2025-11-06 16:00:22
For those hoping to cross from Mexico into the United States, the final hurdle is often the Rio Grande, also called the Rio Bravo. The river marks the border between Texas on one side, and four Mexican states on the other.
Crossing it has long been known to be dangerous. But what began as an occasional news story when a tragic drowning had occurred became a transnational investigative project when three newsrooms decided to dig into the data on deaths on both sides of the border.
The resulting investigation, which was published by Mexico’s El Universal, the investigative outlet Lighthouse Reports, and The Washington Post, went on to win the 2025 Gabo Award in the coverage category, where judges praised its “investigative rigor, its innovative approach, and its ability to question power structures with evidence and sensitivity.”
The project started with an idea to examine how many women and children were dying trying to cross this stretch of water. Reporters had observed changes in migration dynamics since the pandemic: now entire families were leaving their countries to reach the United States. And while there are dangers the length of the journey, crossing this river – the final stage – was proving for many to be a matter of life or death.
GIJN interviewed journalists Miriam Ramírez and Daniela Guazo from El Universal, along with Melissa del Bosque of Lighthouse Reports to learn about the work behind the investigation. They detailed how dogged document gathering and extensive data analysis allowed them to reveal a figure for migrant drownings that was “significantly higher” than the previous best-known estimate, and shared their experiences of organizing a cross-border collaboration, collating data, and being true to the stories of the people they featured.
In large-scale collaborative investigations like this, building a methodology before starting research is key to saving time and focusing on what you want to find out or prove. Melissa del Bosque, who is the investigations editor at Lighthouse Reports, said the team understood early on the importance of establishing a work scheme.
The methodology that served as the basis for the investigation was developed with the support of experts, activists, journalists, and academics such as Professor Stephanie Leutert, an expert on migration at the University of Texas at Austin.
The Rio Grande runs along the border states of Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo León, and Tamaulipas on the Mexican side, and the state of Texas on the US side.
One of the team’s key early discoveries was that there was no single official record of deaths in the river – while some deaths were recorded in the US, others were documented by Mexico.
To counter that problem, they designed a work process from data collection to analysis, that created a roster of sources among authorities at the local, state, and national levels, and that established standards and processes for contacting identified sources. Lastly they made sure that they had a standardized data entry and verification process, which covered everything from processing information to identifying and handling duplicate cases.
Del Bosque said that the methodology – and the work plan that was based on it – meant that collaboration was smoother and brought clarity about what the investigation sought to achieve. The methodology was also made public, so that other journalists could replicate similar work.
Expecting there to be a number of government agencies or public organizations that would hold the information they needed for the investigation, journalist Miriam Ramírez and her colleagues created a list: identifying 165 sources to whom they made requests for information.
While they initially hoped to use 2012 as a starting point, obstacles in accessing the data forced them to refocus their research on the period from 2017 to 2024.
Miriam Ramírez who works for El Universal. Image: Courtesy of the reporter
From the beginning, they realized that there was going to be an issue working across borders. While US authorities provided files with geographic coordinates, age, name, date of birth, nationality, and the place where the drowning occurred, the situation was more complex on the Mexican side. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the National Migration Institute provided annual statistical data that was “very poorly disaggregated, making it difficult to analyze the information,” Ramírez explains.
“We had to abandon our initial hypothesis regarding the drowning of children because we faced deficiencies in the records… Few authorities provided information from previous years, and we only obtained useful data from 52 of the 165 authorities identified,” she says.
The team submitted more than 200 requests to access the information. When they hit a wall, they sought other avenues: they modified their questions, searched public databases, and made calls to speak directly with the agencies, utilizing all available resources to get the data they needed.
During the data collection process, del Bosque noted how both countries lacked information on migrant deaths by drowning. Even other media, she adds, showed little interest in reporting on the issue, as if there were no stories to tell.
Faced with data gaps and the disparity of records between countries, the Lighthouse Reports team took on the challenge of standardizing records and analyzing the data. The methodology they used details the process to avoid duplication of cases between those provided by the Mexican municipalities and prosecutors’ offices and those from US Customs and Border Protection.
