GIJC15 Keynote: The Rising Threats to Investigative Journalism 📰

Keynote: Investigative Journalism Under Attack

Reporting in many countries is getting more dangerous than ever.
Journalists are increasingly harassed and arrested and independent media closed.
Even family members of reporters are being arrested, for instance in Azerbaijan and Central Asia.

In this panel, five courageous investigative reporters from four continents talk about their harrowing experiences with prosecutions, dirty tricks, and violent attacks. But more than that, they will show that intimidation does not work. All still continue to tell the stories that need to be told. From Mexico to Pakistan, Angola to Malaysia, reporters refuse to be silenced, despite facing kidnappings, death threats, beatings, imprisonment, and harassment. They will talk about their strategies for fighting back -- legally, politically, and journalistically.

And they will underline the importance of international collaboration, as in the case of Azerbaijani investigative reporter Khadija Ismayilova. Detained in December 2014, Khadija was sentenced to more than seven years in prison this September, but her international colleagues at the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) have continued her work.

This panel will unequivocally state that journalism is not a crime!

Moderator: Margo Smit - NOS
Margo Smit has been the Director of the Dutch-Flemish Association of Investigative Journalists until September 2015. Now she is working as ombudsman at the Dutch Broadcasting Foundation (NOS) and as an independent investigative journalist.

Speakers:
Clare Rewcastle Brown - Sarawak Report - Editor - United Kingdom
Clare Rewcastle Brown is a former UK television reporter and investigative journalist who started up Sarawak Report primarily to explore the issues driving the deforestation of the Borneo Rainforest. She also runs Radio Free Sarawak, an independent daily broadcast aimed at serving the indigenous people of the region and to give them a platform on these issues which have affected their lives.Sarawak Report and Radio Free Sarawak were founded by Rewcastle-Brown in 2010. Radio Free Sarawak has gone on to win the IPI International Press Institute’s Free Media Pioneers Award 2013 and the Communication for Social Change Award 2014.

Umar Cheema - Investigative reporter, The News - Pakistan
Umar Cheema is an investigative reporter for Pakistan's English language daily, The News International. In 2008, he won a was a Daniel Pearl Journalism Fellowship, and was the first Pearl fellow to work for The New York Times. Cheema studied at the London School of Economics under a Chevening Scholarship and obtained a master degree in Comparative Politics.

Rafael Marques de Morais - Maka Angola - Editor - Angola
Rafael Marques de Morais is the editor of Maka Angola. He's an investigative journalist and anti-corruption activist from Angola. He has done work on human rights abuses and corruption in the resource rich African country, and has been awarded several international prizes for his efforts. In May he was convicted of “defaming” a group of generals through his expose of abuse and corruption in the Angolan diamond fields.

Drew Sullivan - Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) - Editor - Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina
Drew Sullivan, USA, co-founded the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Program (OCCRP) where he now serves as editor-in-chief. He is a journalist and social entrepreneur who founded the Center for Investigative Reporting in Bosnia-Herzegovina in 2004 as well as the Journalism Development Network, an innovative media development organization with programs worldwide. He is the recipient of the European Press Prize, the Daniel Pearl Award (twice), the Online Journalism Award for investigative reporting (twice), the Global Shining Light Award (four times), the Tom Renner award for Crime Reporting (twice) among dozens of others.

Marcela Turati - Journalist, Periodistas de a Pie - Mexico
Marcela Turati is a Mexican journalist who reports about human rights and the impact of drug violence and its victims. She is co-founder of the network Periodistas de a Pie (Journalists on Foot), dedicated to training journalists to improve the quality of their journalism and to defend freedom of expression. In 2013, she received the Louis Lyons Award for conscience and integrity in journalism, granted by the Nieman Foundation at Harvard as a “standard-bearer for the journalists who have risked their lives to document the devastating wave of violence in Mexico” and the Lasa Media Award and the WOLA Human Rights Award.

More info: http://gijc2015.org/

Recorded on October 8, 2015, in Lillehammer, Norway.