or the result of a lucky leak. It required many weeks on the road, visiting each school across the length and breadth of the Eastern Cape to document the appalling conditions in which students had to live. His persistence, determination and rigour together led to a most important story, powerfully told. And powerfully illustrated by photographer Yandisa Monakali. As a result, at least one official was suspended and the provincial authorities were booted into action. As one of the judges said, there can be no more important story than neglect of our schoolchildren, and no more valuable role for journalism than forcing a provincial government to do their duty by these youth. Well done to Mndisi and the Daily Dispatch.
The award will be announced and presented at the Global Conference, held October 12 to 15, 2013, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The winner receives an honorary plaque, US$1,000, and a free trip to the Global Conference.
Deadline for submissions is June 15, 2013.
Criteria
The journalist, journalism team, or media outlet provided independent, investigative reporting, which:
Originated in and affected a developing or emerging country
Was broadcast or published between April 2, 2011 and December 31, 2012;
Was of an investigative nature;
Uncovered an issue, wrong-doing, or system of corruption which gravely affected the common good;
And did so in the face of arrest, imprisonment, violence against them and their families, or threats and intimidation
Submissions must include the following
A nomination letter in English, listing the journalist’s name (or team member names), and name of his/her media organization with address, telephone number, fax and email.
The letter should provide a brief summary of the entry topic, explaining the importance of the story, the challenges faced in reporting it, and the political or social impact it made upon its broadcast or publication.
One copy of the published entry or one copy of the broadcast material with a copy of the script
NOTE: If the original entry is not in English, a full translation or lengthy summary of its key findings must be provided in English. If this is not available, the story will not be eligible for judging.
The Global Shining Light Award is sponsored by the Global Investigative Journalism Network, an association of 80 nonprofit groups in nearly 40 countries that work to support and spread investigative reporting.
It’s time again. Every two years since 2001, the world’s investigative journalism community has joined together in a different city, and the results have been extraordinary. We’ve spread investigative reporting and data journalism around the world, sparked the creation of dozens of investigative reporting centers, and led to hundreds of great stories and collaborations.
This year, for our eighth gathering, we’re holding the Global Conference for the first time in the southern hemisphere, in extraordinary Rio de Janeiro. What’s more, we’re combining the GIJC with two other seminal events in international muckraking: Latin America’s annual COLPIN conference on investigative reporting, and the national congress of ABRAJI, Brazil’s investigative journalism association.
GIJC13's awards ceremony and reception will be held in Rio's magnificent Theatro Municipal. Photo: CulturaGovBr in Flickr (CC License).
The result promises to be the largest ever international gathering of investigative journalists. Rosental Calmon Alves, director of the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas, calls the coming conference “The World Cup of Investigative Journalism.”
There will be more than 100 panels, seminars, and workshops, with tracks on corruption, the environment, sports, and data-driven journalism; a hackathon on apps targeted to the needs of investigative reporters; a track for teachers and trainers of investigative journalism; and announcement of the Global Shining Light, Daniel Pearl, and Latin American investigative journalism awards.
On our conference page you’ll find information on panels and workshops, registration, travel grants, travel tips, and a list of some of the extraordinary journalists from 25 countries who have already confirmed they’re coming to Rio. Hope to see you at GIJC13!
The Global Investigative Journalism Conference is the most significant international gathering of investigative journalists. Held every two years, the conference attracts hundreds of reporters and editors from as many as 80 countries. Producing the event requires intense planning, fund-raising, and operational skills by its hosts, but the effort is worth it because of the high standards of GIJC speakers and sessions, its global impact, and the way it raises the profile and stature of the organizers.
The Global Investigative Journalism Network, which oversees the conferences, is now accepting proposals for the 9th Global Investigative Journalism Conference, to be held in 2015. If your organization would like to host the next GIJC after this year’s conference in Rio de Janeiro, now is the time to assemble and submit a proposal.
Deadline to submit a proposal is August 15, 2013.
