2025-11-22 12:04:09
When Tempo reporter Francisca Cristy Rosana opened the cardboard box addressed to her, she found a pig’s head with its ears cut off.
The box was delivered to the Tempo Digital newsroom in March after the Indonesian publication, which started as a weekly news magazine in 1971, had published a story about an online gambling operation that implicated a powerful politician and another organizer with ties to the police.
“I think it’s one of the most graphic terror acts that we have received throughout our existence,” said Wahyu Dhyatmika, CEO of Tempo Digital.
Nearly three weeks after the online gambling story was published, the Tempo Digital website was hit with a DDoS (distributed denial-of-service) attack. Dhyatmika said that these attacks indicated that the media is being backed into the corner of an already shrinking civic space for dissent. During large street demonstrations, the police target photographers and videographers.
“They will try to erase and delete all recordings of police beating the protesters,” he said at a keynote panel that opened the 14th Global Investigative Journalism Conference 2025 (GIJC25) in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Veteran investigative editors from across Asia, whose work has toppled dictators and exposed massive corruption in government, headlined the panel, sharing strategies for reporting in a region that is defined by growing hostility toward the press. They spoke against a backdrop of rising authoritarianism, tech oligarchs tightening control of information, shrinking media budgets, and escalating digital and physical threats, many of which are targeted at female journalists.
The session followed a forceful keynote address by 2021 Nobel Peace laureate Maria Ressa, who warned that in the face of authoritarianism sweeping across the globe, many press freedoms may only have a year or two before they could be lost forever.
This panel featured Glenda Gloria, executive editor of Rappler (Philippines), Gunel Safarova, acting director and editor-in-chief of Abzas Media (Azerbaijan), Mayank Aggarwal, trustee and editor at The Reporters’ Collective Trust (India), Sherry Lee, COO and deputy CEO of The Reporter (Taiwan), Wahyu Dhyatmika, CEO of Tempo Digital (Indonesia), and Yongjin Kim, co-founder of Newstapa (South Korea). The session was moderated by Steven Gan, co-founder of GICJ25 co-host Malaysiakini.
Wahyu Dhyatmika, CEO of Tempo Digital, Sherry Lee, COO and deputy CEO of The Reporter, and Yongjin Kim, co-founder of Newstapa (left to right). Image: Samsul Said, Alt Studio for GIJN
According to a Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) report released in January 2025, by December 1, 2024, at least 361 journalists were imprisoned worldwide.
The nations leading the crackdown were China, with 50 journalists behind bars, followed by Israel with 43 journalists (all Palestinian) in detention, and Myanmar, holding 35 under its military regime. Other top offenders included Vietnam and Russia. CPJ attributed the detentions to a mix of authoritarian repression, wartime crackdowns, and political instability in the region.
Detention is a grim reality for Azerbaijani investigative journalist Gunel Safarova, acting director and editor-in-chief of the exiled outlet Abzas Media. Safarova detailed how her team has pushed back even after a brutal government crackdown that targeted independent media. In November 2023, six of Safarova’s colleagues were arrested and sentenced to between seven-and-a-half and nine years on charges described by human rights and media freedom groups as politically motivated.
Abzas set up a new newsroom in exile while the imprisoned reporters continue to write from behind bars, exposing corruption within the prison system. Safarova revealed that three of her female colleagues were transferred from Baku, Azerbaijan’s capital, to another smaller region farther away from their families.
When Abzas started working in exile, many people showed their support to keep them reporting. Exile was not the hardest part, but staying committed to journalism while colleagues are unjustly detained is both painful and motivating.
“Emotionally, it is hard because when your colleagues, who are your friends, are kept in prison, it is unjust. But I think we owe them a debt,” said Safarova.
Sherry Lee, COO and deputy CEO of The Reporter, highlighted a major cross-border investigation into China’s growing military pressure on Taiwan.
