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(Photo: Roger H. Goun)
In our world, the news about the news is often grim. Newspapers are shrinking, folding up, or being cut loose by their parent companies. Layoffs are up and staffs are down. That investigative reporter who covered the state capitol -- she's not there anymore. Newspapers like the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, and the Chicago Tribune have suffered from multiple rounds of layoffs over the years. You know the story and it would be easy enough to imagine that it was the world's story as well. But despite a long run of journalistic tough times, the loss of advertising dollars, and the challenge of the Internet, there's been a blossoming of investigative journalism across the globe from Honduras to Myanmar, New Zealand to Indonesia.
Woodward and Bernstein may be a fading memory in this country, but journalists with names largely unknown in the U.S. like Khadija Ismayilova, Rafael Marques, and Gianina Segnina are breaking one blockbuster story after another, exposing corrupt government officials and their crony corporate pals in Azerbaijan, Angola, and Costa Rica. As I travel the world, I'm energized by the journalists I meet who are taking great risks to shine much needed light on shadowy wrongdoing.
And I'm not the only one to notice. "We are in a golden age of investigative journalism," says Sheila Coronel. And she should know. Now the academic dean at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism, Coronel was the director of the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism, whose coverage of the real estate holdings of former President Joseph Estrada -- including identical houses built for his mistresses -- contributed to his removal from office in 2001.
These are, to take another example, the halcyon days for watchdog journalism in Brazil. Last October, I went to a conference of investigative journalists there organized by the Global Journalism Investigative Network. There were 1,350 attendees. In July, I was back for another conference, this time organized by the Association of Brazilian Investigative Journalists and attended by close to 450 reporters. Thanks in part to Brazil's Freedom of Information Act and the "open budget" movement that seeks to shed light on the government's finances (and let people have a say in how their tax dollars are spent), journalists there have been busy exposing widespread corruption in local government as well as a cash-for-votes scheme that resulted in the arrest of nine senior politicians.
Cross-border news networks funded by foundations and philanthropists are carrying out similar investigations all over the world. Based in New York and edited by a Nigerian, Omoyele Sowore, Sahara Reporters uses leaked stories and documents to expose corruption in Africa's richest country. Its funders include the Omidyar Network, created by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar and his wife, Pam, and its stated goal is nothing less than "seeking the truth and publishing it without fear or favor."
A group of students and I studied Sahara Reporters earlier this year. In our report, we described one typical story that outlet broke which detailed how then-Minister of Aviation Stella Oduah purchased two bulletproof BMWs -- at nearly double the normal price -- with funds from the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA). Sahara Reporters posted receipts of the purchases and documents linking Oduah to the scheme. It also located sources who testified that the whereabouts of the cars were unknown and that they were suspected of being employed for Oduah's private use. Meanwhile, Sahara Reporters exposed the budgetary constraints the NCAA was operating under and linked these to several air mishaps, including two crashes resulting in the deaths of 140 people.
Oduah, who was already under fire for the NCAA's poor performance, initially denied the accusations. Within days, however, numerous news outlets had picked up the story and run with it. The reports triggered a series of reactions from the government, opposing political parties, civil society organizations, and the Nigerian public. Earlier this year, Oduah was fired.
Honorable Mentions
In recent years, I've been a judge for the human rights reporting awards given out by the Overseas Press Club in New York. You should see the staggering pile of entries. It takes days to read through them all. Our major "problem": an overabundance of top-notch reporting we're unable to acknowledge with prizes. (Happily, some of them received prizes anyway, just not from us).
Among the remarkable pieces we read but didn't give the human rights prize to was an Associated Press series on the effects of narco-violence on ordinary people in Honduras. It laid out the way they have been forced to flee their villages or vacate neighborhoods block by block as drug dealers moved in and took over their homes. The series described how some homeowners stopped painting their houses or mowing their lawns lest they appeal to drug lords who might seize them. People were even being shaken down by gangs that left notes demanding payments if they wanted to be allowed to stay in their houses.
At the same time, the government was sowing misery of its own. As part of the series, Alberto Arce wrote about a 15-year-old boy -- the son of a college professor -- who went out one night to meet a girl he had friended on Facebook only to be killed at a government roadblock by trigger-happy soldiers.
This year, when the press started to cover the flood of children from Central America crossing the U.S. border, I thought back to that series and how well it explained the kinds of desperate conditions that can lead to mass migration.
Similarly unforgettable was the reporting of Cam Simpson at Bloomberg Businessweek about the workers behind Apple's iPhone 5. Migrants from Nepal, they fell into debt paying middlemen for jobs assembling that smartphone in factories in Malaysia. After Apple started rejecting the phones, production was cut back and some 1,300 workers were left to fend for themselves for months without food or pay. Since their passports had been taken from them, they were unable to leave the country and essentially confined to a hostel, trying to scrape together a bit of rice each day. Finally, in despair, they began rioting and the Malaysian police were called in. Their response will seem odd indeed to anyone reading recent reports from Ferguson, Missouri. Instead of arresting the workers, the police had food delivered and went to work to get the Nepalese sent home. (Still broke, many of them are likely to go further into debt to again pay brokers to secure overseas jobs that may land them in similarly dire straits.)
A third striking piece of global reportage was E. Benjamin Skinner's "The Fishing Industry's Cruelest Catch." It focused on the conditions Indonesian migrant workers encounter fishing in the waters off New Zealand, for New Zealand companies, aboard Korean boats. A report by academic researchers Christina Stringer and Glenn Simmons, in collaboration with deep sea fishing skipper Daren Coulston, prompted Skinner, a journalist specializing in slavery, to spend six months in several different countries checking out their allegations.