The decision on the 2015 conference will be made by GIJN’s 80-plus member organizations. (Each organization gets a single vote.) Voting will be in person at the GIJN delegates meeting at the Rio conference in October and by absentee ballot by those who cannot attend the Rio conference.
Proposals will be public and posted on the GIJN.org website.
The hosting organization will team with the GIJN Secretariat and GIJN member groups to finance and organize the conference. We recommend detailed proposals of at least five pages that discuss:
Fundraising strategy, including the host organization’s ability to find funding and sponsorships. (The average cost of a GIJC is about US$500,000.)
Ability of the host organization to obtain local support.
Host organization’s experience at organizing conferences.
Host organization’s experience in management.
Advantages of holding the GIJC in the suggested city, including environment, transportation, logistics, security, visas, and cost.
Estimated budget for the conference.
A description of the potential venue (hotel, conference center, university) for the conference.
Suggested focus and structure of conference panels, workshops, and other events.
Please let us know if you have any questions or need any clarifications on requirements by contacting secretariat@gijn.org.
As our governments and businesses become increasingly flush with information, more and bigger data are becoming available from across the globe. Increasingly, investigative reporters need to know how to obtain, clean, and analyze “structured information” in this digital world. Otherwise, they and the news organizations they work for will miss some of the most important stories of our time. Even in relatively closed societies, journalists can now work their way from the outside in, using international data sets to reveal what’s happening in their home countries.
Here is a list of resources to get you started, but we want to keep updating our community with the best resources available. Do you know of a great data tutorial we haven’t listed, perhaps in a language other than English? Help us keep this resource guide comprehensive by sending your favorite resource to: kate.willson (at) gijn (dot) org.
Key Resources
National Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting, a project of Investigative Reporters and Editors, launched in 1989 to train reporters around the world on how to use data as part of broader investigations. In addition to “boot camps” and in-office training, NICAR offers a data library, practice data sets, and hosts the original annual conference on computer-assisted reporting. IRE also publishes the popular book, Computer-Assisted Reporting: A Practical Guide.
Poynter offers Five Tips for getting started with computer-assisted reporting, and 10 Tools to analyze datasets more efficiently.
Hacks/Hackers is a global movement bringing together computer programmers and investigative journalists to tell powerful data-driven stories. Trainings offered through regional chapters.
The Investigative Dashboard lists tools for data mining, visualization and social network analysis. Google search your tool of choice and you’ll surely find tutorials on how to begin.
Data Mining
Code Academy offers a series of free interactive trainings on the basics of HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Python, Ruby, and PHP.
Ghana Databootcamp trains participants in Ghana on how to locate, obtain and analyze public data on the extractive industries.
Kate Willson is news adviser in the Student Media Department at Oregon State University, Corvalis, and a consultant to the Global Investigative Journalism Network. She served as a senior reporter with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and has received more than 20 awards for her investigative and crime reporting.
Last month we wrote about survival strategies for nonprofit investigative journalism organizations. More than 100 of these groups now exist worldwide, and we’re working with many of them to ensure that they’re still around in a year or two. As we stressed in that story, key to succeeding in the long term is diversifying revenue. Smart news nonprofits have multiple revenue streams, ranging from grants and individual donations to story fees, public events, and advertising.
GIJN’s colleagues at the Los Angeles-based Investigative News Network recently put together a useful infographic on the varied sources of revenue that groups can tap into. INN is an association of more than 80 nonprofits in North America, and many of their members are working hard on business plans and sustainability strategies.
GIJN’s staff will be there, and we’ll be working with INN to do similar sessions at the Global Investigative Journalism Conference in Rio de Janeiro this October. Nonprofit news managers: hope to see you in San Antonio or Rio!
The Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE) Conference is the largest gathering of investigative journalists in the United States. This year, more than 1,000 journalists are coming together here in San Antonio, Texas, to attend 100-plus panels, workshops, and roundtables. Many of the activities here are hands-on sessions in which experts share useful tips and tricks for everyday work. Below you can find some handy tools and resources shared during the first day of the conference. More to come!