“Taiwan is sometimes referred to as the most dangerous place on Earth because China has conducted military exercises around Taiwan for years,” said Lee. However, since 2022, when then-US House Speaker Rep. Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan, the drills have become more frequent and larger in scope.
“What we are facing now is not an open war. This is a gray zone of conflict,” said Lee of the nearly daily incursions, intimidation, and disinformation designed to destabilize the country without firing a shot.
The Reporter analyzed more than 400 flight and naval trajectory maps from Taiwan and Japan’s defense ministries, using QGIS, Python, and other tools to track Chinese warplanes and ships across the Western Pacific. Their visualizations gave the public the first clear picture of how widespread and coordinated these operations have become, leading to co-publication with The Washington Post and a book that sparked regional debate.
Lee said the project shows that modern warfare targets narratives as much as territory, urging journalists to build technical skills, collaborate across borders, and treat information manipulation as a frontline threat.
Sherry Lee, COO and deputy CEO of The Reporter (Taiwan) speaking at the Uncovering Asia keynote panel at GIJC25. Image: Samsul Said, Alt Studio for GIJN
South Korean journalist and Newstapa co-founder Yongjin Kim of Newstapa recounted a years-long investigation that helped expose corruption surrounding former President Yoon Suk-yeol and First Lady Kim Keon-hee, and ultimately contributed to Yoon’s downfall.
The reporting began during Yoon’s confirmation hearing as prosecutor general six years ago, when Kim’s team obtained an audio recording contradicting his public testimony. Despite Newstapa publishing the evidence, Yoon rose to lead the prosecution service before becoming president in 2022.
“In September 2023, the Yoon administration and prosecution launched a full-scale retaliation. The prosecutors raided our newsroom and the reporter’s home and indicted us on charges of defaming the president. But we didn’t back down. We launched a new investigation,” said Kim.
Newstapa continued critical scrutiny of Yoon, demanding transparency, suing for access to spending records, and eventually collecting tens of thousands of documents. The files revealed widespread misuse of public funds and fueled nearly 200 stories. Reporters then uncovered evidence linking the former First Lady to a multimillion-dollar stock manipulation scheme.
“In September 2023, the Yoon administration and prosecution launched a full-scale retaliation. The prosecutors raided our newsroom and the reporter’s home and indicted us on charges of defaming the president. But we didn’t back down. We launched a new investigation,” said Kim.
In December 2024, Yoon was impeached after parliament had ruled unanimously that he had violated the constitution for having no justification to declare martial law.
Glenda Gloria, executive editor of Rappler, reflected on how Philippine investigative journalism has rebounded after years of political harassment under former President Rodrigo Duterte, whose administration threatened shutdowns and imprisonment of co-founder, Maria Ressa. Despite obstacles, which included restricted access to documents, sources, and contracts, Rappler continued data collection, building extensive, detailed databases of routine government movements, such as tracking the filing of candidacies to monitor campaign donors and their connection to elected officials.
This groundwork enabled reporters to quickly link politicians to major flood control contracts funded by public money, exposing conflicts of interest and prompting immediate political pushback.
Gloria emphasized the active role citizens took in the investigation: a mapping of anomalous flood control projects using tips, photos, and videos from local communities revealed a nearly nationwide misuse of funds. The Rappler team also leveraged digital platforms, including TikTok and their own app, to reach younger audiences and funnel them to deeper investigative reporting, while testing paid content models.
Gloria said the experience reinforces a core lesson: pursuing leads, engaging communities, and innovating distribution are essential for credible, sustainable investigative journalism — and to slowly restore the bond between the public and the media. “There is no better way to rebuild public trust in investigative journalism than to show citizens that reporters actually pursue the tips and leads from them.”
“Will this last in an age of AI and fakery? Maybe not. But after a long, dry summer under Duterte, we will take this as a public that is reconnecting with journalists and their work,” said Gloria.