The result was a gripping story of modern day slavery. Indigent Indonesian villagers were, he reported, misled into accepting contracts on vessels that ply the Southern Pacific Ocean and Tasman Sea searching for fish to be sold to giant American chains like Safeway, Walmart, and Whole Foods. Many of the Indonesians thought they were signing on to first world labor conditions on modern New Zealand-owned vessels. Once aboard, however, they found themselves virtual prisoners, forced to work long hours for substandard food and beaten or sometimes sexually assaulted when they tried to resist.
After various deductions were taken from their paychecks, the workers, promised $12 an hour, ended up getting only about a dollar an hour. Not only was Skinner's story well-written and well-reported, but within months of its appearance, New Zealand had moved to change its laws and Safeway, Whole Foods, and Walmart began investigating their supply chains.
The Future of Global Muckraking
When I began researching my new book, Global Muckraking: 100 Years of Investigative Journalism from Around the World, I assumed that the good old days of investigative reporting were in the past. It was a surprise to learn just how much high quality work is still being done around the planet. The amount of data now available online, the ability of journalists to use the Internet to connect to one another and share information -- a major aid in cross-border reporting -- and a wave of new philanthropy have all helped fuel the current boom. In addition, fresh news operations of every sort seem to be popping up, eager to promote investigative reporting.
I thought I was well versed in innovative twenty-first century methods of news funding when I headed into this project, but I continue to stumble upon exciting experiments. For example, Morry Schwarz, a book publisher and property developer from Melbourne, Australia, funds weekly, monthly, and quarterly publications devoted to long-form writing on serious issues of the day, while also running the publishing house Black Inc. Australian philanthropist Graeme Wood, with money he made from an online business, founded the Global Mail,a nonprofit website that was similarly aimed at promoting long-form journalism. He also underwrites cross-border investigations via the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. In Brazil, Joao Moreira Salles, scion of a prominent family enmeshed in the banking sector, has used his money to found a monthly magazine, Piaui, whose recent issue included an investigative piece about indigenous opposition to Belo Monte, a hydroelectric plant under construction in Altamira in the Amazon region.
Moves toward democracy in many countries, along with the Arab Spring (however shortcircuited it was) have also unshackled the global press in a variety of ways. Compared to five, 10, or 20 years ago, Myanmar, Ghana, and Tunisia, to take just three examples from many, have far freer -- sometimes remarkably freewheeling -- media atmospheres. And what's happening in countries like those has had a knock-on effect on nearby states.
Of course, there are also democratically elected governments in countries like Turkey, Ecuador, and Hungary that have been clamping down on free speech. And from Syria to Ferguson, Missouri, many locales remain dangerous for journalists. On balance, however, the press is ever less under the thumb of government, a situation that only encourages investigative reporting. To take two examples where the press has become at least marginally harder to control thanks to social media, the Internet, and some brave (or nervy) independent-minded journalists, consider China and Vietnam, where once utterly closed media scenes are slowly being pried open.
The mass layoffs of older journalists around the world has had one benefit: there are plenty of experienced hands ready to train the next generation and provide institutional memory at innovative ventures. Some of these oldtimers, who aren't busy teaching (or taking public relations jobs -- but that's a story for another time), are busy founding and running nonprofits dedicated to doing hard-driving, investigative reporting. These include: 100 Reporters, Global Journalism Investigative Network, Forum for African Investigative Reporters, Investigative Reporters and Editors, Investigative News Network, SCOOP, and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. All of these organizations are benefitting from experienced editors and reporters downsized from traditional media outlets and committed to helping the next generation -- and learning from them, too.
No one can say how this wave of new reporting will continue to be funded in the future, nor can I promise to be as cheery a decade from now as I am today about investigative journalism's prospects. Already some donors are putting in place stipulations that might constrain future reporting -- like requiring publications to meet benchmarks offering proof of a story's impact. Still, if the history of investigative reporting in the United States has taught us anything, it's that outlets come and go, but the legacy of great investigative reporting, the tradition that inspires future generations of crusading journalists, endures.
It can take years for investigative journalism to make a difference and, in the past, many of the most important outlets didn't make money and disappeared. They were sometimes run by passionate crusaders who seized the moment, wrote the stories, and then moved on. Everybody's Magazine folded long ago, but Upton Sinclair's takedown of the scandalous Beef Trust, specifically Armour and Co., in 1908 opened American eyes to the way meat was produced in this country. Who remembers In Fact? But George Seldes's prescient 1941 expose of the dangers of cigarettes in the pages of that now-defunct publication has stood the test of time. And while McClure's, I.F. Stone's Weekly, and Ramparts may be increasingly distant memories, the effects of their investigative work ripple all the way to the present.
And this isn't peculiar to the United States.
Young journalists on their way up are being trained in a craft that, history tells us, will outlast the death of any particular publication. Ory Okolloh of the Omidyar Network regularly makes this point. She notes that after the pioneering Nigerian newspaper Next234 went out of business, its reporters and editors simply moved on to other media outlets in Africa, where they are breaking important stories and training the next generation of reporters.
For investigative reporting, injustice is the gift that just keeps giving. While so much of the business side of journalism remains in flux, fine reporters with an investigative urge are finding ways to shine much needed light into the parts of our global lives that the powerful would rather keep in the shadows. These may be tough times, lean times, difficult times, but don't be fooled: they're also boom times. There can be no question that, if you're a reader with access to the Internet, you're living in a new golden age of investigative journalism.