Here's our next report from this year's Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE) conference: The second day at IRE's 2013 conference is also a busy one, with more than 60 panels and workshops, and plenty of networking opportunities. More than 1,200 journalists are at the San Antonio, Texas, gathering, which today featured mentoring sessions in which senior journalists shared tips and experience with younger ones, lots of data journalism training, and panels ranging from managing investigative teams to following international money trails.
Here´s our latest report from this year's Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE) conference. More and more tipsheets and slides are getting online, so today we're sharing the best from Saturday as well as some tools from previous days that we hadn't mentioned yet.
There’s plenty of activity as we move closer to the Global Investigative Journalism Conference in mid-October. Our just-released newsletter includes an update on some of the great speakers coming to the conference, as well as visa information for entering Brazil, GIJC13′s call for research papers, and a thanks to our terrific partners around the world who are helping make this extraordinary event possible. We’ve also listed ways for journalists, educators, donors, and others to get involved in the Global Network. And, as usual, you’ll find the latest resources in our toolbox section, and a calendar of upcoming events.
Journalist Marcela Turati has gained global attention for her compassionate and committed reporting on the victims of Mexico’s drug wars. An investigative reporter for the magazine Proceso, she is co-founder of Periodistas de a Pie (Journalists on Foot), a network that supports journalists covering issues such as poverty and human rights. The Nieman Fellows at Harvard University, in choosing her for the 2013 Louis M. Lyons Award for Conscience and Integrity in Journalism, called Turati “a standard-bearer for the journalists who have risked their lives to document the devastating wave of violence in Mexico,” and saluted her “courage… journalistic excellence and leadership.”
On June 25, Turati gave the keynote speech at the Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE) annual conference in San Antonio, Texas. During a lengthy talk, in sometimes halting English, hundreds of journalists sat silent and fixed on her words. Turati’s message to her colleagues was straightforward: “Don’t abandon us.”
Here’s her full speech.
Good afternoon everyone.
I am honored to address IRE on a topic of importance to us all, especially considering that this is an organization that has long stood up for investigative reporting on the border, most memorably after Don Bolles, an IRE co-founder, was killed by organized crime figures in Arizona.
As you know, in 2006 president Felipe Calderón launched the ‘war on drugs’ in part with funding from the United States. Our country became a battlefield. He put soldiers and federal police on the streets, supposedly to fight drug cartels, giving rise to an irregular war, which has caused at least 70,000 victims of homicide, and more than twenty thousand disappeared people. These are unresolved crimes, of which we still have not fully grasped the nature.
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Journalists in many regions of the country have become trapped in the middle of the conflicts. And, due to the lack of investigation into the murders by the authorities, it is still difficult to understand who is truly behind the crimes.
We Mexican journalists have become war reporters in our own country. In my case, for example, I began as a reporter who covered poverty, who from one day to the next was suddenly covering massacres of young people, documenting ghost towns abandoned after a series of murders, or social programs for children orphaned by the violence. One day I had in front of me a row of 30 women with photos of their missing children who wanted to tell me their stories.
I have dedicated much of my own work as an investigative reporter at Proceso to ferreting out the truth behind some of these episodes and documenting the victims of the war.
We Mexican journalists were not prepared for the violence. Suddenly, there we were, being pushed-around, in the chaos, in the middle of a war which was not about drug trafficking, as they told us, but for control of territory. A war to see who would hold onto the land where narcotics are grown, the trafficking routes, and the points of sale of drugs in the country. To see who would control the business, who would tax the sellers, who would appoint the mayor, the next chief of police and the director of prisons.
And in a situation like this, it is clearly central to have control of the press, so that no one asks questions. To guarantee control of the population.
I and other reporters founded an organization called Periodistas de a Pie (Journalists on Foot) to train journalists who cover poverty issues. However, we had to change focus quickly to respond to the crisis. We held workshops on how to survive an assignment, how to understand the drug trafficker, how to interview a child who had survived a massacre, how to continue reporting without losing the joy of living.
