2025-03-07 16:00:06
At Infobae, an online Argentinian newsroom established in 2002, a quiet revolution has taken place: the data team established by veteran data journalist Sandra Crucianelli is now made up entirely of women.
When she started hiring her data team seven years ago, she was not looking to hire women in particular, that was just a happy coincidence. “I did not look for members based on their gender. I only focused on looking for the best [candidate] for each task,” she says.
But it’s a far cry from the landscape she encountered when she first started working back in the 1980s. At that time, the industry, at least in Argentina, where she is based, was dominated by men, and data journalism was a niche field.
“Back then, what is known today as data journalism did not exist. We did investigative journalism using spreadsheets but in a very exceptional way,” she says.
Her journey from biochemistry to the trenches of data journalism has been one of persistence and passion, but her experiences have also mirrored a shift in the industry landscape.
In the demographics section of the 2023 State of Data Journalism survey — carried out by the European Journalism Centre but looking at the global panorama — 49% of respondents identified as men, 48% as women, 1% as non-binary / genderqueer. The near parity between men and women, the authors wrote, showed “a significant shift” from 2022 when 58% of the respondents were male and 40% identified as women.
The global breakdown of gender distribution, however, reveals some stark differences: in Pakistan, for example, 94% of people responding to the survey identified as male, in Nigeria the figure was 76%, and in Mexico 71%. While this is just one survey, and reflects those who chose to contribute, it suggests there are places where women still face obstacles and data journalism is a male-dominated field.
The latest State of Data Journalism survey from 2023 explored the industry’s demographics, looking at the gender breakdown in different countries. Image: Screenshot, European Journalism Centre
For International Women’s Day this year, GIJN decided to speak to women from different parts of the world about their journeys in data journalism, how they got into the field, what their experiences have been, and to find out if there are still structural barriers or challenges holding them back.
For Crucianelli, becoming a data journalist was a gradual process. A scientist by training, she found herself drawn to the unfiltered truth hidden within data. “My academic background does not come from journalism, but from science. I studied biochemistry for several years at university and although I did not graduate, I did study mathematics, so numbers always caught my attention.”
The first step was to immerse herself in investigative journalism. It was the rise of computer assisted reporting in the 1990s that led her to data journalism, and eventually to Infobae where she established her own team. She and her colleagues have won prizes and plaudits for their work on the FinCEN Files, the secret decrees of Argentina’s military dictatorship, and the Panama Papers.
A number of women told us their first forays into data journalism were driven by a desire to tell stories and make sense of the world around them — for which numbers and data offered a pathway.
E’thar AlAzem, executive editor at Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism, loved numbers and puzzles even as a child and this, years later, led her to data journalism. “I’m constantly driven by the quest for evidence, and data journalism fulfills this passion,” she says.
Savia Hasanova, a data analyst based in Kyrgyzstan, who transitioned to the field from policy research, found herself drawn to the power of numbers to illuminate social issues. “I realized that I could bring new insights and knowledge to a broader audience and use my analytical background to become a data journalist,” she explains.
For Hasanova, data journalism isn’t just about numbers, it’s about giving voice to the marginalized. “We use data to report on domestic violence, violations of women’s and girls’ rights, and the discrimination we face,” she says, emphasizing the ability to “reshape narratives and amplify voices that have long been ignored.”
Pinar Dağ is a data journalist educator, judge for the Sigma Awards, and GIJN’s Turkish editor. Image: Courtesy of Dağ
Pinar Dağ is a data journalism educator and practitioner in Türkiye, a judge of the Sigma Awards for Data Journalism, and GIJN’s regional editor in Turkish. She was working as a journalist in London when the WikiLeaks story broke — and that got her interested in the systematic analysis of documents and data. She has now been teaching data journalism for 14 years, providing access to many other journalists who, like her, are interested in the power of data to tell investigative stories.
When asked what, if anything, women bring to the field that is different to their male colleagues, she highlights how some bring a “feminist” approach. “When you look at the diversity of data journalism topics, you can see that there is empathy, sensitivity, different and diverse perspectives, the details of human-centered stories are worked out very well, and gender-sensitive analyses are made,” she notes.
It is a point echoed by Hassel Fallas, the founder of Costa Rica-based La Data Cuenta. She emphasizes the importance of a gender perspective in data analysis which women often bring to newsrooms from lived experience, particularly in the age of AI. “Gender biases in data often obscure the specific challenges women face, making gender-conscious analysis essential for a more accurate and nuanced depiction of reality,” she says.
Helena Bengtsson, the data journalism editor at Gota Media, started out in the ‘90s and says she is generally “not very fond of gender generalizations.” But when asked what women bring to data journalism she says, “If there is anything, maybe attention to detail.”
“I think that is the most important trait in a data journalist,” she adds. “You can always learn the different programs and methods — but if you can’t pay attention to details and at the same time see the whole picture, you’re not a good data journalist.”
Kenyan data journalist Purity Mukami had a background in statistics when she started in journalism. She says her boss at the time — John Allan Namu, the CEO of Africa Uncensored — recognized her background could be useful for election reporting and from there, her path into data journalism was set.
Mukami points out the significant role mentors can play, and says that in newsrooms across the country she has constantly encountered women who would not be there had it not been for the intervention of veteran data journalist Catherine Gicheru. “She has done so much to strengthen and connect a lot of women data journalists, through the WanaData program,” Mukami says, about the Pan-African network of journalists, data scientists, and techies that gives women journalists the opportunity to collaborate and work on data journalism projects.