Through this work, the team was able to find:
“What we did was to analyze the periods when these deaths began to increase, the start of Operation Lone Star, and the reinforcement of the National Guard deployment, and that’s where we find these patterns, a link between militarized immigration policies, and the increase in deaths,” Ramírez notes. While her team could not establish a conclusive causal relationship between the border build-up and the spike in drownings, expert interviews and migrant testimony pointed to a clear correlation.
Their methodology also addressed how to discard duplicate data. This allowed for the consolidation of a single database, enabled them to generate an analysis of the information, and then share the results. Ultimately the figures shed light on one of the teams’ hypotheses: Operation Lone Star had had an influence on the number of drownings being reported.
The Washington Post team conducted the forensic analysis and reconstructed the increase in Lone Star’s infrastructure using satellite imagery. Contributions from the other journalistic teams complemented this work.
Reporters documented the build-up of infrastructure on the US-Mexico border, such as the use of barbed wire and shipping containers at certain points. Image: Justin Hamel/ Lighthouse Reports. Republished with permission
For this project, up to three meetings per week – which took place in Spanish and English – were necessary, ranging from editorial meetings where findings were shared, to huddles with the team of reporters to follow up on hypotheses, to meetings to review the visualizations that would be generated.
“Data analysis supports the editorial teams’ hypotheses. It’s not about looking for new angles; it’s about supporting what already exists. After that comes the question: how do we visualize this?” explains Guazo.
The data team proposed up to six sketches so the team could discuss how they would illustrate the data showing fatalities, the presence of the National Guard, and buildup of the Lone Star infrastructure.
Choosing the right visualization for data is always a challenge, which is why Guazo recommends being clear about what you want to show and answering the questions: What is most important in the story? What do you want to convey to the reader?
The research required constant fact-checking to avoid errors in data analysis, and with new data added periodically, previous readings had to be modified.
Reporters mapped out the changing infrastructure at key points along the Texas border with Mexico. Image: Screenshot of a map created by The Washington Post and Lighthouse Reports
The project lasted 10 months, but alongside the data element stood an editorial prerogative: Above all, the life stories of the people they were writing about had to prevail. Together, they reported on stories of people with destroyed families and broken dreams, migrants caught in a struggle to improve their quality of life. Among the stories of loss they recounted is one of a mother who lost her toddler and newborn baby while trying to cross.
That subject matter made the fieldwork even more challenging than the technical data questions, says Ramírez.
“I had been processing death figures, I knew there were drownings, but once I got to the field and saw the children, women with babies, pregnant women, it really impacted me,” she adds.
The situation at the border is also complicated by a serious organized crime dynamic, with migrants often facing kidnappings, extortion, disappearances, and homicides on their journey through Mexico.
From del Bosque’s perspective, there are not enough journalists interested in covering stories about migration due to political pressure or threats related to organized crime gangs, who are often involved in transporting migrants.
“Many media outlets don’t want to write about these issues because they say: ‘We’ve already written stories, there’s nothing new,’” she says. “Eight years ago there was more interest, unfortunately now migrant deaths have become normalized, and there’s also a crisis in journalism and few journalists focus on migration. We need to create new ways of looking at this issue.”
Lucero Hernández García is a freelance journalist and digital consultant from Mexico, and a GIJN collaborator. She has a master’s degree in communication and digital media, with a specialty in multimedia production. She runs workshops and teaches data, visualization, digital tools, and online journalism to university students. Her work has been published by IJNet, and she has received scholarships from Cosecha Roja, Sembramedia, and the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
2025-11-05 16:00:20
In September 2025, podcaster Pablo Torre published an investigation alleging that the NBA’s Los Angeles Clippers may have used a side deal to skirt the league’s strict salary cap rules. His reporting, aired on multiple episodes of Pablo Torre Finds Out, focused on star forward Kawhi Leonard.