Before we realized it, we were a crisis center. At any hour of the day, including tense deadline moments, we have received calls from colleagues in remote zones, desperately seeking help because they know the hitmen are coming for them and they need refuge. Or requests for psychological support for reporters who don’t want to go back out to work after a traumatic event, like a fire or attack on their office.
In this war for territory, the journalists have become victims. Because, unlike in traditional wars, in Mexico journalists don’t die in the crossfire, from a stray bullet, from walking in a minefield. In Mexico, the killers hunt down journalists, dragging them out of their offices and their houses, intercepting them in the street.
In Mexico the reporters who are supposed to file the news became themselves the news.
In the past 10 years, at least 17 journalists have disappeared and 72 have been killed. None of them have been solved.
One of them is Regina Martínez, the valiant reporter who exposed political corruption and
Cimacnoticias in Flickr (CC License)
You don't kill the truth by killing a journalist.
organized crime in the state of Veracruz. She worked for Proceso magazine, as do I. A year ago she was strangled in her house. The local government, which may be implicated in the murder, decided without credible evidence that her murder was the result of a robbery, and they locked up a young man. He claims he was tortured into admitting the crime.
As in the other murders of journalists, the judicial authorities did not consider her journalistic work as a possible cause of the murder. As in other murders, they blamed the journalist for her own death, and tried to call her integrity into question.
Days after her murder, two more journalists were killed with another who had recently left the profession out of fear.
These killings had the desired effect. They silenced the rest.
At least 17 journalists fled the state, some of them paid by the state government to leave and come back after the elections. Some left the profession in an attempt to save their lives. Others of them are cutting grass or selling tacos in the US, or rely on solidarity to sustain themselves, whilst they wait for their asylum case to be heard. Others work as street vendors or as whatever they can, in Mexico City, trying to rebuild their lives. Terrified, penniless, broken.
The situation is different in various regions of Mexico.
In some areas, drug traffickers leave videos or messages, and they call up the journalists to report on them. In other zones, the warnings always come accompanied by violence, and journalists who publish information that annoys a certain group are abducted and tortured, and their skin marked, to show that they won’t get a second chance. In some areas, journalists are forced to attend press conferences with the local cartel chief, who dictates the editorial line: telling them what information to cover and what to ignore. Generally, they give them instructions to follow, they watch them, and they pay them a salary. The newsrooms are infiltrated, too. Whoever refuses has to change jobs or start a new life somewhere else.
In places like Mexico City, they are visited by the so called ‘narco-lawyers’, who tell them which information irritated their clients.
In this turf war, the media is a target: they receive intimidating phone calls, bombs are hurled, they are fired upon with heavy arms. There have been cases in which employees (not always journalists) have been taken as hostages to force the publication of something favoring a certain group. Some newsrooms have been burnt down as reporters are inside, writing.
Some states have become zones of silence, and the silence has extended. We are losing contact with regions that are now forbidden territory for everyone, in which we no longer know something as basic as how many people are killed every day. Only from time to time, when a massacre occurs (which is so spectacular that it can’t be covered up – such as that of 72 migrants -) or an entire village flees their homes: only then can we get a sense of what is happening, only then can we get an idea of what is being hidden.
One of the most dangerous states for journalists is only two hundred and sixty five kilometers from here, less than three hours on the highway, on the other side of the border, where silence has been imposed.
In states like the Tamaulipas, many blood-chilling episodes take place, which could have been written about by any war reporter. For months, passengers in public buses have been made to get off and in that very place recruited by force, taken as slaves or killed and buried. Only suitcases arrive at bus terminals. Nobody said anything until graves were found containing almost two hundred bodies.
In places like this, and in various parts of the borderland, people ‘disappear’, along with their car or truck. Some were Mexicans on their way to McAllen or Laredo to go shopping or to visit. Some were Americans visiting relatives in Mexico.
I remember when I went to Matamoros, across the border from Brownsville, to cover the discovery of this mass grave. It was said that there were thousands of bodies, but they didn’t finish excavating it. Hundreds of anguished families arrived there from all over the country, all looking for a child who had disappeared.
A woman who was waiting to see if one of the bodies was that of her son found out I was a journalist. She began to hold forth furiously.