Gicheru, who led WanaData and is the director of Africa Women Journalism Project, says that a scarcity of training opportunities available for women when she was a reporter meant she had to learn on the job. But she saw in the field and in her newsroom how important it was to have women be a part of the conversation.
“One of the most eye-opening moments for me was when we worked on a story about maternal health. We had heard about women dying in childbirth, but when we analyzed hospital records and government data, the numbers were staggering — far worse than what individual stories suggested,” she recalls.
As for what’s next, Mukami, who now works for OCCRP, says that while her experience has been one of equality in the newsrooms she has worked in, more broadly there is still a sense that women don’t get promoted to senior or leadership positions as often as men. “I also believe women are stereotyped as being emotional and therefore rarely get managerial roles in this space. Finally, with the new tools and skills one needs to learn while being a wife and a mom in an African setting, [it] can be overwhelming,” notes Mukami.
Hassel Fallas, founder of the Costa Rican-based data journalism site La Data Cuenta. Image: Courtesy of Fallas
Fallas also pointed to this issue — saying that while the growing numbers of women in data journalism is great, what matters more is, “whether women have the same opportunities for leadership and professional growth.” She has noticed a persistent gender gap in journalism. “While women make up approximately 40% of the journalism workforce, they hold only 22% of leadership positions in media organizations,” she says, citing figures reflected in recent editions of the Reuters’ Institute’s report on women in the news.
“This disparity reflects structural barriers, including limited access to decision-making roles and the ongoing need to prove our expertise in male-dominated environment,” Fallas adds.
Gicheru also feels that gaps remain when it comes to fair representation of women leaders in the field. “In leadership, there are still fewer women, which means fewer role models and mentors for the next generation,” she explains. One of the reasons she feels there are less women in data journalism in some places is because, “it has long been seen as a ‘tech-heavy’ space, which meant that many women were discouraged from pursuing it.”
She also points to another reason there are fewer women in leadership positions — cultural barriers. “Many women journalists, especially those in smaller newsrooms, juggle multiple responsibilities — reporting, editing, and sometimes even administrative work — while their male counterparts focus solely on investigative work,” she points out.
Crucianelli says one way to overcome these systemic problems is to encourage more data journalism across the profession. “What is needed are more data units in newsrooms. There are important media [outlets] in several countries that do not even have one,” she notes.
Having women in data journalism will “challenge systems, expose inequalities, and push for change”, says Gicheru. For her, “data journalism is not just about numbers — it’s about power. It’s about shifting the narrative so that women and marginalized communities are not just footnotes in news stories but at the center of them.”
Amel Ghani is based in Pakistan. She is GIJN’s Urdu editor and an associate at GIJN’s Resource Center. She has reported on the rise of the religious political parties, the environment, labor rights, and covered tech and digital rights. She is a Fulbright Fellow and holds a Master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University, where she specialized in investigative journalism.
2025-03-06 16:00:30
Investigative reporter Ginna Morelo has spent years investigating the crimes that right-wing death squads committed during the decades-long conflict in Colombia.
Her work has been published in leading newspapers and she has written a number of books about her investigations. She is a five-time winner of Colombia’s highest journalism award, the Premio Nacional de Periodismo Simón Bolívar, and has received international prizes, including from the Sociedad Interamericana de Prensa and the Premio Ortega y Gasset.
But although her output has been prolific, and touched on some of the darkest sides to the Colombian conflict, for many years one of her projects remained in the dark: direct threats made against her family and fears for her sources meant it was a story just too dangerous to be told.
As she tells GIJN in an interview, nothing is ever wasted. And if you report carefully, and with your sources’ best interests at heart, there is nothing stopping you from going back to a story a number of years down the line.
Starting in the 1960s, Colombia saw an explosion of violence between left-wing guerilla organizations, the armed forces, and later on, far-right armed groups. The latter in many cases acted in coordination with state security agencies.
The conflict was felt everywhere from the capital Bogotá to the Amazonian regions of the south, from the mountains to the coasts. Morelo is from Córdoba on the country’s northern Caribbean coast, where one of the key actors involved in the violence was the AUC (United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia) — an umbrella organization of right-wing paramilitaries.
For over a decade, Morelo investigated the violence meted out by the group against civilians in the region. Many of these reports were published but one topic — the story of a paramilitary group’s takeover of the University of Córdoba from the 1990s to the early 2000s — remained off-limits.
Marx Plaza at University of Córdoba. Image: Courtesy of Entre Ríos Museo, Diego Pérez
Members of the AUC later acknowledged as part of a demobilization process that they murdered professors, students, and labor unionists with a leftist ideology across the country. But back then, this ideological takeover — backed by force — was a secret, and many of Morelo’s sources were paralyzed with fear.
“When I told them what I wanted to do, they would share the stories of their beginnings in the student movements, but when I tried to delve deeper, they would ask for time, more time,” she says, about her sources’ reluctance to speak.
Morelo was warned the topic could put her in danger and several colleagues advised her not to investigate, while sources told her they were fearful and preferred to remain silent.