Trump and Musk are on an unconstitutional rampage, aiming for virtually every corner of the federal government. These two right-wing billionaires are targeting nurses, scientists, teachers, daycare providers, judges, veterans, air traffic controllers, and nuclear safety inspectors. No one is safe. The food stamps program, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are next. It’s an unprecedented disaster and a five-alarm fire, but there will be a reckoning. The people did not vote for this. The American people do not want this dystopian hellscape that hides behind claims of “efficiency.” Still, in reality, it is all a giveaway to corporate interests and the libertarian dreams of far-right oligarchs like Musk. Common Dreams is playing a vital role by reporting day and night on this orgy of corruption and greed, as well as what everyday people can do to organize and fight back. As a people-powered nonprofit news outlet, we cover issues the corporate media never will, but we can only continue with our readers’ support. |
In our world, the news about the news is often grim. Newspapers are shrinking, folding up, or being cut loose by their parent companies. Layoffs are up and staffs are down. That investigative reporter who covered the state capitol -- she's not there anymore. Newspapers like the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, and the Chicago Tribune have suffered from multiple rounds of layoffs over the years. You know the story and it would be easy enough to imagine that it was the world's story as well. But despite a long run of journalistic tough times, the loss of advertising dollars, and the challenge of the Internet, there's been a blossoming of investigative journalism across the globe from Honduras to Myanmar, New Zealand to Indonesia.
Woodward and Bernstein may be a fading memory in this country, but journalists with names largely unknown in the U.S. like Khadija Ismayilova, Rafael Marques, and Gianina Segnina are breaking one blockbuster story after another, exposing corrupt government officials and their crony corporate pals in Azerbaijan, Angola, and Costa Rica. As I travel the world, I'm energized by the journalists I meet who are taking great risks to shine much needed light on shadowy wrongdoing.
And I'm not the only one to notice. "We are in a golden age of investigative journalism," says Sheila Coronel. And she should know. Now the academic dean at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism, Coronel was the director of the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism, whose coverage of the real estate holdings of former President Joseph Estrada -- including identical houses built for his mistresses -- contributed to his removal from office in 2001.
These are, to take another example, the halcyon days for watchdog journalism in Brazil. Last October, I went to a conference of investigative journalists there organized by the Global Journalism Investigative Network. There were 1,350 attendees. In July, I was back for another conference, this time organized by the Association of Brazilian Investigative Journalists and attended by close to 450 reporters. Thanks in part to Brazil's Freedom of Information Act and the "open budget" movement that seeks to shed light on the government's finances (and let people have a say in how their tax dollars are spent), journalists there have been busy exposing widespread corruption in local government as well as a cash-for-votes scheme that resulted in the arrest of nine senior politicians.
Cross-border news networks funded by foundations and philanthropists are carrying out similar investigations all over the world. Based in New York and edited by a Nigerian, Omoyele Sowore, Sahara Reporters uses leaked stories and documents to expose corruption in Africa's richest country. Its funders include the Omidyar Network, created by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar and his wife, Pam, and its stated goal is nothing less than "seeking the truth and publishing it without fear or favor."
A group of students and I studied Sahara Reporters earlier this year. In our report, we described one typical story that outlet broke which detailed how then-Minister of Aviation Stella Oduah purchased two bulletproof BMWs -- at nearly double the normal price -- with funds from the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA). Sahara Reporters posted receipts of the purchases and documents linking Oduah to the scheme. It also located sources who testified that the whereabouts of the cars were unknown and that they were suspected of being employed for Oduah's private use. Meanwhile, Sahara Reporters exposed the budgetary constraints the NCAA was operating under and linked these to several air mishaps, including two crashes resulting in the deaths of 140 people.
Oduah, who was already under fire for the NCAA's poor performance, initially denied the accusations. Within days, however, numerous news outlets had picked up the story and run with it. The reports triggered a series of reactions from the government, opposing political parties, civil society organizations, and the Nigerian public. Earlier this year, Oduah was fired.
Honorable Mentions
In recent years, I've been a judge for the human rights reporting awards given out by the Overseas Press Club in New York. You should see the staggering pile of entries. It takes days to read through them all. Our major "problem": an overabundance of top-notch reporting we're unable to acknowledge with prizes. (Happily, some of them received prizes anyway, just not from us).
Among the remarkable pieces we read but didn't give the human rights prize to was an Associated Press series on the effects of narco-violence on ordinary people in Honduras. It laid out the way they have been forced to flee their villages or vacate neighborhoods block by block as drug dealers moved in and took over their homes. The series described how some homeowners stopped painting their houses or mowing their lawns lest they appeal to drug lords who might seize them. People were even being shaken down by gangs that left notes demanding payments if they wanted to be allowed to stay in their houses.
At the same time, the government was sowing misery of its own. As part of the series, Alberto Arce wrote about a 15-year-old boy -- the son of a college professor -- who went out one night to meet a girl he had friended on Facebook only to be killed at a government roadblock by trigger-happy soldiers.
This year, when the press started to cover the flood of children from Central America crossing the U.S. border, I thought back to that series and how well it explained the kinds of desperate conditions that can lead to mass migration.
Similarly unforgettable was the reporting of Cam Simpson at Bloomberg Businessweek about the workers behind Apple's iPhone 5. Migrants from Nepal, they fell into debt paying middlemen for jobs assembling that smartphone in factories in Malaysia. After Apple started rejecting the phones, production was cut back and some 1,300 workers were left to fend for themselves for months without food or pay. Since their passports had been taken from them, they were unable to leave the country and essentially confined to a hostel, trying to scrape together a bit of rice each day. Finally, in despair, they began rioting and the Malaysian police were called in. Their response will seem odd indeed to anyone reading recent reports from Ferguson, Missouri. Instead of arresting the workers, the police had food delivered and went to work to get the Nepalese sent home. (Still broke, many of them are likely to go further into debt to again pay brokers to secure overseas jobs that may land them in similarly dire straits.)