“Why are you, reporters, coming here now,” she said, “for months we have been saying that people were disappearing on this highway, but nobody paid any attention. It felt like we were talking from the bottom of the sea.”
Her phrase, talking from the bottom of the sea, sums up perfectly the situation that this lost zone is living there, where The Dallas Morning News reported that 8 journalists had disappeared, something that we Mexicans didn’t know. And where have been discovered training camps for the ‘sicarios’, the hitmen, some of them teenagers from Laredo, Texas, who dropt out of high school to become assassins on the Mexican side of the border.
In this area full of hidden graves, sown with corpses, citizens are murdered every day. Even the border crossing is controlled by drug traffickers, who abduct those who don’t pay and decide who goes through and who dies.
Many journalists tried to speak out about it until they were silenced. As far as they can, they are still trying. Some live with a pistol to their head. Others leave running, with only their keys in their pocket, to start again. Until the night covers them.
How much they can do depends on where they live.
In desperation, citizens have tried to assume the role of the journalists. I remember that video filmed by a normal citizen who went out into the street to record on her cell phone the destruction of the battle of the night before, of the shootouts that the authorities claim don’t happen. They use social networks or set up blogs, such as ‘Valor por Tamaulipas’, where they post citizens’ reports of armed encounters which the media are prohibited from covering. These websites don’t last long. The drug cartels put a price on the heads of their administrators.
The government is also interested in shutting down these sources of information, because they contradict the official government position that everything is well.
I know a journalist who went to Tamaulipas to report on the situation. In the main square, in front of the government building, he was surrounded by a convoy of vans which bore the logo of the local cartel on their number plates. The reporter and the cameraman were abducted and tortured, and warned to stop asking questions.
In this area, the earth swallowed a young freelance visitor from San Antonio, who left his hotel to take photographs and never came back.
And a Mexican reporter who anonymously ran a blog for citizens, telling them where there were shoot-outs and publishing their complaints, was decapitated, and her body found with a note threatening anyone who uses social networks. How can we say that journalism is possible in a place like this?
The violence has even reached Mexico City. An example is the magazine where I work, which was founded four decades ago and is still considered a leader in investigative journalism today. Proceso is one of the media which has suffered the most aggressions. Not only did they murder Regina Martínez. Four journalists have been forced to move, some outside the country, others from one city to another. In this year, four have been threatened, and some of them have asked for assistance through a recently created governmental mechanism for journalists’ protection. Let’s see if it Works.
Proceso is not the worst case. Others exist.
At the beginning of the last decade, the organization for training journalists that emerged thanks to the support of the IRE, was forced to attend to the crises of that period. In these recent years, involuntarily perhaps, our organization has focused too on attending these crises.
From being active journalists, without quite knowing how, we became defenders of human rights. We have organized marches to demand an end to impunity and justice for our colleagues, as well as auctions and collections to support journalists who have had to flee their homes. We support other local journalists, helping them become stronger, organize themselves and develop their own techniques to deal with emergencies.
We do not agree that the only way for the government and some international organizations to deal with these crises is by removing journalists from their home territory. Because in this way the silencers win the game.
The battle we have at hand is not only for freedom of expression. It is for peoples’ right to be informed.
In a panorama like this, investigative reporting has faltered. Journalists are no longer the watchdogs of democracy, as we used to define ourselves.
In many areas, the watchdog is chained, muzzled, it does not have permission to bark. It is an abused animal who has learned not to bark when an enemy approaches. It is a dog domesticated by governors who bought its silence. It is a dog forced to turn a blind eye to violations of the law.
However, even in some of the worst places there are a few fierce and isolated watchdogs still fighting to defend the owners of the house they protect, still resisting the leash. There are individual efforts, true heroes, who risk their lives with every article they write.
Not every part of Mexico has come to this extreme point but the silence is spreading. Not only through violence but through more sophisticated methods, such as the threats of imprisonment. Or using enormous government advertising budget lines to fill media with propaganda or pay for publicity or they remove it, as reward or punishment. Or buy off media owners and managers.