But through her reporting, Morelo discovered that the AUC’s actions — killings, threats, harassment, kidnapping, stigmatization, and more — against academics and staff at the university were part of a strategy that had a purpose beyond spreading terror or gaining power. Paramilitaries and politicians, she observed, had a counter-cultural project, so they conducted a systematic campaign to destroy any trace of what they considered “leftist” ideas.
Armed groups controlled the appointment of the university rector, banned library books, and exacted physical punishments, she found. The takeover resulted in dozens of people being killed or disappeared, pushed some intellectuals into exile, and forced the interruption of academic projects on topics such as food security and climate change. It also led to a local population plunged into fear and silence.
Part of that story, as a result of Morelo’s initial reporting, was due to appear as a chapter in her 2009 book “Tierra de Sangre, Memoria de las Víctimas” (Land of Blood, Memory of the Victims) — which was based on survivors’ accounts of the conflict in Córdoba. Just as she was about to go to press, however, Morelo received a phone call that shook her: a threat against her two children. She called the publisher and told them to hold fire.
“Those two nights I didn’t sleep at all, and I remember being almost like a watchman for my children” while they slept, she recalls. Ultimately, she decided to release the book but cut the chapter on the university takeover.
“I myself remained silent for protection,” Morelo tells GIJN, adding that part of her silence was out of “fear.”
Morelo’s story is similar to that of many journalists who have tried to expose the truth about events in Colombia, and other countries with high levels of violence and corruption, and who have encountered multiple threats to themselves and their families’ lives. During the past four decades, 2,546 reporters in Colombia have been threatened due to their work, according to the Colombian Press Freedom Foundation.
Morelo walked away from the university takeover story for nearly two years. When she went back to it, it was still considered too dangerous to report on, but she wanted to check in with her sources and find out what was happening.
It would take more than a decade for her to feel that the security situation was sufficiently changed for her to publish — and 13 years after her first book about the paramilitary influence in Córdoba, she released “La Voz de Los Lápices” (The Voice of the Pencils), in 2022.
To decide if it was finally safe, Morelo used a risk assessment method, with the help of a colleague, a social scientist, and her own sources — the survivors of the violence — who finally told her: “It’s time. We are ready.”
Morelo says that it’s important for reporters in a similar position to consider a golden rule: the importance of protecting the lives of reporters, sources, and those around them. As Morelo puts it: “We have no right… to put at risk the lives of the people who love us.”
There are two main concerns when deciding that a story can’t be told immediately. One is the possibility of losing impact. On that subject, Morelo says she has learned to appreciate other types of impact investigations can have — such as contributing to the healing process of victims and survivors, and helping societies learn from the past.
Another main concern is that witnesses may forget important details of the story, or that it may become harder or impossible to reach them. But, as Chilean investigative reporter Cristobal Peña said at an investigative journalism conference in Bogotá in 2011, the passing of time doesn’t necessarily mean a story will be lost or forgotten. It can actually “release consciences, secrets, and archives.” In other words, years after an event, people may have a more complete, reflective view of what happened.
That is what Morelo observed. After years of trying to tell the story, she found survivors who were finally willing to talk to her. Many had written down their memories, keeping a note of the events at the campus during the takeover, with records added in the intervening years.
“As journalists, we are not the owners of any story. Not even if we have the byline. Stories are created over time in people’s memories” says Morelo.
A plaque at the University of Córdoba to honor three students who were murdered in 1997. Image: Courtesy of Entre Ríos Museo, Diego Pérez
“Silence is a knot and a nest because everything seems tied [up], but things are happening there,” says Morelo. And even when there are security considerations stopping you from telling a story, you can consider these steps:
“When a journalist is told that it’s not the right time and that they can’t publish yet, they say: ‘This is the end.’ But for me it wasn’t the end. For me it was like the best invitation I’ve ever received because from the moment I slowed down, I was able to look back at that memory of the past and see what was happening, the real background of the countercultural project [at the University of Córdoba],” Morelo explains. “So, it’s not the final product that makes me happy, but the process and the lessons learned.”
Miriam Forero Ariza is a Colombian journalist and data journalism expert. She led Colombiacheck.com, the first fact-checking media in Colombia, and Poderopedia.co. Her work has been published by El Espectador, Vice, La F.M., and Colombiacheck, among others. She is co-author of the Iberoamerican Data Journalism Handbook’s and the book “Communicate Without Harm: Coexistence and Mental Health.” She is also Editor-in-Chief at Cuestión Pública.
2025-03-05 16:00:58
For more than a quarter century, elPeriódico was Guatemala’s boldest daily newspaper, proudly describing itself as “the most aggressive, least complacent, most critical and nonconformist counterweight to abuses of public power” among the country’s news media.
Then, citing persecution and political and economic pressures, in May 2023, the newspaper announced it was shutting its doors. Its founder, José Rubén Zamora, had been detained since the previous July on alleged money laundering charges in a process riddled with irregularities surrounding government prosecutors.
Although the closure of elPeriódico is final and Zamora remains under house arrest, the outlet’s contributions to history are once again accessible to anyone interested starting January 31, when the Central American Independent Media Archive, or CAIMA went live.
Organized by Ramón Zamora, José Rubén’s son, funded with support from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and with technical assistance from Bard College in New York, the archive provides free access to all print editions of the newspaper, as well as publications from eight other Guatemalan news outlets and from Confidencial in Nicaragua. In the future, the initiative’s founder hopes to include even more media outlets from Central America.