A third striking piece of global reportage was E. Benjamin Skinner's "The Fishing Industry's Cruelest Catch." It focused on the conditions Indonesian migrant workers encounter fishing in the waters off New Zealand, for New Zealand companies, aboard Korean boats. A report by academic researchers Christina Stringer and Glenn Simmons, in collaboration with deep sea fishing skipper Daren Coulston, prompted Skinner, a journalist specializing in slavery, to spend six months in several different countries checking out their allegations.
The result was a gripping story of modern day slavery. Indigent Indonesian villagers were, he reported, misled into accepting contracts on vessels that ply the Southern Pacific Ocean and Tasman Sea searching for fish to be sold to giant American chains like Safeway, Walmart, and Whole Foods. Many of the Indonesians thought they were signing on to first world labor conditions on modern New Zealand-owned vessels. Once aboard, however, they found themselves virtual prisoners, forced to work long hours for substandard food and beaten or sometimes sexually assaulted when they tried to resist.
After various deductions were taken from their paychecks, the workers, promised $12 an hour, ended up getting only about a dollar an hour. Not only was Skinner's story well-written and well-reported, but within months of its appearance, New Zealand had moved to change its laws and Safeway, Whole Foods, and Walmart began investigating their supply chains.
The Future of Global Muckraking
When I began researching my new book, Global Muckraking: 100 Years of Investigative Journalism from Around the World, I assumed that the good old days of investigative reporting were in the past. It was a surprise to learn just how much high quality work is still being done around the planet. The amount of data now available online, the ability of journalists to use the Internet to connect to one another and share information -- a major aid in cross-border reporting -- and a wave of new philanthropy have all helped fuel the current boom. In addition, fresh news operations of every sort seem to be popping up, eager to promote investigative reporting.
I thought I was well versed in innovative twenty-first century methods of news funding when I headed into this project, but I continue to stumble upon exciting experiments. For example, Morry Schwarz, a book publisher and property developer from Melbourne, Australia, funds weekly, monthly, and quarterly publications devoted to long-form writing on serious issues of the day, while also running the publishing house Black Inc. Australian philanthropist Graeme Wood, with money he made from an online business, founded the Global Mail,a nonprofit website that was similarly aimed at promoting long-form journalism. He also underwrites cross-border investigations via the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. In Brazil, Joao Moreira Salles, scion of a prominent family enmeshed in the banking sector, has used his money to found a monthly magazine, Piaui, whose recent issue included an investigative piece about indigenous opposition to Belo Monte, a hydroelectric plant under construction in Altamira in the Amazon region.
Moves toward democracy in many countries, along with the Arab Spring (however shortcircuited it was) have also unshackled the global press in a variety of ways. Compared to five, 10, or 20 years ago, Myanmar, Ghana, and Tunisia, to take just three examples from many, have far freer -- sometimes remarkably freewheeling -- media atmospheres. And what's happening in countries like those has had a knock-on effect on nearby states.
Of course, there are also democratically elected governments in countries like Turkey, Ecuador, and Hungary that have been clamping down on free speech. And from Syria to Ferguson, Missouri, many locales remain dangerous for journalists. On balance, however, the press is ever less under the thumb of government, a situation that only encourages investigative reporting. To take two examples where the press has become at least marginally harder to control thanks to social media, the Internet, and some brave (or nervy) independent-minded journalists, consider China and Vietnam, where once utterly closed media scenes are slowly being pried open.
The mass layoffs of older journalists around the world has had one benefit: there are plenty of experienced hands ready to train the next generation and provide institutional memory at innovative ventures. Some of these oldtimers, who aren't busy teaching (or taking public relations jobs -- but that's a story for another time), are busy founding and running nonprofits dedicated to doing hard-driving, investigative reporting. These include: 100 Reporters, Global Journalism Investigative Network, Forum for African Investigative Reporters, Investigative Reporters and Editors, Investigative News Network, SCOOP, and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. All of these organizations are benefitting from experienced editors and reporters downsized from traditional media outlets and committed to helping the next generation -- and learning from them, too.
No one can say how this wave of new reporting will continue to be funded in the future, nor can I promise to be as cheery a decade from now as I am today about investigative journalism's prospects. Already some donors are putting in place stipulations that might constrain future reporting -- like requiring publications to meet benchmarks offering proof of a story's impact. Still, if the history of investigative reporting in the United States has taught us anything, it's that outlets come and go, but the legacy of great investigative reporting, the tradition that inspires future generations of crusading journalists, endures.
It can take years for investigative journalism to make a difference and, in the past, many of the most important outlets didn't make money and disappeared. They were sometimes run by passionate crusaders who seized the moment, wrote the stories, and then moved on. Everybody's Magazine folded long ago, but Upton Sinclair's takedown of the scandalous Beef Trust, specifically Armour and Co., in 1908 opened American eyes to the way meat was produced in this country. Who remembers In Fact? But George Seldes's prescient 1941 expose of the dangers of cigarettes in the pages of that now-defunct publication has stood the test of time. And while McClure's, I.F. Stone's Weekly, and Ramparts may be increasingly distant memories, the effects of their investigative work ripple all the way to the present.
And this isn't peculiar to the United States.