Steven Gan, co-founder of Malaysiakini, ended the panel by highlighting that while Asia remains one of the most challenging and dangerous places to work for journalists, nowhere is more dangerous than West Asia, or what is also referred to as the Middle East. More than 200 Palestinian journalists have been killed since the start of the war in Gaza, a staggering number that exceeds the number of journalists killed in all wars combined since World War I.
“Let’s honor their courage, their sacrifice, and their unvarying commitment to truth. There is no way, no better way for us to honor that than by refusing to bow to intimidation and for us to continue our task as journalists. In doing their job, they paid the ultimate price. May their work live on in ours,” said Gan.
2025-11-22 10:10:20
This past year was cataclysmic for independent nonprofit media funding following the dismantling of USAID and donor intimidation by populist governments. And experts warn that 2026 will likely be even worse for traditional funding sources.
As a result, they urge nonprofit investigative outlets in the near term to be laser-focused on audience engagement, out-of-the-box creative solutions, and clear communications to potential donors about their organization’s unique value to the public and democracy. And they need to “stop leaving money on the table” by failing to connect (and promote) their work to the impacts it produces. These were among the key takeaways at the “Strategies to Identify Funding Sources for Investigative Journalism” panel at the 14th Global Investigative Journalism Conference (GIJC25) in Malaysia.
Because donors are now well aware of the erosion of democratic institutions and human rights norms around the world, an opportunity exists for investigative newsrooms to credibly argue that their work is essential to the freedoms even of the donors themselves.
“When you are out there making money off selling T-shirts and cups, and bringing people to convenings, that’s not an industry: that’s survival,” said panelist Drew Sullivan, co-founder and publisher of the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP). “When you approach a donor, you have to win the case that investigative reporting is a vital, core necessity of a democracy. It does not work without accountability. Most donors understand this, but they’re scared. So address their worries, and make that case.”
Drew Sullivan, María Teresa Ronderos, Pradeep Gairola, and Nkirote Koome (left to right) spoke at the Strategies to Identify Funding Sources for Investigative Journalism panel at GIJC25. Image: Zahid Hassan for GIJN
“[Investigative journalism] is a messy business — you can get sued; get threatened, and people often don’t want to get their hands next to it,” said María Teresa Ronderos, director of the Latin American Center for Investigative Journalism (El CLIP), who moderated the session.
“But we can show how we create spaces of real freedom with verified information in the middle of a very disrupted world, where there is lots of disinformation, and people are very confused; there is so much trash out there,” Ronderos added. “I think investigative journalism has a huge opportunity to service this area.”
Addressing the current funding crisis, the panelists noted that the US government had pulled US$268 million from independent media in 2025, a stunning sum that was only slightly mitigated by new support from the European Union.
“My concern now is institutional donors,” Sullivan explained. “The Trump administration is trying to stigmatize donors, saying they’re anti-American or supporting terrorism when supporting organizations they don’t agree with. No donor wants to be ‘Soros-ed’ on every right-wing website.”
But, he added: “Independent journalism is also getting a more engaged public with these attacks, and there are ways to monetize that.”
Nkirote Koome (right), manager for Africa and the Middle East at the International Fund for Public Interest Media (IFPIM), discusses the current challenging funding environment for investigative journalism. Image: Zahid Hassan for GIJN
Other strategies to win new revenue suggested by the panel included:
Looking out years into the future, Sullivan suggested that AI, in particular, would transform the landscape and could revolutionize accountability journalism.
“You have to be creative,” he explained. “Donors say: ‘Journalism is not reaching people anymore.’ They say: ‘You only do bad news, and everyone’s tired of bad news.’ And they’re right. So it’s up to our generation now to reinvent, and show that to donors.”
He added: “The good news is that we’re free. I’m not tied to sales anymore. I’m tied to impact; to changing the world. So we at OCCRP are now a technology company. Now we’re into gaming; into film; into information technology. All of this because we still want to do investigative reporting.”