For Ramón Zamora, who has been living in exile in the United States since 2023, the archive represents both a contribution to making his country’s recent history better known and a way to bring justice to his father and his decades-long work.
“This not only represents the country’s history, but it also contains investigations and stories that are still current,” Ramón Zamora told the LatAm Journalism Review (LJR). “We’ve always said that part of the goal of the persecution against my father was to wipe away any reporting that discomforted powerful people in the country.”
The website of elPeriódico was available for only three days after the announcement of its closure, as there were no longer resources to keep the online servers running, Ramón Zamora said. However, the idea of an archive was not new. A 2013 digital attack that wiped out 10 years of archived material highlighted the need to organize the material in a secure location.
“When we suffered a digital attack on the website, we lost the entire archive that existed online from 2003 to 2013 — an entire decade of journalism,” he said. “And from before 2003, we only had editions that were never digitized or converted to be available to the public.”
Printed editions of the Guatemalan newspaper elPeriódico with headlines about corruption, drug trafficking, and politics. One special edition featured is a tribute to persecuted or exiled journalists and figures. Image: Courtesy of elPeriódico
In the final days before the newspaper closed, knowing he would likely have to leave the country, Ramón Zamora asked the publication’s administrative team to help him digitize nearly 27 years of print editions, a mission they successfully accomplished. When he left the country, he carried with him copies of all the digitized editions stored on a hard drive.
Thanks to support from USAID and the work of Bard College archivists, who had previously worked on the Russian Independent Media Archive, the project of a public archive became feasible. Initially, only elPeriódico’s collection was to be made available. Since December, when the project was publicly announced, however, Ramón Zamora has reached agreements to archive eight other Guatemalan publications: Agencia Ocote, No-Ficción, Ojo con mi Pisto, Plaza Pública, Prensa Comunitaria, Ruda GT, Con Criterio, and Crónica.
In total, more than 500,000 documents have been archived. Outside of Guatemala, the only participant, for now, is Confidencial from Nicaragua. The project aims to include other newspapers from Central America, as publications in countries like Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Honduras face their own threats to press freedom.
“In our region, we’ve seen kidnappings, attacks, and assassinations. And in our time, the tools to silence the media also extend to the digital world, with DDoS attacks or fake pages,” Ramón Zamora said. “Having backup copies strengthens the media. It increases our resilience, and in moments of attack that aim to silence investigations, it allows us to recover more quickly.”
One challenge in attracting more publications to the initiative involves copyright. Many outlets offer access to their archives as part of subscriber benefits, Ramón Zamora explained. This means not all archived materials will be easily accessible to the general public online, he added.
“So we’re saying: ‘Well, we’ll make the copy, but the content won’t be accessible to the average user of the archive because that’s part of the outlet’s business or sustainability model,’” Ramón Zamora said. “The idea is that we won’t own the content. We just want to protect it.”
Former elPeriódico staffers explain the importance of keeping the reports published in the newspaper accessible. For Lucy Chai, who worked at elPeriódico from December 2002 to December 2022, starting as a political reporter and eventually becoming deputy editor — and who now works at Prensa Comunitaria — many of the newspaper’s reports remain relevant.
“There are investigations that deal with structures that still exist in Guatemala, such as judges, deputies, businesspeople, and politicians,” Chai told LJR. “There are many investigations about corruption that only elPeriódico worked on, especially concerning corruption at the highest levels.”
Alexander Valdéz, who primarily covered the judiciary while at elPeriódico, says one of the archive’s key contributions is showing corruption cases not only in Guatemala’s most recent governments but also in previous administrations.
Many of the reports published in the newspaper led to legal proceedings and accountability. However, Valdéz said, there were also cases where impunity prevailed.
“There are still many cases that haven’t been processed because of corruption in the justice sector,” Valdéz told LJR. “That’s why it’s important for this work to remain accessible in a space where the public can read it and demand that authorities investigate pending cases.”
Meanwhile, Ramón Zamora sees the archive as a deeply personal project. As his family faces imprisonment and exile, the archive, filled with reports available to the public, represents a unique form of justice.
“For me, it’s important to be able to say: this happened,” he said. “It’s very personal for me that they managed to shut down elPeriódico, but it’s also a personal victory to say: they tried to silence us, but here we are. We will continue to tell the truth, and no one can take away what we’ve already done.”
Editor’s Note: This story was originally published by the LatAm Journalism Review and is reposted here with permission. It was translated into English by Teresa Mioli. Spanish and Portuguese versions are available.
André Duchiade is a Brazilian journalist and translator based in Rio de Janeiro. André worked on the international politics desk at O Globo from 2018 to February 2023, and his stories have been published at The Scientific American, The Intercept, Época, and Agência Pública de Jornalismo, among others. He is also a former Media Fellow at the Global Public Policy Institute (GPPi) in Berlin.
2025-03-04 16:00:10
The stage is dark, except for the beams of faint white light that illuminate four actors standing in a row, who are taking turns to tell the stories of the murdered journalists they play. Reporters from different corners of the world, shot, decapitated, dismembered, and burned alive because of their work.
That was the powerful opening sequence of the show “Behind the Scenes of Forbidden Stories,” which was staged at Paris’ Concorde Theater in mid-February and focused on the French nonprofit media site’s efforts to continue the investigations of journalists who have been killed or silenced.