Young journalists on their way up are being trained in a craft that, history tells us, will outlast the death of any particular publication. Ory Okolloh of the Omidyar Network regularly makes this point. She notes that after the pioneering Nigerian newspaper Next234 went out of business, its reporters and editors simply moved on to other media outlets in Africa, where they are breaking important stories and training the next generation of reporters.
For investigative reporting, injustice is the gift that just keeps giving. While so much of the business side of journalism remains in flux, fine reporters with an investigative urge are finding ways to shine much needed light into the parts of our global lives that the powerful would rather keep in the shadows. These may be tough times, lean times, difficult times, but don't be fooled: they're also boom times. There can be no question that, if you're a reader with access to the Internet, you're living in a new golden age of investigative journalism.
In our world, the news about the news is often grim. Newspapers are shrinking, folding up, or being cut loose by their parent companies. Layoffs are up and staffs are down. That investigative reporter who covered the state capitol -- she's not there anymore. Newspapers like the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, and the Chicago Tribune have suffered from multiple rounds of layoffs over the years. You know the story and it would be easy enough to imagine that it was the world's story as well. But despite a long run of journalistic tough times, the loss of advertising dollars, and the challenge of the Internet, there's been a blossoming of investigative journalism across the globe from Honduras to Myanmar, New Zealand to Indonesia.
Woodward and Bernstein may be a fading memory in this country, but journalists with names largely unknown in the U.S. like Khadija Ismayilova, Rafael Marques, and Gianina Segnina are breaking one blockbuster story after another, exposing corrupt government officials and their crony corporate pals in Azerbaijan, Angola, and Costa Rica. As I travel the world, I'm energized by the journalists I meet who are taking great risks to shine much needed light on shadowy wrongdoing.
And I'm not the only one to notice. "We are in a golden age of investigative journalism," says Sheila Coronel. And she should know. Now the academic dean at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism, Coronel was the director of the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism, whose coverage of the real estate holdings of former President Joseph Estrada -- including identical houses built for his mistresses -- contributed to his removal from office in 2001.
These are, to take another example, the halcyon days for watchdog journalism in Brazil. Last October, I went to a conference of investigative journalists there organized by the Global Journalism Investigative Network. There were 1,350 attendees. In July, I was back for another conference, this time organized by the Association of Brazilian Investigative Journalists and attended by close to 450 reporters. Thanks in part to Brazil's Freedom of Information Act and the "open budget" movement that seeks to shed light on the government's finances (and let people have a say in how their tax dollars are spent), journalists there have been busy exposing widespread corruption in local government as well as a cash-for-votes scheme that resulted in the arrest of nine senior politicians.
Cross-border news networks funded by foundations and philanthropists are carrying out similar investigations all over the world. Based in New York and edited by a Nigerian, Omoyele Sowore, Sahara Reporters uses leaked stories and documents to expose corruption in Africa's richest country. Its funders include the Omidyar Network, created by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar and his wife, Pam, and its stated goal is nothing less than "seeking the truth and publishing it without fear or favor."
A group of students and I studied Sahara Reporters earlier this year. In our report, we described one typical story that outlet broke which detailed how then-Minister of Aviation Stella Oduah purchased two bulletproof BMWs -- at nearly double the normal price -- with funds from the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA). Sahara Reporters posted receipts of the purchases and documents linking Oduah to the scheme. It also located sources who testified that the whereabouts of the cars were unknown and that they were suspected of being employed for Oduah's private use. Meanwhile, Sahara Reporters exposed the budgetary constraints the NCAA was operating under and linked these to several air mishaps, including two crashes resulting in the deaths of 140 people.
Oduah, who was already under fire for the NCAA's poor performance, initially denied the accusations. Within days, however, numerous news outlets had picked up the story and run with it. The reports triggered a series of reactions from the government, opposing political parties, civil society organizations, and the Nigerian public. Earlier this year, Oduah was fired.
Honorable Mentions
In recent years, I've been a judge for the human rights reporting awards given out by the Overseas Press Club in New York. You should see the staggering pile of entries. It takes days to read through them all. Our major "problem": an overabundance of top-notch reporting we're unable to acknowledge with prizes. (Happily, some of them received prizes anyway, just not from us).
Among the remarkable pieces we read but didn't give the human rights prize to was an Associated Press series on the effects of narco-violence on ordinary people in Honduras. It laid out the way they have been forced to flee their villages or vacate neighborhoods block by block as drug dealers moved in and took over their homes. The series described how some homeowners stopped painting their houses or mowing their lawns lest they appeal to drug lords who might seize them. People were even being shaken down by gangs that left notes demanding payments if they wanted to be allowed to stay in their houses.
At the same time, the government was sowing misery of its own. As part of the series, Alberto Arce wrote about a 15-year-old boy -- the son of a college professor -- who went out one night to meet a girl he had friended on Facebook only to be killed at a government roadblock by trigger-happy soldiers.
This year, when the press started to cover the flood of children from Central America crossing the U.S. border, I thought back to that series and how well it explained the kinds of desperate conditions that can lead to mass migration.
Similarly unforgettable was the reporting of Cam Simpson at Bloomberg Businessweek about the workers behind Apple's iPhone 5. Migrants from Nepal, they fell into debt paying middlemen for jobs assembling that smartphone in factories in Malaysia. After Apple started rejecting the phones, production was cut back and some 1,300 workers were left to fend for themselves for months without food or pay. Since their passports had been taken from them, they were unable to leave the country and essentially confined to a hostel, trying to scrape together a bit of rice each day. Finally, in despair, they began rioting and the Malaysian police were called in. Their response will seem odd indeed to anyone reading recent reports from Ferguson, Missouri. Instead of arresting the workers, the police had food delivered and went to work to get the Nepalese sent home. (Still broke, many of them are likely to go further into debt to again pay brokers to secure overseas jobs that may land them in similarly dire straits.)