Mexico’s newly-elected president has insisted to “speak well” of Mexico. At the moment, politicians and organized crime share the same objective: ‘que no se caliente la plaza’, to keep from heating up the areas they control.
The killings and disappearances of journalists are not random. The targets are often the leading investigative reporters – or top watchdog reporters who appear to have been carefully selected to send a powerful message and silence a region rather than an individual.
Ramón Angeles Zalpa is an example: he exposed the extraction of natural resources, of mines and forests, by organized crime in Michoacán. He was never seen again.
María Esther Aguilar Casimbe published about the capture of a trafficker mayor, a police torturer and the seizing of a shipment. Any one of these three stories could be the cause of her disappearance.
Alfredo Jiménez Mota started the list. A brave, experienced young journalist who was investigating a local capo, Mota went out to take an interview and wasn’t seen again.
Although we have new laws which allow us to access public information, investigative journalism is becoming more and more difficult. Even daily journalism is under threat. There are questions that now nobody asks.
In 1976 IRE made a great effort to shed light on the murder of its co-founder Don Bolles by traffickers. You were not able to live with this murder, you made great investigative efforts because he was one of your own.
On the other side of the border they are killing journalists like flies. Some of them are young people who dreamed of being investigative journalists. Others were skilled reporters who died investigating stories. Armando Rodriguez, “El Choco” was a member of the IRE Mexico Project and had spoken at its conferences.
He was the reporter who counts the daily killings in El Diario de Juárez. He was killed when he was taking his daughter to school.
These are your colleagues, our colleagues, members of our family of investigative reporters. I want to ask you that you do not ignore us. This problem, and these techniques I mentioned, do not stop at the border.
I recognize that great efforts have been made by some American journalists. Many top us newspapers covered the violence in Juarez , in fact almost all the newspapers of the world eventually sent someone there. There are subjects that came to light thanks to the work of US investigative reporters or correspondents, such as Operation Fast and Furious, which makes us so indignant.
Or the publication of the databases with up to 25,000 names of people who disappeared under the last government.
But as time passes, all this death, all these massacres, all these mass graves, all these bodies, all these missing people, stop being so newsworthy.
As Lise Olsen wrote in a book: on the US side, “reporters who are informed and experienced in Mexico and the border have been dropped in all border states, largely for economic reasons, but the violence has had an impact too.
“Every major newspaper in the region has eliminated bureaus and cut coverage. In California, the largest border region newspaper, the San Diego Union, had a five-person border team in the late 1990s. Only one person remained to cover Tijuana in 2012. The Los Angeles Times has a single border reporter, though he works with a team of two in Mexico City. The Arizona Republic has lost border staff too. In Texas, the Dallas Morning News formerly deployed five people to Mexico City–one remains. The Houston Chronicle and the Express-News (…) located only 150 to 300 miles from Mexico by car, once had three border reporters and two in Mexico City. Only one of those jobs remained in 2013.
“Many large and small US newspapers no longer allow reporters to cross the border to cover any story. Both national US and Mexico City-based media companies have reduced binational coverage”.
Many times, reporters as you, ask us: how can we help you?
We could say: raising funds, offering asylum, raising awareness. But what we ask from IRE members is that you do your work here. That you investigate trafficking networks in your own country. That you share this problem, which is mutual.
It isn’t only gun trafficking that adds to the death toll in our country. It’s corrupt us government officials, US drug dealers and gangs, and US dirty businessmen and money launderers.
Because some cartel leaders and hitmen are us citizens. Many others live and own property here.
We do not ask for anything that is not in your best interest.
But as your friends, we need you to see that you need to face this problem as your own. Asking yourself, who is my neighbour. Who controls neighbouring states. Because we share three thousand kilometers of border. Because, as you have reported, Mexican cartels are present in more than 200 cities, and keep growing.
Also push for your newspapers to cover stories about how Mexican policy cost lives or forced journalists or others into exile. Many of those who were forced to flee are here – right here in Texas – and are included in the growing list of those who have asked for asylum.