The performance, conceived by the Forbidden Stories team alongside French director and playwright Mélody Mourey, brilliantly combined recited monologues, interviews with investigative journalists, videos, audio recordings, and music performances. The goal was “to mix witness accounts and theater,” Mourey tells GIJN.
The production stemmed from an idea by Forbidden Stories founder and executive director Laurent Richard, who wanted to show the importance — and dangers — of investigative journalism to a different audience from the outlet’s usual readership.
“Forbidden Stories is well known among journalists, but not really to the broader public yet. That has to change, because our work is for the general interest,” Richard says. “All creative ways to explain what we do are worthwhile.”
Members of the production and Forbidden Stories staff backstage at the theater. Image: Courtesy of Cebos Nalcakan
Telling the Stories That Would Have Been Silenced
Forbidden Stories, a GIJN member, was founded in Paris in 2017 with the motto: “Killing the journalist won’t kill the story.” It works by identifying investigations all over the world that have been thwarted because the journalists conducting them have been killed, attacked, or threatened. To finish the stories, Forbidden Stories convenes an international task force of reporters from different news outlets, including both small, local papers and large news organizations, such as Reuters or The New York Times.
Image: Screenshot, Concorde Theater
Its first project continued the work of murdered Maltese reporter Daphne Caruana Galizia. Just eight years later, it now has more than 25 investigations to its name, with topics including environmental crimes in the Global South, corruption, the illegal activities of Mexican drug cartels, and violence against journalists from Rwanda to Gaza.
Forbidden Stories has also set up SafeBox, a secure digital platform where vulnerable journalists can share their material just in case, so that their investigations can be continued should anything happen to them. The platform’s main goal is to discourage attacks, by making it known that a reporter’s work will be published no matter what, and therefore making violence against them pointless. Launched in 2022, Safebox currently boasts more than 170 members, up from 110 less than one year ago.
The theater performance sought to show how some of Forbidden Stories’ investigations were carried out. In a segment about its Gaza Project, journalists Léa Peruchon of Forbidden Stories and Arthur Carpentier of Le Monde guide the audience through the video footage they analyzed and the software they used. Ultimately, they found strong evidence that Israeli forces targeted press infrastructure inside the Gaza Strip on multiple occasions during their military campaign following Hamas’s attack on October 7, 2023. (In their response to that investigation, a spokesperson for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) denied intentionally targeting journalists, calling the allegation “unfounded.”)
“We wanted to show how collaboration between journalists works but also how, starting from an image, we could trace where the strikes came from, putting together, step by step, a full investigation,” Peruchon explains. This “allows people to get a real sense of what our day-to-day work looks like.”
The production also addressed the challenges of the cooperation-based approach to journalism that Forbidden Stories seeks to promote. One of the monologues focuses on the “lone wolf” mindset of many investigative reporters, who can be loath to share sources, findings, and credit.
But more than anything else, the night at the Concorde Theater was about highlighting the heavy price many investigative journalists end up paying for their reporting.
One of the night’s longest segments was dedicated to Rafael Moreno, a Colombian journalist gunned down in 2022 shortly after he reached out to Forbidden Stories to denounce threats he was receiving. Before he was killed, he had shared his findings on corruption and environmental crimes in Córdoba province where he lived. After he was killed, a group of dozens of journalists continued his investigation, resulting in a flurry of articles that appeared in more than 30 news outlets around the world.
The show also featured on-stage interviews with a son of Daphne Caruana Galizia, Andrew, and with Ferdinand Ayité, a Togolese investigative journalist. Ayité immigrated to France after being jailed in his home country, and his paper, L’Alternative, has relied on Forbidden Stories for training and to secure sensitive information on SafeBox. “It was very good to be able to speak in front of a large audience, to talk about my story and how useful the collaboration with Forbidden Stories has been for us,” he tells GIJN.
Richard says that, at this moment when populist leaders are actively sowing distrust towards journalists among the general public, he wanted to show that “journalists are taking risks for us all.” US President Donald Trump is quick to demonize what he calls “fake news media,” even labeling them “the enemy of the people.” But as Richard put it from stage at the end of the performance: “Journalists aren’t the enemies of the people. We are the people.”
To get this message across, the production relied on star power, too. Well-known and award-winning French investigative reporter Elise Lucet conducted several of the interviews, and one of the monologues was read by actress Ophélia Kolb of “Call My Agent!” fame.
Award-winning French journalist Elise Lucet (right) conducted interviews onstage, among them were exiled Togolese investigative reporter Ferdinand Ayité. Image: Courtesy of Cebos Nalcakan
Richard and his team said they are satisfied with the impact the production has had so far. The 650-seat theater was packed at the performance with no empty seats. Though tickets were free for the public — to make the journalism more accessible to everyone — the production still paid dividends for Forbidden Stories, as it saw a spike in donations in the following days, thanks to leaflets with a QR code that were handed out to the audience.
Attendees included both people familiar with Forbidden Stories and others who had never heard of it before. Immediately after the show, several people sought out the Forbidden Stories members at the theater to ask about their investigations and where they could be found.
For Forbidden Stories it was a good night, but the times are challenging. Trump’s rhetoric against journalists is emboldening autocrats around the world, according to Richard. And it’s not just a war of words. “It’s a world-scale catastrophe,” he explains. “Global journalism has been completely upended by the end of US aid.”