“It’s true, there has been a lot of reprioritization on the funder side, and there is a scarcity of funding,” said Koome. “But I’ve also seen pockets of opportunity. And I see hope.”
Rowan Philp is GIJN’s global reporter and impact editor. A former chief reporter for South Africa’s Sunday Times, he has reported on news, politics, corruption, and conflict from more than two dozen countries around the world, and has also served as an assignments editor for newsrooms in the UK, US, and Africa.
2025-11-22 09:29:12
What struck the audience who listened to “The Prince,” The Economist’s eight-part series about China’s President Xi Jinping, wasn’t the richness of the historical clips that illustrated his rise from a lowly politician to becoming “the most powerful person in the world,” nor was it the expertly mastered sounds and riveting narration of the host.
The moment people always remember is a clip of Sue-Lin Wong, the Asia correspondent at The Economist, standing mic in her hand in her mother’s kitchen in Sydney, far away from her duty post in Hong Kong, having a candid conversation about life in communist China.
According to Wong, that mother-daughter moment became the scene listeners brought up most often when they talked to her about the series. And that, she told a room packed with audio storytellers and enthusiasts, is the whole point of narrative podcasting.
In the “Making An Investigative Podcast” session at the 2025 Global Investigative Journalism Conference, three leading audio storytellers showed how journalists can package investigative work for the ears. The session, moderated by Tessa Pang, impact editor at Lighthouse Reports, featured a range of tips for print journalists transitioning to audio storytelling and others who are yet to produce their first podcast.
Wong, who has a background in print, said scripting a podcast requires a different set of skills and considerations than writing for the printed word. The room erupted into agreeing “hmmmms” and head nods when she said: “The power of the pause isn’t something we have to think about in print but is something so powerful in podcasts.”
The Economist’s podcast. Image: Screenshot
Where print reporters instinctively lead with findings, data, and analysis, audio storytelling requires emotions, said Susanne Reber, a veteran investigative editor and the founder of Piz Gloria Productions, which specializes in narrative serialized stories. She illustrated this with a clip of a scientist explaining how to clean oil-soaked birds with dishwashing liquid while in an interview with “This American Life” host Ira Glass. The unexpected charm and the surprise of the interviewer captured on the tape, she said, is the sort of “pure radio gold” that makes audio storytelling an enriching experience for listeners.
Fact, data, and analysis are important in investigative podcasts too, she stressed, but listeners want more. This, she said, is because audiences connect first with feeling, not facts.
In order to do this right, Reber’s golden rule to beginners is to record or “roll everything” and in a way that shows intimacy — that can draw in the listeners and put them in the same room as the reporter.
“If you want to capture that intimacy,” she said, “then you actually have to be able to hear that person’s voice, which means you want to hear them pause. You want to hear them think, you want to hear when they smack their lips. The moment is key… letting moments breathe.”
When the Philippines-based PumaPodcast, an audio-storytelling platform, made a six-part audio documentary series on former President Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs, founder Roby Alampay expected that what would make the series powerful was the sound engineering.
Roby Alampay from PumaPodcasts. Photo: Vivian Yap Wei Wen for GIJN
Later though, he realized that what made the series resonate with audiences was the collection of voices from victims and their relatives, and how those individual stories impacted the listeners. He said one of the most powerful moments in the series was a mother asking, “When my nephew has decided to change, then you decide to kill him?”
He says it’s vital for audio storytellers to find the right voices — and use these skillfully to tell the story. Similarly, for a series they made about the coronavirus pandemic, he said, it was the voices of people narrating their personal experiences with COVID-19 — the format that they chose — that created an enriching experience for the audience.
“Anybody can take a snap of a burning village or a village that was wiped out by a tsunami, anybody can drive by and take a picture,” he said. “It takes a journalist to get out of the car, go down there, walk through the rubble and not only take a picture of a hand underneath the rubble, but actually talk to people.”