Leonard, one of the NBA’s most sought-after free agents, signed a four-year, US$176 million contract renewal with the Clippers during the 2021-22 off-season — the maximum allowed under league rules at the time. But Torre reported that in early 2022, Leonard’s LLC, KL2 Aspire, signed a cash and equity deal amounting to roughly $50 million through a brand sponsorship with Aspiration, a now-bankrupt financial technology startup that marketed itself as a climate-friendly bank.
Torre highlighted how the sponsorship coincided with major investments in Aspiration by Clippers owner Steve Ballmer and another team investor. The arrangement, Torre suggested, looked less like a conventional endorsement deal and more like a “no-show” side payment that could have helped the Clippers keep their star without technically violating the salary cap.
Leonard has denied that the partnership was improper, insisting he fulfilled his contractual obligations. The Clippers and Ballmer have also rejected claims of wrongdoing.
Torre’s reporting nevertheless had an immediate impact. Major outlets picked up the story, Aspiration’s bankruptcy filings drew renewed scrutiny, and the NBA announced it was investigating the matter.
In the wake of Pablo Torre’s revelations, many legacy media outlets highlighted his reporting.
At the University of Florida’s College of Journalism & Communications, part of my research involves unpacking the importance of decentralized networks of local outlets that cover stories from underrepresented areas of the country.
I see Torre’s work as a clear example of the growing need for this kind of bottom-up, citizen journalism — particularly given media industry trends.
Watchdog journalism is supposed to hold power to account.
This is sometimes referred to as the “fourth estate.” A term that dates back to the 17th century, it reflects the idea that an independent press is supposed to act as a fourth pillar of power, alongside the three traditional branches of modern democracies — legislative, executive, and judicial.
Proudly independent from political or financial influence, fourth estate news media has traditionally demonstrated a public service commitment to exposing corruption, encouraging debate, highlighting issues that are important and forcing leaders to address those issues.
The need for watchdog journalism appears more urgent than ever.
In the Western world, with authoritarianism on the rise, the fourth estate is experiencing widespread threats. Reporters Without Borders’ latest World Press Freedom Index found that global press freedom reached an all-time low in 2025. For the first time, it classified the situation as “difficult.”
Meanwhile, market forces and profit motives have weakened the media’s role in upholding democratic checks and balances. Fierce competition for clicks, eyeballs, and ad revenue impacts the type of content and stories that commercial outlets tend to focus on.
There appears to be less and less of a financial incentive to put in the time, resources, and effort required for deep investigative reporting. It’s just not worth the return on that investment for commercial outfits.
In the US, the Trump administration and media consolidations have further weakened the press’s ability to serve as a check on those in power.
Over the past year, two major TV networks — ABC and CBS — reached settlements for separate lawsuits brought forward by President Donald Trump tied to editorial choices on their broadcast programming. Needless to say, both decisions create significant precedents that could prove consequential for journalistic integrity and independence.
Image: Screenshot, CNN
In July 2025, the GOP-led Congress stripped over US$1 billion from the Corporation of Public Broadcasting, dealing a blow to public nonprofit outlets NPR, PBS, and their local affiliates.
More recently, Washington Post columnist Karen Attiah lost her job after speaking out against gun violence on social media in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination.
From a structural standpoint, the US media ownership landscape has, for decades, been plagued by consolidation. Media channels have become merely one slice of the massive asset portfolios of the conglomerates that control them.
It’s probably fair to say that producing costly and burdensome watchdog journalism isn’t exactly a priority for busy executives at the top of these holding companies.
Independent local outlets are a dying breed, too.
Studies have shown that news deserts — areas with little or no local coverage — are multiplying across the US.
This has dire consequences for democratic governance: News deserts often correlate with lower civic engagement, reduced voter turnout, and less accountability for business and political leaders.
What’s more, fewer local journalists means less scrutiny of local governments, which undermines transparency and enables corruption.
Half of all counties in the US only have one newspaper — hundreds have none at all. Image: UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media
For these reasons, more readers seem to be getting their news from social media and podcasts. In fact, according to a new Pew Research Center report, one in five Americans get their news from TikTok alone. And in its 2025 Digital News Report, the Reuters Institute noted that “engagement with traditional media sources such as TV, print, and news websites continues to fall, while dependence on social media, video platforms, and online aggregators grows.”