The Trump administration’s cuts to the US Agency for International Development (USAID) have dramatically reduced the resources available to independent nonprofit media, freezing an estimated $268 million in agreed grants across more than 30 countries.
Global investigative journalism has also been heavily impacted by the reduction in financial support coming from the National Endowment for Democracy, a foundation largely funded by the US Congress that has existed since 1983. Leaders there say the organization can no longer access its accounts at the US Treasury Department — resulting in the suspension of grants to some 2,000 partners around the world. For Forbidden Stories, this resulted in a sudden 10% hole in its budget.
“And yet, at this time of adversity, when access to information is being threatened by far-right populists and disinformation campaigns, we can feel that the public’s interest in what we do is even stronger,” Richard says. Forbidden Stories’ collaborative journalism model, he adds, can provide a response to the deterioration of journalists’ working conditions and financial resources.
Richard would also like Forbidden Stories’ experiment with theater to continue, perhaps by staging a version of the show in the US, to raise funds, but also to increase awareness of the organization’s mission in the Western hemisphere. Journalists have taken to theater stages before, but this production’s format “is something new,” he says.
Michele Barbero is an Italian journalist based in Paris. After several years at France 24, he currently works for French news agency AFP. His byline has also appeared in a variety of publications, including Foreign Policy, Jacobin, and Wired UK.
2025-03-03 16:00:45
Editor’s Note: With more than 75 executive orders signed during the first months of the second Trump administration, journalists around the world are finding it hard to follow all that’s changing. This is an updated version of the first tipsheet by Pulitzer-Prize winning reporter Martha Mendoza.
The government of the United States engages with virtually every country in the world on some level. This can include Congressional and Presidential actions, Justice Department criminal investigations, foreign assistance, public and private financial interactions, US federal contracts executed in other countries, as well as weapons systems sold and delivered. The following tools are designed to help journalists outside the US understand how their countries are impacted. All of these activities are traceable at some level through public-facing databases.
Some of the resources listed have a cost, but most are free. Sometimes journalists ask if it’s legal to look at these sites. Answer: it’s absolutely legal. Stories abound on these websites, so go and use them.
Question: What contracts have been signed or cancelled under the new administration in my country?
Resource: The Federal Procurement Data System tracks all contracts the US federal government has made. It includes contract details, supplier names and addresses (you need to call them), contract amounts, and types of work.
Go to: fpds.gov.
Image: Screenshot
Image: Screenshot
The US government spent some $38 billion in foreign aid in 2021, supporting development efforts and providing humanitarian relief. The aid can be political, strategic, or economic, and is separate from military spending (we’ll come to that below). Most of the foreign aid actually goes to US (and foreign) contractors who carry out various projects or programs. Congress and the White House have a lot of influence on this spending, but countries also lobby the US to gain support on specific issues. All of this is trackable too.
Question: What has the White House and/or President Trump said or done about my country?
Resource: The White House publishes Presidential Actions, Briefings & Statements, Fact Sheets, and Remarks. A simple search of your country in the upper right Search box will return a list of items addressed in the White House about your country. Go to: whitehouse.gov.
Image: Screenshot
Question: What work is the US federal government soliciting new contracts for in my country?
Resource: The System for Award Management is used by businesses to search for and bid on contract opportunities. Journalists can view contract data, award data, and bidder names. Go to sam.gov.
Use the Search box to type in the name of your country in quotes. Note solicitation date, contacts and items.
Image: Screenshot
Question: What is the US government spending money on in my country?
Resource: Foreign Assistance. This database lets you search by country and year, and even allows journalists to download spreadsheets. You can also look up information using these criteria:
Question: What are the specific US government contracts in my country?
Resource: USA Spending. This site includes advanced search capabilities and enables reporters to look for spending by country and fiscal year, among other terms.
To navigate the website go to: USA Spending → Award Search → Advanced Search → Fiscal Year → Location COUNTRY → ADD FILTER → Search.
Question: Who in my country is trying to influence US politics and on what issues?
Resource: FARA Efile. The Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) requires persons acting as agents of foreign principals to make periodic public disclosures. This site allows you to browse these filings by country or location represented to see which nations are involved and which lobbying firms and lobbyists — who are sometimes former US government officials — they have hired.
To navigate the website go to: FARA Efile → Browse Filings → Active Registrants by Country or Location Represented → COUNTRY/LOCATION → View → View Document.
Image: Shutterstock
Question: Who is lobbying in the US on behalf of my government or companies in my country, and on what issues?
Resource: Lobbying Disclosure. The Lobbying Disclosure Act sets standards for domestic lobbyists in the US and this database includes registrations and quarterly activity reports for foreign entities and their representatives.
To navigate the website go to: Lobbying Disclosure → Registrations and Quarterly Activity Reports → Foreign Entities → COUNTRY → Search Reports → View.
Question: What US lawmakers have visited my country on political business, why, and when?
Resource: Congress.gov. This site documents official foreign trips by US government agents or members of Congress by country visited.
To navigate the site go to: Congress.gov → Search by Source → Congressional Record → “Official Foreign Travel” and Country Name.
Question: What current US bills under debate could impact my country?
Resource: Congress.gov. This site includes all pending US federal legislation and allows foreign journalists to search the text of these proposed laws for mentions of their country or other relevant terms.