Of course, once you have the tape, the ability to masterfully splice the different voices gathered throughout the reporting process and meticulous production are also important, the panelists said.
The three speakers all agreed that while the success of narrative podcasting depends on emotions and moments that are able to create a sensory experience, there needs to be structure. Every story must have a beginning, middle, and an ending, in order to carry the listener along as the story progresses, they said.
“If you can get them to episode two, you’re on your way,” Reber said.
She advised journalists to think in scenes and arcs, as screenwriters do: Who are the protagonists? What is the turning point? Where are the moments of surprise? Narrative clarity matters most in the opening minutes, she said.
Wong also echoed this, describing her obsession with process. For her second series, “Scam Inc,” an audio investigation into the global, underground scam economy, she abandoned long Word documents and instead used software with backlinking to track characters, threads, and themes that allowed her to see patterns in her reporting.
The arc, she said, “emerged organically from the bottom up” through the process.
2025-11-21 18:05:38
Illegal mining is a significant challenge, particularly in Brazil, the African continent, and various parts of Southeast Asia. It exploits loopholes in regulatory frameworks and a lack of oversight, and is closely linked to economic crimes and corruption.
In many countries, the offense is also closely linked to the destruction of natural resources and Indigenous lands, as mineral reserves are often located in rural and remote areas that have been inhabited by native communities for generations.
“Illegal mining is not chaos. It’s an informal system with its own power lines,” said Linda Mujuru, an award-winning Zimbabwean freelance investigative journalist, whose reporting focuses on mining, land, and environmental justice. Mujuru spoke at the 14th Global Investigative Journalism Conference in Malaysia, in a session titled Tracing Illegal Mining Activities, where she was joined by journalists from Brazil and Turkey to discuss the challenges of reporting on illegal mining in their countries.
It is important for journalists investigating illegal mining to trace the human network involved in the operation before mapping the specifics of the mining itself, said Mujuru. Permits and official documents will likely only reveal a small part of the big picture, she explained.
Given the locations of the sites where illegal mining typically occurs, it is critical to develop sources within local communities who live in and around it. Miners, primary healthcare workers, and youth leaders, for example, often know the ins and outs of nearby mining activities. “Relationships will reveal more than official data,” Mujuru explained.
When reporting stories that involve an imbalance in power structures such as illegal mining, journalists must speak to sources on both sides of the issue, said Karla Mendes, an award-winning Brazilian journalist who works as an investigative and feature reporter for Mongabay.
“It is important to show that you are a journalist and not an activist,” she cautioned. “It is easy to be on the side of those protesting the mines, but it is important to speak to the other side as well.”
Leave behind preconceived notions and prejudices about the country or region in which you are investigating illegal mining, said the panelists. For journalists who report on this subject, it is crucial to know the context and history of the land involved. “There are few opportunities available and that forces Indigenous people into illegal mining. This context makes for balanced reporting,” said Mendes.
Illegal mining is a multifaceted issue, she added. Investigative journalists should understand that it is not just a crime story, but a public health story, an environmental story, and a story about Indigenous rights. Brazil’s Indigenous Munduruku, for example, have experienced ongoing health issues even after illegal gold miners were removed from one part of the Amazon rainforest. Mendes’ reporting for Mongabay suggests Brazil’s government has done little to help the Indigenous community tackle the wide range of diseases linked to mercury contamination caused by the mining.
Zimnanwean freelance investigative journalist Linda Mujuru told attendees that it is critical to develop sources within local communities who live in and around mines. Image: Alyaa Alhadjri for GIJN
When reporting on sensitive issues such as illegal mining, trust is vital, emphasized both Mujuru and Mendes. “Indigenous people are attacked all the time and they need to trust you,” said Mendes. “They need to see examples of your [previous work].”
Both journalists said they have previously shared reportage on issues involving Indigenous communities with sources on the ground to show their intent as reporters and the impact that this kind of investigative journalism can have.