With this in mind, the US government’s latest framework for a deal for TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, to sell the social media platform’s stateside operations to a consortium of US-based investors takes on even more significance. Many of these investors are allies of Trump. They’ll get to control the algorithm — meaning they’ll be able to influence the content that users see.
At the same time, social media has also allowed independent journalists such as Torre to find an audience.
Granted, with past journalistic stints at both Sports Illustrated and ESPN, Torre is not exactly a pure outsider. Yet he’s far from a household name, with fewer than 200,000 podcast subscribers.
Luckily, he’s by no means the only independent journalist serving as a citizen watchdog.
In January 2025, freelance journalist Liz Pelly published her book “Mood Machine,” which details her investigation into Spotify’s dubious financial practices. Through her research and reporting, she alleges that the music technology company conspired to suppress legitimate royalty payments to artists.
Andrew Callaghan of Channel 5 News fame on YouTube runs one of the largest crowdfunded independent newsrooms in the world. His exclusive interview with Hunter Biden in July 2025 got him a type of access that established mainstream media couldn’t get.
In 2020, Canadian siblings Sukh Singh and Harleen Kaur founded GroundNews, an online platform providing news aggregation, curation, and rigorous fact-checking. All Sides and Straight Arrow News are similar bottom-up projects designed to expose media bias and fight misinformation.
Meanwhile, the nonprofit media outlet ProPublica has published award-winning investigative journalism through a distributed network of local reporters. Their Life of the Mother series, which explored the deaths of mothers after abortion bans, earned them multiple awards while prompting policy changes at federal and state levels.
All have surfaced meaningful stories worth bringing to light. Historically, these types of stories were the purview of newspapers of record.
Today, underground sleuths might be among the last bulwarks to abuses of power.
The work isn’t easy. It certainly doesn’t pay well. But I think it’s important, and someone has to do it.
Editor’s Note: This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Alex Volonte is an interdisciplinary industry professional with broad experience in multimedia entertainment, having initially worked as content producer for broadcasters and digital outlets across Central Europe. He is binational (Swiss/Italian) and fluent in all major Western languages. He holds a MSc in Media & Communications from the London School of Economics. He is currently pursuing a PhD in Journalism at the University of Florida, while acting as Graduate Teaching and Research Assistant at the College of Journalism & Communications.
2025-11-05 08:22:26
2025-11-04 16:00:14
From investigating a money scam sent over Whatsapp to exposing lucrative phishing accounts, alumni of GIJN’s four Digital Threats courses have produced a number of exposés of online scams and disinformation, from India to Kenya to the Philippines.
Presented by several cyber experts in a dozen remote, hands-on sessions, these courses — launched in 2023 — have trained 107 investigative journalists and researchers across four cohorts. A recent GIJN survey of 31 alumni from those cohorts found that individual alumni and their newsroom teams have subsequently published increasingly ambitious and sophisticated exposés into deeply veiled online deceptions. Follow-up interviews also revealed how the reporters behind these investigations leveraged the Digital Threats course’s new tools and techniques and bolstered their confidence to pursue seemingly impenetrable frauds. Just as follow-the-money reporters have gained much greater capacity in recent years to uncover shell company networks and hidden assets, cyber journalists are now increasingly empowered to expose digital camouflage and online misconduct.
Here are three detailed examples of recent, impactful investigations that were sharpened by GIJN’s Digital Threats training.
Image: Screenshot, BoomLive
Earlier in 2025, a BoomLive story by Hera Rizwan, entitled It Wasn’t Just A WhatsApp Image That Stole Rs 2 Lakhs, revealed an online money scam in India. Published by BoomLive’s Decode section, Rizwan’s story explained to readers how this complicated fraud was triggered by the seemingly harmless step of clicking on an image in a WhatsApp chat, which ultimately allowed bad actors to use steganography and malicious APK binding to gain access to people’s devices — and then drain their bank accounts. Rizwan, an alumnus from GIJN’s fourth Digital Threats course, says one of the less appreciated benefits of the training is that reporters learn how to handle malware-type evidence without the risk of being infected themselves, and develop the confidence to dig into all the relevant materials.