To navigate the website go to: Congress.gov → search COUNTRY → Check Legislation.
Question: What work is the US government planning in my country?
Resource: SAM.gov. This handy database includes all government contracts in a country and allows you to search information from the Federal Procurement Data System.
To navigate the website go to: SAM.gov → Search → COUNTRY.
Question: What are the financial assets of US officials working in my country and their spouses (such as ambassadors or USAID directors)?
Resource: Office of Government Ethics. This database includes ethics documents, financial disclosure reports (OGE Form 201), presidential appointee and nominee records, and more based on country.
To navigate the website go to: Office of Government Ethics → Access Ethics Documents → View Officials’ Individual Disclosures → (Click on the banner) → Title → COUNTRY.
Question: What export restrictions and sanctions is the US imposing?
Resource: Consolidated Screening List. This government search engine is part of the US International Trade Administration and allows you to look up via name, country, and source across a number of official cabinet agencies.
Question: Where can I find the information deleted by new White House administrations?
Resources: End of Term Web Archive: The University of North Texas Libraries capture and save U.S. Government websites at the end of presidential administrations every time there’s an administration change in the US. The EOT has thus far preserved websites from administration changes in 2008, 2012, 2016, and 2020.
Data.gov Archive: The Harvard Law School Library released in early 2025 a 16TB collection including over 311,000 datasets harvested during 2024 and 2025, a complete archive of federal public datasets linked by data.gov and it will be updated daily.
Here’s a list of efforts to preserve data deleted by the second Trump Administration, which deleted data from Centers for Disease and Control (CDC), the US Census Bureau, and environmental data.
The US-Mexico border wall in the southern US state of Arizona. Reporters can search different databases to find out if their foreign nationals are being held in immigration detention. Image: Shutterstock
Almost anyone entering the US needs to obtain some sort of visa, whether it’s for a short-term tourist stay, work or educational opportunity, or seeking citizenship. The US immigration system is opaque, however, and the federal laws that cover it are outdated. The federal immigration system also has its own courts and detention system completely separate from the US criminal justice system. The US has specific rules and regulations for each country, and they can differ substantially. Investigating the status of immigrants or foreign visitors in the US is very achievable, even if a journalist is unable to come to the US themselves. Here are some tools to help.
Question: How many people from my country are currently in immigration detention in the US, and where are they being held?
Resource: Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC). This broad database, run by Syracuse University, includes a wealth of information on detentions by citizenship and country.
To navigate the website go to: TRAC → All Immigration Tools → ICE Detainers, Latest Data → Pull down: Citizenship → COUNTRY NAME.
Question: How many people from my country have been ordered deported or allowed to stay in the US through immigration courts this year?
Resource: TRAC Immigration. This subsite of the broader database (mentioned above) focuses on immigration-related issues, which include immigration court decisions and deportations by nationality.
To navigate the website go to: TRAC → Immigration → All Immigration Tools → Immigration Court Decisions Tool → Starting with: Nationalities → COUNTRY NAME.
Question: Where are people from my country working? How do I find out about visas/green cards in the US?
Resource: MyVisaJobs. This site lets you peruse foreigners with US work visas by country of citizenship.
To navigate the website go to: MyVisaJobs → Green Card → Country of Citizenship.
Question: I think someone from my country has been detained by US immigration. How do I find them?
Resource: ICE Locator. This site lets you search for detained migrants using their A-number (alien registration number), country of birth, or biographical information.
Image: Shutterstock
The US Department of Defense (DOD) trains and supplies foreign militaries around the world. With some digging at the sites below, it’s possible to see which military units received training in the US, and very specifically what that training was. It’s also possible to find out what weapons systems or nuclear technologies have been sent from the US to another country.
Question: Does my country import or export advanced technologies in trade with the US?
Resource: US Census Advanced Technology Product Data. This sub-site of the US Census covers monthly foreign trade — imports and exports — with the US across a number of specific categories, including nuclear technology.
To navigate the site go to: US Census Advanced Technology Data → (10) Nuclear Technology → Search List for Country Name.
Question: What military training and assets has my country received from the US?
Resource: Foreign Military Training and DOD Engagement Activities of Interest. Note: this data only goes back six years on the DOD website.
Question: How much money has the US spent on military sales and training in/for my country?
Resource: DSCA Historical Facts book and Fiscal Year Series. The Historical Sales Book (HSB) offers a by-country list of US military sales from fiscal years 1950 through 2021.
Question: What are some of the specific weapons systems and support sent from the US to my country?
Resource: Excess Defense Articles Database Tool. This site’s information includes the receiving country, the item or material, the quantity of each, market value, and the method of transfer (sale) of the military equipment.
Image: Shutterstock
In today’s world of global commerce, sometimes a journalist can learn about a company in their home country by searching through US records. It’s also possible to look at the tax filings of nonprofits that do work around the globe if they are based in the US, including how much their executives are being paid. Finally, tracking imports and exports is the start of examining labor abuses in your home country, or a Global South nation, and how those practices are linked to products that end up on Western shelves.
Question: Who are the officers and what documents have been filed for a particular company?
Resource: Open Corporates.
Question: What publicly-traded US corporations are investing or operating in my country?
Resource: Securities and Exchange Commission. This database lets you search based on company name and country to find official filings and other information, including full text of these documents going back four years.
