AROUND 1,200 of the world’s most ‘troublesome’ journalists and would-be journalists came together last month to exchange ideas and share experiences in the unseasonably cold, almost-summer of Johannesburg, its jacaranda trees covered in a mantle of purple blossoms.
A biannual gathering, the largest of its kind in the world, the tenth Global Investigative Journalists Conference 2017 (GIJC) got under way on Nov 15 at the University of the Witwatersrand where Nelson Mandela once studied. The event took place at an apt time, in the afterglow of the recent Paradise Papers exposé, another tour de force by some 400 investigative journalists around the world.
The GIJC, co-sponsored by the Global Investigative Journalism Network (GIJN), was a five-day smorgasbord that catered to journalists afflicted with a particularly inquisitive bent of mind and the tenacity of a dog with a bone, and who believe there’s a very thin line between journalism and activism. From the ABCs of investigative journalism to data mapping, ethical dilemmas, advanced digital tools and resources for information-gathering, fact-checking and journalists’ safety, there was something for everyone.
Over the course of five days, there were over 150 panels, workshops and special events — several of them taking place simultaneously — and a record 1,200 participants. They included Pulitzer Prize winners such as Joseph Stiglitz and several of the journalists who investigated the Panama Papers, not to mention some of Africa’s finest journalists who work in one of the most hostile environments for media practitioners.
Anton Harber, who heads Wits University’s journalism and media studies programme, is himself one such journalist. In the early ‘90s, he uncovered the payment of bribes by the segregationist National Party government to members of the Inkatha Freedom Party for sabotaging the talks with Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress to bring an end to apartheid. If not for that exposé, history may have taken a different course.
There were seasoned and rookie journalists, and journalism students from Wits University itself and elsewhere at the conference. They networked over umpteenth cups of tea and coffee (journalists swear by their caffeine) between the sessions, relaxing on the sun-drenched green in front of the auditoriums, and over the lunch buffet under a huge marquee. And if you could hear yourself above the noise, there was also the evening at the Orbit jazz club featuring GIJN’s own band, The Muckrakers.
The plenary session, titled “Investigating the autocrats”, particularly relevant in the wake of the Paradise Papers, brought together senior journalists from Russia, Venezuela, Philippines, India and — in a post-Trump world — the US as well. Patricia Evangelista from Rappler, the Philippine website creating waves in the region for its fearless reporting, gave a bone-chilling talk about the state sanctioned murders of alleged drug addicts and suspected drug dealers under President Duterte’s regime.
Some sessions were especially popular. Among them was the rather sexily titled ‘Internet manhunt — backgrounding and tracking people online’ with the BBC’s Paul Myers, who shared what he described as “the black arts of internet investigation”. Delete your Facebook profile, your tweets, even your former business profile, and it can all be traced if someone has the know-how. In fact, there’s a veritable stalkers’ paradise of online tools out there, and they’re all open source.
The information age is revolutionising journalism in many ways. Data is the new buzzword, and there were workshops for data mining, data visualisation, web scraping, etc to help journalists learn how to find stories using data and use it to dig deeper.
Another session that attracted a crowd was ‘Bullet-proofing your story’, which posited that every story has at least one weak link, be it legal, or related to sourcing, evidence, etc. The panel’s central question was to make sure it passes muster on all fronts.
Meanwhile, Malachy Browne of The New York Times held the audience spellbound with his use of video forensics to construct a blow-by-blow timeline of the Las Vegas mass shooting in October. It’s a relatively new technique that extracts information from video, metadata and social media to build a story.
There was also a well-attended discussion on undercover reporting. Although it conjures up daredevil feats reminiscent of spy thrillers, going undercover can be a nerve-wracking, even life-altering experience.
One of the speakers was Rana Ayyub, a young Indian journalist who went undercover for eight months as a hardcore Hindu to insinuate herself into the BJP’s high command and expose those complicit in Gujarat’s anti-Muslim riots in 2002.
What she uncovered was so explosive that no one, including Tehelka where she then worked, would touch it with a bargepole. She finally self-published the material in the form of a book, Gujarat Files.
The latter won a Citation of Excellence at the GIJC, while the Global Shining Light award went to two investigations into extrajudicial killings in Nigeria. Pretty dark stuff. However, even journalists bent on upsetting the apple cart enjoy letting their hair down, something easily achieved on the final evening with a live band in attendance, dancing and plenty of good food and drink. Here’s to GIJC 2019, this time in Hamburg!
Published in Dawn, December 15th, 2017
Dear visitor, the comments section is undergoing an overhaul and will return soon.