Hera Rizwan of BoomLive’s Decode section. Image: Courtesy of Rizwan
“Lessons from trainers like Craig (Silverman), Luis (Assardo), Jane (Lytvynenko,) and (Etienne) Maynier — on verifying sources and connecting technical details to real-world impact — guided how I structured the investigation and narrative,” she explains. “The course taught how to translate complex technical concepts into accessible language for readers, a skill I applied when explaining steganography and APK binding in the story.”
Rizwan notes that Indian media coverage of cyber scams generally focuses on just the basic facts released by police, like reporting the incident and the amount of money lost. She says her deeper understanding of the subject matter allowed her to expose “the technical and psychological layers behind the attack — how a harmless-looking image could carry hidden malware, and how scammers exploit trust and familiarity to deceive victims.”
In another innovative digital investigation, Rizwan leveraged her new skills to reveal how one of India’s largest gig economy platforms used AI to alter the photos of service professionals without their consent, and with harmful consequences.
“Beyond data privacy concerns, the story highlights how algorithmic decisions and AI-driven automation can directly impact the livelihoods of vulnerable gig workers,” she explains.
Image: Screenshot, Piga Firimbi
In October 2024, an investigation by Nyekerario Omari, for Kenya’s Piga Firimbi, revealed how a network of Facebook accounts were impersonating airports and airlines around the globe to “sell” unclaimed passenger luggage that does not exist. Her story Fake Bags for Sale exposed 112 phishing accounts, and — similar to Rizwan’s WhatsApp story — also alerted readers about how they can recognize and avoid this type of scam.
An alumnus from the third Digital Threats cohort, Omari says her first challenge for the project was to establish relationships between the Facebook accounts without an exhaustive network analysis process. “I relied on the common tactics and techniques used by these accounts,” she explains, “such as language which created urgency about the lost luggage; claims that the listed airports were selling off valuable unclaimed bags at an affordable price; the use of common manipulated/edited images, and fake testimonials across posts.”
Nyekerario Omari is a graduate of GIJN’s third Digital Threats training cohort. Image: Courtesy of Omari
Omari says her Digital Threats training was particularly helpful with her next challenge: to deconstruct the mechanics of how the scam worked.
“Through the GIJN Digital Threats course, [I] was able to highlight how these phishing campaigns work, by digging into Facebook campaigns which rely on clickable impersonated websites with a short shelf life to collect the victim’s personal data,” she says. “The techniques used for this relied on analyzing domain data and Facebook page transparency using tools like WhoIs, DNS Checker, Big Domain Data, and Reverse image searches to establish any manipulation.”
She adds: “The tools and techniques introduced during the second week of training by Craig Silverman were new for me, along with the fundamentals of investigating digital threats.”
She also points out that the training provided her valuable “backup tools” to have on hand for this and other investigations — alternate methodologies that she can try when a familiar tool fails to produce results.
“Most of the tools shared complemented each other,” she notes. “For example, DNSLytics, DNS Checker, and Big Domain data complemented WhoIs [search]. Additionally, InVid WeVerify and Photo Forensics proved valuable when a page’s transparency offered limited information.”
Image: Screenshot, Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism
In August of this year, Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ) reporter Regine Cabato, uncovered a “cyborg” propaganda operation, in which a mix of humans and AI-driven bots were peddling coordinated misinformation across the Internet in support of that country’s Duterte family dynasty.
PCIJ reporter Regine Cabato. Image: Courtesy of Cabato
An alumnus from GIJN’s 2024 Digital Threats training, Cabato says one impact of the story was to help inoculate readers against this wave of disinformation. Its reach was also impressive, as a social media video version of the story received 130,000 views across Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. The exposé also triggered a retaliatory harassment campaign against PCIJ from extreme pro-Duterte supporters, later described in a story by Rappler.