To navigate the website: Securities and Exchange Commission → Search for company filings → full text past four years → Country Name.
Question: How do I look at the financial records of a US-based non-governmental organization or nonprofit, including salaries, donations, and spending?
Resource: Candid (GuideStar). The free version of this site allows you to search by the name of the organization and access its IRS Form 990s, which provide detailed financial information on donors/grantees, activity, and pay for staff and directors. Note: there is a time lag in these forms becoming publicly available, so the most recent 990 data could be several years old.
To navigate the website go to: GuideStar → NGO Name → Financial Reporting → Form 990.
Question: What companies in my country export to the US — and what products or goods are they selling?
Resource: Panjiva and ImportGenius. These sites let you search by country names for imports (US) and exports.
For more tips and tools on investigating businesses and corporations, check out GIJN’s guide Researching Corporations and Their Owners.
There are many stories to be discovered in US court records, which are largely open and available for free or a small charge. It’s also possible to find cases of people from other countries who are prosecuted in the US. If the foreign nationals are in US custody it’s also possible to exchange emails or schedule a visit.
Question: Who from my country is being federally prosecuted in the United States and why?
Resource: US Department of Justice. On the DOJ site, search through the press releases for mentions of the country in question.
Question: How do I see individual court files?
Resources: Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER).
To navigate PACER go to: Pacer → Find a case → NAME → Docket Report
To navigate Court Listener go to: Recap Archive
Question: How do I write or otherwise arrange an interview with foreign nationals detained in the US?
Resource: Bureau of Prisons Inmate Locator. Find the person incarcerated via one of four identification methods (most likely an “INS number” for foreigners) or their full name (age, race, and gender are additional inputs). If you plan on visiting for an interview, contact the warden and fill out a news media form.
To navigate the website go to: Federal Bureau of Prisons → Inmates → Find an inmate → Ask them to fill out the Request for Visitors Form.
These sites are a great resource for stories that take a look at recent diplomatic and foreign policy history and the connection to the US. There may be untold stories here relevant to other countries.
Question: Where are the records of US State Department/CIA activity?
Resources: Access to Archival Databases (AAD). National Archives records are available back to the 1970s. Also, the US State Department’s Virtual Reading Room includes a wealth of foreign policy documents released because of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) maintains a FOIA Reading Room for researching historical links to the US and its conduct overseas.
Martha Mendoza is a two-time Pulitzer prize-winning investigative reporter with the Associated Press. She currently writes breaking news, enterprise, and investigative stories from Silicon Valley, in California. She was part of a team that exposed forced labor in the fishing industry in Southeast Asia in 2015, an exposé that helped to free 2,000 slaves.
2025-02-28 16:00:00
On a recent Friday night, Dr. Gordon Schiff, the quality and safety director at the Harvard Medical School, received an email from a colleague informing him that one of his academic papers published on a federal website was taken down. It included the words “transgender” and “LGBTQ,” which are among the words that are being removed quickly from federal websites following the Trump administration’s orders to stop diversity initiatives, remove references to gender and equity from public health material, and withdraw research papers that promote “gender ideology.”
Schiff’s paper, “Multiple Missed Opportunities for Suicide Risk Assessment” — available on the Wayback Machine — was published in 2022 on the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality’s Patient Safety Network website. It was a case study with advice and commentary for physicians and it included this sentence: “High-risk groups include male sex, being young, veterans, Indigenous tribes, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer/questioning (LGBTQ).”
“We weren’t even advocating anything here,” says Schiff, who is also the associate director of Brigham and Women’s Center for Patient Safety Research and Practice. “We were just reporting what the risk factors were.”
During one weekend in mid-February, nearly 8,000 US government websites were taken down, reported Ethan Singer of The New York Times. ABC News also reported that the US Department of Agriculture directed its officials to remove content related to climate change from public websites. It’s unclear whether the web pages will come back online, and if so, to what extent they will be modified.
Schiff says he’s aware of 19 other papers and summaries that were removed from AHRQ’s Patient Safety Network.
“A wholesale censoring of things that have already been published, a wholesale precluding of the kind of research where the problems are the greatest is chilling and it’s dangerous,” says Schiff, who began his medical residency in 1976 and has been at the Brigham since 2007. “People’s lives are going to be lost.”
Schiff encouraged journalists to continue holding public officials accountable.
“They need to be exposing abuses like this,” he says. “They need to be not afraid.”
While journalists continue to report stories about what’s happening to federal health data, they also need access to data to report stories about health issues in general.
There’s no perfect alternative to the government databases, but some non-governmental organizations have their own datasets, which can be useful to journalists. Several journalism associations have also been downloading government data and making them available to their members.
To help journalists with their continued reporting, we have curated a list of non-government websites that have health data, although some use government data to create their reports.
We’ll continue to update this list. If you have a suggestion for a database, please email The Journalist’s Resource.
Editor’s Note: This post was originally published on The Journalist’s Resource and is reposted here with permission. It was updated as of February 15, 2025.
Naseem S. Miller is the senior editor for health at The Journalist’s Resource. She joined JR in 2021 after working as a health reporter in local newspapers and national medical trade publications for two decades. Immediately before joining JR, she was a senior health reporter at the Orlando Sentinel, where she was part of the team that was named a 2016 Pulitzer Prize finalist for its coverage of the Pulse nightclub mass shooting.