Doğu Eroğlu, an Istanbul-based investigative reporter and the founder of Ortak, an Istanbul-based independent investigative newsroom, discussed an investigation into the İliç gold mine disaster in eastern Turkey’s Erzincan Province in February 2024. The collapse of cyanide-laced leach material — crushed, low-grade ore stacked in large heaps and irrigated with a chemical solution to dissolve and extract valuable metals like gold, copper — resulted in the deaths of nine mine workers.
“We had a list of former and current workers at the mines but they had signed a non-disclosure agreement [with the mining company],” said Eroğlu. “Everyone was terrified [to speak to us]. Even engineers who were working elsewhere and would possibly go back to the mines were terrified. We had to find retired miners who didn’t give a damn about the company.”
“Physical intimidation is big in Turkey,” added Eroğlu, speaking about investigative journalism in his country. Bigger firms have a reputation at stake and, as such, small companies can be “more dangerous, because they put all their eggs in one basket” as a business, he explained.
Takeaways and Tips
To tackle concerns of post-publication retaliation, trust is the best defense, said Mujuru: “It is important to identify organizations that you can collaborate with.” For smaller newsrooms or those without legal departments, Mendes suggested using a pro bono lawyer to conduct a legal review pre-publication.
2025-11-21 14:00:54
Maria Ressa — a 2021 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, and co-founder of the pioneering investigative outlet Rappler — opened the 14th Global Investigative Journalism Conference (GIJC25) in Malaysia with a powerful call for the under-fire investigative reporting community to embrace “radical collaboration,” and to use the crisis as an opportunity for impact and survival.
At a global moment of rampant authoritarianism, emboldened tech oligarchs, media funding freezes, and both cyber and physical attacks on journalists, Ressa used her keynote address to warn that many press freedoms may only have one year left before they could be forever lost. But she recounted her own personal experience of persecution in the Philippines to show how a relentless commitment to hold powerful actors accountable — even in the face of repression — can lead to sustainable revenue and justice.
“I had 11 arrest warrants in 2019 — that was the year Rappler became profitable,” she noted, prompting cheers from the audience. She acknowledged that the repeated arrests of newsroom leaders was “not exactly a sustainable business model” for others to emulate, but noted Rappler’s turnaround was an example of how audiences can rally around a courageous press. She also cast it as an extreme example of how “crisis is opportunity” for resource-challenged and harassed newsrooms worldwide.
Referring to Rodrigo Duterte, the former president of the Philippines, Ressa prompted cheers from assembled journalists when she pointed out why she remains optimistic about the future of investigative journalism. “I want to tell you why I remain optimistic, why I think we can do this,” she said. “It’s because the man who tried to jail me and close Rappler down was arrested in March this year, and he’s now at The Hague for crimes against humanity. So you see: if you keep doing your jobs and collaborate together, impunity ends.”
However, Ressa also described several existential threats currently facing the media and civil society. “This is the deadliest year for journalists — 250 killed in Gaza alone,” she noted.
In a dramatic moment, Ressa warned that 2026 could represent a crucial, one-year window for many independent newsrooms to secure their rights, their partnerships, and their new sustainability models.
“The best advice we in the Philippines can give to those Western countries is: you fight now, when you still have your rights, because those rights will decrease, and clawing them back later on is near impossible,” she warned. “To the funders: this is the moment. If you don’t do this, if you don’t meet the moment, then in the next year, we will have fallen even further. If we do not do those things — collaborate, especially — then I think medium-size news organizations will die within a year.”
Maria Ressa explains how state-sponsored propaganda targeted her and her news organization on major tech platforms. Image: Suzanne Lee, Alt Studio for GIJN
Ressa warned of the poisonous and polarizing consequences of the global war on facts perpetrated by tech algorithms, where hate is amplified and vulnerable communities are further marginalized.