I would have liked to have come here to talk to you about a different panorama. To tell you how fruitful were the courses and conferences that IRE’S Mexico Project organized in Mexico City in the nineties, and in the two binational meetings in Tijuana and Ciudad Juárez. Or how long lasting have been the relationships that were made between many journalists back then.
But what’s left after they shoot up your office three times, as happened to El Siglo de Torreón, even though it had federal protection? Or if, as happened to El Mañana, they kill two editors and throw a grenade which wounds many people? Or to El Diario de Juárez that after two of its reporters were murdered wrote an editorial asking drug lords who control the city what their ground rules were, thereby revealing to the world that the Mexican national government had no control over the largest city on the us border?
The battle to control information is underway at this very moment.
But everything is not lost. Valiant efforts are being made. El Diario de Juárez, as example, using databases and processing information it was able to map the violence and related how the government aligned itself with a cartel group. And the magazine Zeta de Tijuana every month tells us the correct figures for the killings, because otherwise no one would have access to that state’s data.
There have been efforts of collaboration among editors who agree to publish the same article when they put pressure on someone from the group. Or collaborations between reporters and foreign correspondents, so that news prohibited in Mexico can be divulged elsewhere.
Other journalists have created news blogs to inform the people of what is happening, and they maintain them for the time they are able to keep their identity secret. In one case, a Mexican media opened a blog in Texas, in order to avoid detection. Until they were discovered. Journalists have also created our own networks, such as our organization.
I know various journalists who are secretly writing a book, hoping that conditions change and they can publish it. These are efforts which go against the current.
These isolated and, for their own safety, anonymous heroes, are among various enemies: companies which don’t protect their own people, the corrupted government and organized crime.
I have a story embedded in my mind. I repeat it a lot – perhaps you have already heard it. But I can’t avoid retelling it here.
A reporter told me how one night someone called to tell him that a commando squad had taken his colleague. He got up from the bed, got dressed, said goodbye to his wife, kissed his children, and sat down in the living room; waiting to be taken away. It was the longest night of his life.
“Why didn’t you run?” I asked, surprised.
“Where could I run?” he said. “My only wish was to stop them entering my house and taking me in front of my family. I didn’t want my family to remember me with that image.”
He survived, but his friend was found the next day, his body discarded in the street, as if he were trash. In the city where they live, the policemen are the narcos.
There’s another one I can’t forget. A colleague went to see what help she could give to some reporters in Veracruz. She asked one of them how we could help. He said: bring me a pistol. She was stupefied. A pistol? Yes, he said, it isn’t to kill them, it’s to kill myself if they come for me. Because now they don’t just kill you – they torture you as well.
Whenever I recall these stories I think of how many journalists would be feeling that same solitude. Not knowing whom to ask for help. Too many are resigned to the fact that death is their destiny.
So the question of what we can do acquires a different resonance. You can do many things. But I believe that we must do journalism, because that is what we are, journalists. We must expose the business, the drugs and arms trafficking networks, the corrupt authorities, we must follow up on judgments to piece together the puzzle of who are their partners and where the disappeared people end up. We must follow the narco-money on both sides of the border.
Again, this isn’t just about helping us, it’s about helping yourselves as well.
In an IRE workshop, I learned that reporters from Laredo or McAllen, Texas, have also been threatened not to cross the border. Correspondent Alfredo Corchado was threatened in a bar in Texas.
What you can do? A friend in Sinaloa, in the investigative magazine Riodoce, perhaps said it the best way: Don’t abandon us. I say the same to you.
As the great Polish writer Ryszard Kapuscinski once said: In the struggle against silence, human life is at stake.
Thank you.
Marcela Turati is an investigative reporter for the Mexican magazine Proceso. In 2007 she co-founded Periodistas de a Pie, a journalism network created to support reporters covering issues such as poverty, civic participation, and human rights. Later, its main mission shifted to support journalists covering the war on drugs conflict and to defend freedom of speech. In 2010, Turati published the book Fuego Cruzado: Las Víctimas Atrapadas en la Guerra del Narco (Crossfire: Victims Trapped in the Narco-War), about the impact of drug violence on Mexican society.