“My co-author Giano Libot and I have kept abreast of partisan influencers, then started comparing notes on the trends we noticed,” says Cabato. “One of the things we noticed was how thousands of suspicious accounts would use “scripts” — recurring arguments with repetitive keywords — in the comment sections of mainstream newsrooms’ posts about Duterte-related news, usually within an hour of posting. I bookmarked one of these posts when I first noticed the trend.”
“For the comment section analysis, Giano used an Apify tool for initial scraping of a sample size of some 2,000 comments. I learned about the tool via the GIJN training,” Cabato says, adding that “Who Posted What? was another helpful tool she learned about in the Digital Threats course.
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.
2025-11-03 19:00:06
GIJN’s member organizations re-elected four current board members whose terms expired in 2025, and also voted in three new board members.
The GIJN community elected four at-large board representatives, including new members Jeff Kelly Lowenstein and Mercedes Bluske Moscoso and returning members Margo Smit and Khadija Sharife. Smit continues as vice chair.
Three regional representatives were also elected. Incumbents Oleg Khomenok (Europe) and Anton Harber (Sub-Saharan Africa) were re-elected for another term, while Yasuomi Sawa (Asia/Pacific) was elected to the board for the first time.
Yasuomi Sawa won the Asia/Pacific board seat through a coin toss, per GIJN by-laws, prevailing in the tiebreaker over Wahyu Dhyatmika.
In all, 18 candidates vied for seven seats on the 14-member board, and 139 votes were tallied. The number of candidates and votes were both the highest in GIJN history. Elections for half the board are held every year. Board members serve for two years.
The top vote-getter overall was Oleg Khomenok. Full voting information is available at GIJN Board Election – 2025.
The 2025 class of GIJN Board members includes:
Voting took place by electronic ballot from October 14 to 30. For election background and rules, see our post on GIJN’s 2025 Board Election.
The new board will officially start after the 14th Global Investigative Journalism Conference in Malaysia, and will have its first board meeting in December 2025.
GIJN welcomes its new board members, and thanks all the candidates for their participation. GIJN also thanks outgoing board members: Syed Nazakat (Asia/Pacific), Nina Selbo Torset (Europe), and Zikri Kamarulzaman (Conference representative) for their significant contributions to the organization and investigative journalism around the world.
2025-11-03 16:00:14
Editor’s Note: Ahead of the 14th Global Investigative Journalism Conference in Malaysia, GIJN is publishing a series of short interviews with a globally representative sample of conference speakers. These are among the more than 300 leading journalists and editors who will be sharing practical investigative tools and insights at the event.
Helena Bengtsson is the data journalism editor at Gota Media and Bonnier News Local in Sweden, and the former data projects editor of the Guardian in the UK. She was a pioneer of computer-assisted reporting in Sweden.
In addition to her investigative contributions to international collaborative projects such as The Panama Papers, Bengtsson has emerged as a leading global advocate for the illuminating power of data journalism, and has guided numerous reporters away from their needless dread of numbers and spreadsheets.
As she told GIJN in a prior interview: “If your editor asks you to do a story about the pension system, you just have to find the information… To be honest, data journalism is a lot easier to understand than the pension system. Every journalist should have basic knowledge of how to sort and filter a spreadsheet and do simple calculations.”
She also trains journalists in building databases with advanced digital tools, and champions collaboration. Twice a recipient of Sweden’s Stora Journalistpriset (Great Journalism Award), Bengtsson’s investigations have featured scoops with direct accountability impact, including an exposé about the impunity enjoyed by teachers implicated in sexual harassment, which triggered a new Swedish law to protect children.
In addition to sharing key data techniques in a practical GIJC25 session on Using Data for Local Investigations, Bengtsson will also lead a workshop in Kuala Lumpur called The Coding Mindset, which is designed to teach attendees how to think strategically about programming, and how to turn raw data into compelling stories.
“There are a lot of people today wanting to get into code, and they say, ‘I have to learn Python,’ and I say, ‘But do you know spreadsheets?’— and they often say ‘no,’” she explains. “We have to talk about structured data before the next steps. So that [Coding Mindset] session will be a way to give people the knowledge and the thought process, and also the thesaurus of how you should express yourself in these projects. Because even if you’re going to ask Claude or ChatGPT to program for you, you have to know when to ask for a loop or a variable.”