“Without facts you can’t have truth; without truth you can’t have trust,” she cautioned. “Without these, you cannot solve existential problems like climate change. You cannot have democracy. As [has been said]: colonialism didn’t die; it just moved online.”
Ressa also warned of growing kleptocracy around the world, fueled by the “normalization of lies” through feedback loops amplified by decentralized networks of influencers and reinforced by platforms that reward emotionally charged content.
Before giving her speech, Ressa joined in a moment of solidarity with journalists under attack worldwide, organized in partnership with the Committee to Protect Journalists. She joined the more than 1,000 attendees gathered in the conference hall for a photo, in a symbolic recognition of the work being done by an investigative community holding the line for facts and accountability everywhere.
“Everything we knew as an industry has been destroyed,” she said. “So we don’t stand still. This is a time for radical collaboration. This is also a time for creation.” She added: “Our enemies are not the governments. They rose on top of technologies that have literally splintered our societies apart. None of the tech that rules our lives today is anchored in facts.”
Investigative journalism leaders joined together with the Committee to Protect Journalists for a moment of solidarity with the press worldwide at GIJC25. Image: Suzanne Lee, Alt Studio for GIJN
Her more specific appeals to the community included:
“My dream is a global federation of news organizations. I think we can do it — the code is there already,” she added. “All we have to do is work together while we still have strength. Otherwise, we will be depleted — and I think we only have a year.”
Ressa’s speech followed a conference welcome from leaders of the two co-hosts of the event: Emilia Díaz-Struck, executive director of the Global Investigative Journalism Network, and Premesh Chandran, co-founder of Malaysiakini.
“We are so excited — this is the first time we are hosting the global conference in Asia,” said Diaz-Struck. “We know this was a tough year for everyone. But the fact that we have more than 1,500 attendees from 135 countries and territories sends a very powerful message.”
She noted that the conference had doubled its prior complement of speakers from Africa, MENA, and Latin America — and tripled the number of speakers from Asia.
Said Chandran: “In 2018, we here in Malaysia had our first change of government in 60 years, and that was driven by journalists. Many here have been pushing the boundaries.”
Diaz-Struck added: “Despite all these challenges we’re facing — democracy going backwards, wars, more journalists in exile — we are alive; we are resilient; and we are doing the investigative journalism that is key for society: holding powers to account.”
GIJN Executive Director Emilia Díaz-Struck (right) and Malaysiakini CEO and co-founder Premesh Chandran welcomed attendees to the 14th Global Investigative Journalism Conference. Image: Suzanne Lee, Alt Studio for GIJN
Rowan Philp is GIJN’s global reporter and impact editor. A former chief reporter for South Africa’s Sunday Times, he has reported on news, politics, corruption, and conflict from more than two dozen countries around the world, and has also served as an assignments editor for newsrooms in the UK, US, and Africa.
2025-11-21 09:03:24
Investigating big tech should not focus on the products and industry claims but rather the remarkably small group of companies and people exerting a growing power over the rest of us. And rather than being dazzled by the purported “magic behind the curtain” of AI, experts recommend that journalists focus instead on human choices and physical impact behind this booming industry.
These were two of the major themes from a high-level, all-day workshop on how journalists should tackle the new tech frontiers, at the kick-off of the 2025 Global Investigative Journalism Conference (GIJC25) in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Collectively titled The Investigative Agenda for Technology Journalism, this invitation-only series of panel discussions included two dozen speakers, featuring veteran editors, reporters, and forensic investigators from five continents on the technology beat.
A packed conference hall heard that the rapidly moving frontiers of technology have created myriad new opportunities for exploitation and abuse for bad actors across the world, and powerful challenges for journalists seeking to hold them accountable. From deepfake videos and targeting of autonomous weapons to online hate and algorithmic bias, speakers explained how these threats and the digital camouflage they employ require a combination of new skills, traditional journalistic methods, and the help of peers to understand and expose.