A third striking piece of global reportage was E. Benjamin Skinner's "The Fishing Industry's Cruelest Catch." It focused on the conditions Indonesian migrant workers encounter fishing in the waters off New Zealand, for New Zealand companies, aboard Korean boats. A report by academic researchers Christina Stringer and Glenn Simmons, in collaboration with deep sea fishing skipper Daren Coulston, prompted Skinner, a journalist specializing in slavery, to spend six months in several different countries checking out their allegations.
The result was a gripping story of modern day slavery. Indigent Indonesian villagers were, he reported, misled into accepting contracts on vessels that ply the Southern Pacific Ocean and Tasman Sea searching for fish to be sold to giant American chains like Safeway, Walmart, and Whole Foods. Many of the Indonesians thought they were signing on to first world labor conditions on modern New Zealand-owned vessels. Once aboard, however, they found themselves virtual prisoners, forced to work long hours for substandard food and beaten or sometimes sexually assaulted when they tried to resist.
After various deductions were taken from their paychecks, the workers, promised $12 an hour, ended up getting only about a dollar an hour. Not only was Skinner's story well-written and well-reported, but within months of its appearance, New Zealand had moved to change its laws and Safeway, Whole Foods, and Walmart began investigating their supply chains.
The Future of Global Muckraking
When I began researching my new book, Global Muckraking: 100 Years of Investigative Journalism from Around the World, I assumed that the good old days of investigative reporting were in the past. It was a surprise to learn just how much high quality work is still being done around the planet. The amount of data now available online, the ability of journalists to use the Internet to connect to one another and share information -- a major aid in cross-border reporting -- and a wave of new philanthropy have all helped fuel the current boom. In addition, fresh news operations of every sort seem to be popping up, eager to promote investigative reporting.
I thought I was well versed in innovative twenty-first century methods of news funding when I headed into this project, but I continue to stumble upon exciting experiments. For example, Morry Schwarz, a book publisher and property developer from Melbourne, Australia, funds weekly, monthly, and quarterly publications devoted to long-form writing on serious issues of the day, while also running the publishing house Black Inc. Australian philanthropist Graeme Wood, with money he made from an online business, founded the Global Mail,a nonprofit website that was similarly aimed at promoting long-form journalism. He also underwrites cross-border investigations via the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. In Brazil, Joao Moreira Salles, scion of a prominent family enmeshed in the banking sector, has used his money to found a monthly magazine, Piaui, whose recent issue included an investigative piece about indigenous opposition to Belo Monte, a hydroelectric plant under construction in Altamira in the Amazon region.
Moves toward democracy in many countries, along with the Arab Spring (however shortcircuited it was) have also unshackled the global press in a variety of ways. Compared to five, 10, or 20 years ago, Myanmar, Ghana, and Tunisia, to take just three examples from many, have far freer -- sometimes remarkably freewheeling -- media atmospheres. And what's happening in countries like those has had a knock-on effect on nearby states.
Of course, there are also democratically elected governments in countries like Turkey, Ecuador, and Hungary that have been clamping down on free speech. And from Syria to Ferguson, Missouri, many locales remain dangerous for journalists. On balance, however, the press is ever less under the thumb of government, a situation that only encourages investigative reporting. To take two examples where the press has become at least marginally harder to control thanks to social media, the Internet, and some brave (or nervy) independent-minded journalists, consider China and Vietnam, where once utterly closed media scenes are slowly being pried open.
The mass layoffs of older journalists around the world has had one benefit: there are plenty of experienced hands ready to train the next generation and provide institutional memory at innovative ventures. Some of these oldtimers, who aren't busy teaching (or taking public relations jobs -- but that's a story for another time), are busy founding and running nonprofits dedicated to doing hard-driving, investigative reporting. These include: 100 Reporters, Global Journalism Investigative Network, Forum for African Investigative Reporters, Investigative Reporters and Editors, Investigative News Network, SCOOP, and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. All of these organizations are benefitting from experienced editors and reporters downsized from traditional media outlets and committed to helping the next generation -- and learning from them, too.
No one can say how this wave of new reporting will continue to be funded in the future, nor can I promise to be as cheery a decade from now as I am today about investigative journalism's prospects. Already some donors are putting in place stipulations that might constrain future reporting -- like requiring publications to meet benchmarks offering proof of a story's impact. Still, if the history of investigative reporting in the United States has taught us anything, it's that outlets come and go, but the legacy of great investigative reporting, the tradition that inspires future generations of crusading journalists, endures.
It can take years for investigative journalism to make a difference and, in the past, many of the most important outlets didn't make money and disappeared. They were sometimes run by passionate crusaders who seized the moment, wrote the stories, and then moved on. Everybody's Magazine folded long ago, but Upton Sinclair's takedown of the scandalous Beef Trust, specifically Armour and Co., in 1908 opened American eyes to the way meat was produced in this country. Who remembers In Fact? But George Seldes's prescient 1941 expose of the dangers of cigarettes in the pages of that now-defunct publication has stood the test of time. And while McClure's, I.F. Stone's Weekly, and Ramparts may be increasingly distant memories, the effects of their investigative work ripple all the way to the present.
And this isn't peculiar to the United States.
Young journalists on their way up are being trained in a craft that, history tells us, will outlast the death of any particular publication. Ory Okolloh of the Omidyar Network regularly makes this point. She notes that after the pioneering Nigerian newspaper Next234 went out of business, its reporters and editors simply moved on to other media outlets in Africa, where they are breaking important stories and training the next generation of reporters.