Nearly 15,000 people from a wide range of professions and industries are attending an annual global mapping conference in San Diego, California. But only a few dozen journalists are there, despite the numerous ideas, methodologies, data, and potential sources that are available. Known as the ESRI International User Conference, it provides many of the presentations online. One of the new international projects is the Urban Observatory that allows a user to compare and map data in cities around the world.
Urban Observatory: Traffic in London versus New York (Screenshot)
ESRI was formed as a land-use company in 1969 and expanded into an international company that works closely with governments and business and their data. For journalists, the software has been sometimes difficult to learn and use and has been expensive. But over the years the software has become easier to handle and ESRI now offers key components and data for free to nonprofits and for the media.
ESRI also is working on a free service called storymaps that uses data, maps, and timelines to tell stories in more informative ways. A National Geographic cartographer and designer demonstrated Geostories during the conference’s small media track. GeoStories is an approach that mixes photographs, audio, and video into the maps.
The ESRI effort is causing journalists who use Google and Tableau to take another look at the company and its software, especially investigative journalists who are dealing with global issues.
The GIJC13 awards ceremony will be held in the magnificent Theatro Municipal in central Rio de Janeiro.
The Global Investigative Journalism Conference is getting close! Our just-released newsletter includes highlights of the planned sessions and collaboration workshops for the big October 12-15 event, as well as information on the Royal Tulip, the conference hotel. You’ll also find an update on the three major awards that will be announced in Rio. This year we received more than 60 submissions from 35 countries for the Global Shining Light Award. The competition is so keen that our judges have called it “an embarrassment of riches.” And, as usual, you’ll find the latest resources in our toolbox section, and a calendar of upcoming events.
The fellowships are part of the 4th Advanced Course for Investigative Journalism, co-organized by IPYS and Transparency International. A group of 12 journalists from across Latin America will be selected after proposing projects on organized crime in the region. Those chosen will receive special training and mentoring, and attend specialized sessions during the Conference.
Applicants should submit an investigative project on organized crime that could be developed within four months. IPYS will evaluate the projects and finance some of them with up to US$6,000. The applicants should send a summary of the project, along with a biography, a photograph, and two samples of their investigative work. Deadline to apply is August 13.
Glenn Greenwald, the Guardian journalist who since June has broken a series of stories on NSA spying, will speak on a showcase panel at the Global Investigative Journalism Conference in Rio de Janeiro this October. Greenwald will talk about government secrecy and his work uncovering the NSA’s global surveillance programs.
Greenwald’s latest revelation, published in The Guardian last week, bared how the NSA’s XKeyscore program collects extraordinary amounts of online data from users around the world. Earlier in the week on CNN, Greenwald engaged in a debate with the New Yorker’s Jeffrey Toobin over the fate of Bradley Manning, who was recently acquitted in a U.S. military court of the charge of aiding the enemy, but convicted of violations of the Espionage Act for his leaks to the website WikiLeaks.
“If you’re sufficiently rich and powerful and well-connected in Washington, the laws don’t apply to you,” Greenwald told Toobin, who defended the guilty verdict. “You don’t get punished. The only people who do are people like Bradley Manning.” Greenwald compared Manning with Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg. “People inside the government with a conscience come forward when they find out things that their government is doing that are wrong and they disclose it to the world through media outlets and journalism. If you think that’s criminal, you’re essentially calling for the end of investigative journalism. That’s what investigative journalism is about.”
Greenwald is a columnist on civil liberties and US national security issues for The Guardian. A former constitutional lawyer, he was until 2012 a contributing writer at Salon. He is currently working on a book based on his NSA reporting, which, according to its publisher, will “contain new revelations exposing the extraordinary cooperation of private industry and the far-reaching consequences of the government’s program, both domestically and abroad.”
The Global Investigative Journalism Conference is the world’s premier international gathering of investigative reporters. The conference will be held at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil’s first private university, from October 12 to 15.
This year 