GIJN: Of all the investigations you or your team have worked on, which has been your favorite, and why?
Helena Bengtsson: It’s almost impossible to choose, as my current project is almost always my favorite. If I have to pick, I’ll mention two. One older project involved convincing the Swedish Statistical Agency to cross-match the database of teachers with another one of people convicted in court. We only received statistical data, of course, but by combining those numbers with case studies from around Sweden, we could show that many teachers who had been convicted of sexual harassment or even abuse were still working in schools. The story led to a change in Swedish law, allowing schools to conduct background checks before hiring.
A more recent project involved processing a huge amount of data from the Swedish Roads and Vehicle Agency, analyzing roads all over Sweden. The project identified almost 16,000 dangerously constructed curves, and we told stories from across the country about hazardous roads and accidents that had occurred there.
GIJN: What are the biggest challenges for investigative reporting in your country?
HB: Some might say that working as a journalist in Sweden is easy — we have one of the best open records laws in the world. However, this also means that many Swedish journalists are not skilled at cultivating sources; it’s not part of our tradition. Open records only get you so far. To do truly great investigations, you need to uncover the hidden information, and that usually comes from sources.
GIJN: What reporting tools, databases, or techniques have you found surprisingly useful in your investigations?
HB: My most important tool is the spreadsheet: I can’t really do anything without Excel or Google Sheets. But something that has surprised me is how helpful it can be to write down your methodology during a project, not just at the end. Describing and thinking through your process as you go allows you to discover gaps in your research and forces you to consider steps and structure. For me, this has saved me from making mistakes and helped me find things I had forgotten or overlooked.
GIJN: What’s the best advice you’ve received from a peer or journalism conference — and what words of advice would you give an aspiring investigative journalist?
HB: Many years ago, I received a grant to do a fellowship abroad. I chose to work with data journalism at the Center for Public Integrity in Washington, DC. I learned so much there, but one thing that stayed with me was the importance of tackling large datasets. They went through millions of records on contributions and lobbying, and I learned not to shy away from huge amounts of data. Nowadays, we have much better tools, of course, but one piece of advice I would give to a young investigative or data journalist is not to be afraid of large volumes of information. There are ways to process and analyze them — and if you keep your focus on finding stories, you’ll be fine.
GIJN: What topic blindspots or undercovered areas do you see in your region? And which of these are ripe for new investigation?
HB: One downside of having great access to public information is that we’re not as skilled at investigating corporations and other entities where there is no public access. I would love to do more stories about how corporations might exploit their employees or the environment. Also, as a data journalist, I also see opportunities to use various AI tools to analyze unstructured data in a more sophisticated way. It won’t be easy, and I’m still struggling to find the best tools for this, but I believe that in a few years we will be telling different kinds of stories than we do today.
GIJN: Can you share a notable mistake you’ve made in an investigation, or a regret, and share what lessons you took away?
HB: It’s always hard to share mistakes, but many years ago we did an investigation into a charity that collected a lot of money. Among other things, we found that the founders had transferred some of the money into accounts in Switzerland. One of the founders lived abroad, and there were no images of him available. Since this was for television, we needed footage. He had a very unusual name, and after a lot of research I found some old video in my network’s own archive. Because the name was so unusual and the person in the old video had the same occupation as our subject, we used that footage. But it wasn’t him — the man in the old video still lived in Sweden, and he was understandably very upset that we had used his image. He received a public apology and some compensation. I was young and new as a journalist when this happened, but I still feel awful when I think about it. This taught me to check, double-check, and then check again — and never, ever assume anything.
GIJN: Can you share what you are looking forward to GIJC25 in Malaysia, whether in terms of networking or learning about an emerging reporting challenge or approach?
HB: As always, I look forward to being humbled. There are so many amazing journalists from countries all over the world and meeting them always leaves me feeling inspired. The circumstances they work under are very different from the comfortable journalistic life I lead. I have no death threats, my phone is not tapped, I can request a lot of public information, and officials are usually (though not always) available for interviews.
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.