For investigative reporting, injustice is the gift that just keeps giving. While so much of the business side of journalism remains in flux, fine reporters with an investigative urge are finding ways to shine much needed light into the parts of our global lives that the powerful would rather keep in the shadows. These may be tough times, lean times, difficult times, but don't be fooled: they're also boom times. There can be no question that, if you're a reader with access to the Internet, you're living in a new golden age of investigative journalism.
"Our nation's public schools, colleges, and universities are preparing the next generation of America's leaders—we must take steps to strengthen education in this country, not take a wrecking ball to the agency that exists to do so."
In a letter to U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon on Monday, Sen. Bernie Sanders led more than three dozen of his Democratic colleagues in dismissing the Trump administration's "false claims of financial savings" from slashing more than 1,000 jobs at the Education Department, emphasizing that the wealthy people leading federal policy "will not be harmed by these egregious attacks" on public schools.
"Wealthy families sending their children to elite, private schools will still be able to get a quality education even if every public school disappears in this country," reads the letter spearheaded by Sanders (I-Vt.), the ranking member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. "But for working-class families, high-quality public education is an opportunity they rely on for their children to have a path to do well in life."
The decision by President Donald Trump and his unelected billionaire ally, Elon Musk of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency( DOGE), to slash the Department of Education (DOE) workforce by 50%—or 1,300 people—and take steps to illegally close the agency has already had an impact on students, noted the senators, pointing to a glitch in the Free Application for Federal Financial Aid (FAFSA) that preventing families from accessing the applications "not even 24 hours after the staff reductions were announced."
"The staff normally responsible for fixing those errors had reportedly been cut," reads the letter, which was also signed by lawmakers including Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Peter Welch (D-Vt.), and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.).
"Without the Department of Education, there is no guarantee that states would uphold students' civil and educational rights."
The letter was sent as The Associated Press reported that cuts within the DOE's Office of Civil Rights have placed new barriers in front of families with children who have disabilities. Families who can't afford to take legal action against schools or districts that are not providing accommodations or services for students with disabilities have long been able to rely on on the office to open an investigation into their cases, but the AP reported that "more than 20,000 pending cases—including those related to kids with disabilities, historically the largest share of the office's work—largely sat idle for weeks after Trump took office."
"A freeze on processing the cases was lifted early this month, but advocates question whether the department can make progress on them with a smaller staff," reported the outlet.
The reduction in force has been compounded by the fact that the remaining staff has been directed to prioritize antisemitism cases, as the Trump administration places significant attention on allegations that pro-Palestinian organizers, particularly on college campuses, have endangered Jewish students by speaking out in favor of Palestinian rights and against Israel's U.S.-backed assault on Gaza and the West Bank.
An analysis of more than 550 campus protests found that 97% of the demonstrations last year remained non-violent, contrary to repeated claims by both Republican and Democratic lawmakers that they placed Jewish students in danger. Meanwhile, the Trump administration, pro-Israel advocates, and Republicans have dismissed outcry over Musk's display of a Nazi salute at an inaugural event in January.
"Special needs kids [are] now suffering because of a manufactured hysteria aimed [at] silencing dissent against genocide," said writer and political analyst Yousef Munayyer. "Utter depravity."
In their letter, Sanders and his Democratic colleagues noted that "several regional offices responsible for investigating potential violations of students' civil rights in local schools" have also been shuttered, expressing alarm that many cases will likely "go uninvestigated and that students will be left in unsafe learning environments as a result."
They noted that at a time of "massive income and wealth inequality, when 60% of people live paycheck to paycheck," the federal government's defunding of public education "would result in either higher property taxes or decreased funding for public schools, including in rural areas."
"It is a national disgrace that the Trump administration is attempting to illegally abolish the Department of Education and thus, undermine a high-quality education for our students," wrote the lawmakers. "These reductions will have devastating impacts on our nation's students and we are deeply concerned that without staff, the department will be unable to fulfill critical functions, such as ensuring students can access federal financial aid, upholding students' civil rights, and guaranteeing that federal funding reaches communities promptly and is well-spent."
Trump, they noted, has expressed a desire "to return education back to the states" despite the fact that state governments and local school boards already make education policy, with just 11% of public education funding coming from the DOE.
However, "the Department of Education has a necessary and irreplaceable responsibility to implement federal laws that ensure equal opportunity for all children in this country," they wrote. "These laws guarantee fundamental protections, such as ensuring that children with disabilities receive a free appropriate public education in the least restrictive environment, that students from low-income backgrounds and students of color will not be disproportionately taught by less experienced and qualified teachers, and that parents will receive information about their child's academic achievement."
"Without the Department of Education, there is no guarantee that states would uphold students' civil and educational rights," said the lawmakers. "We will not stand by as you attempt to turn back the clock on education in this country through gutting the Department of Education. Our nation's public schools, colleges, and universities are preparing the next generation of America's leaders—we must take steps to strengthen education in this country, not take a wrecking ball to the agency that exists to do so."
"Any potential deal that would give Elon Musk and his DOGE associates unilateral authority to manipulate the most critical, expansive national mail network on the planet is deeply troubling," wrote a group of House Democrats.
A group of House Democrats is demanding that the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform conduct a public hearing on the Trump administration and the so-called Department of Government Efficiency's plans for the U.S. Postal Service, in light of recent reporting that U.S. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy says he signed an agreement with DOGE to assist the nation's mail service "in identifying and achieving further efficiencies."