The sessions detailed how the stakes for holding technology corporations and their government allies accountable were higher than ever, with authoritarianism growing in concert, and vulnerable communities and the environment suffering direct harms from its spread into the Global South. One leading forensic investigator revealed that a second boom in cyber surveillance of journalists and dissidents — including zero-click spyware that quietly turns your phone into a surveillance tool — was imminent.
To encourage candid discussion, the day’s series of meetings was held under the Chatham House Rule, where the content of the discussion may be disclosed, but where the identity of participants and their comments may not be supplied without their express permission. Those identified in this report provided consent to use their names and quoted remarks.
“In terms of the most important investigative priorities, I think that’s to center power as the lens through which you examine tech, because there is a really, really tiny group of people making extraordinarily profound decisions that will have ripple effects on supply chains; on the environment; communities all around the world,” said Karen Hao, one of the world’s leading AI watchdogs, and the best-selling author of “Empire of AI: Inside the Reckless Race For Total Domination.”
Natalia Viana, co-founder and executive director of Agência Pública, one of Latin America’s largest nonprofit newsrooms, told attendees: “Many journalists think covering big tech is about covering tech — but it should be about investigating the people who make the decisions behind the algorithms and the market bubbles. These are the most powerful companies in history — and their products affect every aspect of our lives and democracies. It’s a huge power imbalance. They are very hierarchical — a handful of mostly men, and their tactics are reproduced everywhere.”
Despite generative AI’s enduring problems with bias and made-up answers, several reporters advocated for the careful, fact-checked use of large language model chatbots to produce useful and sometimes essential leads and pattern-matching at the outset of investigations. Notably, one veteran editor suggested that – because investigative journalism was a “high-skill, low-efficiency craft” with fewer than 10,000 full-time practitioners worldwide – the investigative journalism community should create its own LLMs to dramatically boost efficiency, and ultimately empower citizens to join the accountability fight.
But AI’s unchecked growth and influence is deeply rooted in mistaken public perceptions.
“I try to debunk all the different narratives that come out of Silicon Valley,” said Hao. “I think the central pillar of [big tech] is narrative: the ability to control, and shape the narrative that allows them to continue expanding and gaining unfettered access to resources.”
Other misleading narratives that reporters should challenge include:
Image: Slide at GIJC25
The targeting and dehumanization of people and groups for who they are is not only on the rise, but, increasingly, is being amplified by populist governments that profit by scapegoating minorities. While news media generally covers the aftermath of online hate, such as public violence, experts recommend more scrutiny of the actual hate campaigns, their origins, and the growing monetization of toxic messaging.
Methods to investigate hate that panelists recommended included:
However, in addition to their accountability role, journalists also have a public service role to play in countering hate as well as not inadvertently amplifying it.
To establish a journalistic corollary to the Hippocratic Oath of “first, do no harm,” panelists urged other reporters to follow these best practices:
Panelists shared chilling cases of tech abuse from their recent investigations: such how the identities of female Ukrainian journalists were stolen and used for AI-generated, Russian propaganda deepfake videos that attracted 24 million views; how the Mexican army secretly surveilled human rights activists; how Israel’s military used a machine learning program to “generate” hundreds of new targets, with lethal consequences for civilians in Gaza.
They also heard about the need for journalists on this beat to be deeply sensitive to less technologically literate audiences.
“Remember to imagine communities where ‘algorithm’ doesn’t even exist in their mother tongue,” an African data journalist pointed out. “Older generations are clicking on all sorts of links, and at the mercy of scamsters without our help. How do we explain phishing to these vulnerable people? Tech systems are entrenching systemic injustice in the Global South.”
Rowan Philp is GIJN’s global reporter and impact editor. A former chief reporter for South Africa’s Sunday Times, he has reported on news, politics, corruption, and conflict from more than two dozen countries around the world, and has also served as an assignments editor for newsrooms in the UK, US, and Africa.