The news follows Washington Post coverage from February, when the outlet reported that U.S. President Donald Trump is considering putting the Postal Service under the control of the Commerce Department. In December, the Post also reported that Trump was eyeing privatizing the Postal Service. Elon Musk, a GOP megadonor who is playing a core role in Trump's efforts to slash federal spending and personnel, has also said the Postal Service should be privatized.
Postal workers unions are fiercely opposed to any effort to privatize the Postal Service.
"The Trump administration... is now subjecting the USPS, America's most trusted federal institution, to the chainsaw approach of Elon Musk and DOGE. This broad assault on the independence of the USPS demands congressional oversight, especially from the committee with jurisdiction over the USPS," according to the letter, which was signed by 20 House Democrats.
In a March 13 letter to congressional leaders, U.S. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy told Congress he signed an agreement with representatives from Elon Musk's DOGE and the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) so that DOGE could help the U.S. Postal Service, which has experienced billions in financial losses in recent years, work to address "big problems."
The Postal Service plans to cut 10,000 employees in the next 30 days through a voluntary early retirement program, according to DeJoy's letter.
DeJoy cited challenges facing the Postal Service, such as "mismanagement of our self-funded retirement assets," "burdensome regulatory requirements restricting normal business practice," and "unfunded mandates imposed on us by legislation."
The letter demanding a public hearing, which was addressed to House Oversight Committee Chair Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), was spearheaded by Oversight Committee Ranking Member Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.), Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.), and Rep. Kweisi Mfume (D-Md.)
"This backroom agreement between the billionaire-led DOGE and Postmaster DeJoy sets off alarm bells about this administration's plans for the Postal Service's role as a cornerstone public institution," according to the letter. "The Postal Service facilitates the delivery of more than 115 billion pieces of mail each year, a significant portion of which is delivered to rural, low-income, and hard-to-reach areas that would not otherwise receive service if not for the universal service obligation, which has received bipartisan support in Congress and is integral to the mission of Postal Service."
"We agree that there are steps Congress could take to strengthen the financial sustainability of the Postal Service, but any potential deal that would give Elon Musk and his DOGE associates unilateral authority to manipulate the most critical, expansive national mail network on the planet is deeply troubling," they continued.
The group is urging that the committee hold a hearing and wrote that they have prepared a letter to send to DeJoy asking that he furnish any signed agreements he made with the GSA and DOGE. The group is urging that Comer also sign on to that letter.
"We already have a good voting system and it's not broken, so it doesn't need to be fixed," said the Utah advocacy director for Mormon Women for Ethical Government.
Utah has the unusual distinction of being a deep-red state where voters enjoy automatic by-mail voting, but that will likely change in the next few years, in part thanks to the influence of conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation.
The state is poised to codify legislation that would get rid of the practice of automatically mailing ballots to all active, registered voters. The GOP-controlled legislature recently passed a bill that will phase out the state's current automatic by-mail voting system by 2029 and also requires voters to list the last four digits of their state identification number with their return envelope beginning in 2026, according to the Utah News Dispatch. Those who opt in to voting by mail and include their state ID information will still be able to vote by mail.
The bill is a scaled back version of an earlier proposal that would have "drastically restricted voting by mail and required most Utahns to return their ballots in person at either a polling place or a drop box manned by at least two poll workers while showing their government-issued ID," per the Utah News Dispatch.
Utah Republican Gov. Spencer Cox is expected to sign the legislation, The Washington Post reported Monday.
"We already have a good voting system and it's not broken, so it doesn't need to be fixed," Melarie Wheat, the Utah advocacy director for Mormon Women for Ethical Government, told the Post. "There are going to be people who are expecting their vote-by-mail ballot and are not going to get it, who are going to say, 'Well, it's just not worth it and I don't have time to go in at this point and vote in person.'"
Chris Diaz, director of legislative tracking for the Voting Rights Lab, told the outlet that "there's never been a state that did this, in taking that step backwards after adopting universal mail voting."
In 2012, Utah began allowing counties to run elections entirely by mail if they chose to do so, according to the outlet Bolts. Eventually, by 2018, about 90% of Utah voters cast ballots by mail, and in 2020 the state changed the default voting method for registered voters to vote by mail by automatically mailing a ballot to them (while still providing in-person voting options).
Researchers at Brigham Young University found that the shift to vote by mail led to a dramatic increase in voter participation in municipal elections.
Trump has repeatedly claimed that mail-in voting leads to fraud—despite having used the system himself in Florida. Research has found that incidences of fraud with mail-in ballots are exceedingly rare—and a recent legislative audit of Utah's election system failed to find "significant fraud."
State Rep. Jefferson Burton (R-64), the lawmaker who championed the bill, conceded to Bolts that the audit had not found widespread fraud in the state and that vote-by-mail has had a positive impact on turnout.
According to the outlet, when speaking about the bill Burton cited a scorecard maintained by the Heritage Foundation, the right-wing think tank that published the far-right policy blueprint Project 2025. The Election Integrity Scorecard gives Utah a relatively poor ranking—53 out of 100. Utah gets poor marks for its "absentee ballot management" and for currently not requiring a photo ID or a unique identifier when participating in vote by mail, among other criteria.
"As [the] Utah House GOP championed a bill to effectively end vote by mail, I kept hearing one organization repeatedly cited: The Heritage Foundation," wrote Emily Anderson Stern, a reporter for The Salt Lake Tribune, wrote on Bluesky.
"While pushing for an end to Utah's universal vote-by-mail election system, state lawmakers—including House Speaker Mike Schultz—have repeatedly relied on the Heritage Foundation's policy perspectives, referencing them in public debate, interviews, promotional materials, and social media posts," according to reporting published by Anderson Stern last week.