Author: Deniz Pozkurt-Pekar

Nominations open for IJ4EU cross-border journalism award

The IJ4EU fund has opened nominations for its annual award celebrating the best of European cross-border investigative journalism, with three cash prizes of €5,000 available for teams that collaborate on transnational issues in the public interest.

Nominations opened on 14 October for the second annual IJ4EU Impact Award, run by the European Centre for Press and Media Freedom (ECPMF), one of three organisations implementing the IJ4EU programme.

The deadline for nominations is 14 November 2021. Winners will be announced at IJ4EU’s #UNCOVERED conference in Berlin on 1 April 2022.

Nominate now

The IJ4EU Impact Award recognises innovation and excellence in cross-border investigative journalism in European Union member states. It is open to both IJ4EU grantees and any other teams that meet the eligibility criteria. Investigations must have been published between 1 October 2020 and 30 September 2021.

The Impact Award is supported by the IJ4EU’s other implementing partners, the International Press Institute (IPI) and the European Journalism Centre (EJC).

Anyone is welcome to nominate investigative projects, including their own journalistic work, as long as the projects were published via a credible medium (e.g. print, broadcast television or radio, online, documentary film, multimedia etc).

The eligibility criteria are as follows:

  • Nominated investigations must have been published between 1 October 2020 and 30 September 2021.
  • Nominated investigations must involve journalists from at least two EU member states.
  • Nominated investigations need to highlight issues of common interest to citizens of at least two EU member states, and be seen to have strengthened European media.
  • Nominated investigations may have been published in any language. However, for investigations not published in English, a translation in English of the core investigation/summary must be provided.
  • Nominations should include any significant challenge to the honesty, accuracy or fairness of an entry, such as published letters, corrections, retractions as well as responses by the relevant newspaper or website.

A team of independent researchers will start to evaluate the impact of the nominated projects in mid-November. They will then be ranked according to:

  • The investigation’s impact. This is assessed according to political reaction (for example, in the European Parliament or national legislatures); advocacy reaction (for example, among NGOs or activists); public reaction (for example, on social media or within an industry); and media reaction (among outlets not involved in the investigation).
  • The effectiveness of cross-border collaboration. How closely and productively did outlets and journalists work together?
  • The process behind the investigation: challenges faced, obstacles overcome, techniques pioneered, information uncovered, sources relied on and so on.

In March 2022, an independent jury set up by ECPMF will review the ranked nominations (including a shortlist of the top 10) and select three cross-border investigations as winners. You can view last year’s jury here. Each award will be worth €5,000.

The winners will be announced in Berlin on 1 April 2022 at IJ4EU’s #UNCOVERED conference, organised by ECPMF. You can view last year’s winners here.
For more information, see the Awards page on the IJ4EU site and the relevant section in our FAQ.

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Catch up on #UNCOVERED 2021

Summaries

Watch Day 1 of #UNCOVERED 2021, as it happened, here.

Watch Day 2 of #UNCOVERED 2021, as it happened, here.

Day 1 panels

Watch the Opening Remarks and Where’s My Money Going? Funding Cross Border Journalism panel here.

Watch The FinCEN Files: The Power of Networks to Enable Cross Border Journalism panel here.

Watch the Reporting on Influence: ‘Following the Money’ Across Borders panel here.

Watch the Cross-Border Chronicles: Investigating the Pandemic panel here, from 00:00:40

Watch the Cross-Border Chronicles: Investigating the Environment panel here, from 00:49:03

2021 #IJ4EU Impact Award Ceremony

Watch the 2021 #IJ4EU Impact Award Ceremony here.

Day 2 panels

Watch the SLAPPs: A Legal Threat to Cross Border Journalism panel here.

Watch the Lessons for Europe: Cross Border Journalism Around the World panel here.

Watch the What’s Next? Innovation in Cross Border Journalism panel here.

Watch The Ibiza Affair: Behind The Headlines panel here.

Register for #UNCOVERED 2022
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Day 2 of #UNCOVERED 2021

by Jane Whyatt (ECPMF)

Day 2 of the #UNCOVERED 2021 online conference took participants behind the scenes of some of the most important stories of the decade.

The themes of collaboration and innovation ran through all the sessions and workshops, and the way the media freedom community has united to oppose SLAPPs was eloquently explained in the debate chaired by Flutura Kusari, legal advisor of the European Centre for Press and Media Freedom (ECPMF). SLAPPs are Strategic Litigation Against Public Participation – in other words, lawsuits that represent an abuse of the legal system to try to intimidate journalists and publishers or ruin them financially.

SLAPPS aim to silence criticism

As Flutura Kusari pointed out, the ECPMF is playing a leading role in the new CASE group of organisations calling for a European Union Directive to combat SLAPPs.  It already has some support in Brussels – panel member Viola von Cramon-Taubadel MEP stressed:

The situation is depressing, but I’m optimistic that we can achieve something.”

Swedish SLAPP victim Per Agerman described the Realtid case at the High Court in London: “In Sweden, you can only sue the editor responsible. By going to London they could bypass the Swedish constitution”.

Cross-border collaboration is clearly essential in such cases, and this is one of more than 70 which ECPMF’s Legal Support helps to fund. Through a partnership between ECPMF and the Justice for Journalists Fund (JFJ), SLAPP cases can be identified, checked, challenged and publicised, and JFJ’s Maria Ordzhonikidze joined the panel to describe their role.

Many investigations featured at #UNCOVERED tackle global themes such as environmental threats, corruption in the shipping industry (Black Trail) and in fishing (The Insatiables). So the panel on “Lessons for Europe” was a good fit, bringing insights from investigative journalists across Africa, Latin America and the Phillipines (pictured below in a screenshot from the panel) to show how cross-border collaboration works in different regions of the world. and share expertise with European colleagues.

Facing a future where data-driven journalism and digitisation are widely perceived as a threat to journalists’ jobs suddenly seemed easier for participants in the Innovation panel. It was moderated by ECPMF Executive Board Chair Yannis Kotsifos, a board member of the European Federation of Journalists. His three experts showed how new technology is enabling reporters to work with data scientists and produce ground-breaking results like the IJ4EU-funded Money to Burn exposé of Europe’s energy policies

AI – promise or problem?

Conference participants got an even more detailed picture of the possibilities for Artificial Intelligence in news at a workshop with data scientist Morteza Shahrezaye and freelance journalist Sylke Gruhnwald. Like the “good cop/bad cop” duo, he enthused about the ability of algorithms to search documents for stories in up to 50 languages, to find veiled Nazi symbols in Facebook posts and to write Guardian newspaper articles all by themselves with only a human proof-reader. Meanwhile she warned about the in-built race and gender bias of most datasets, the need to make algorithms transparent and accountable and the questions about employees’ rights at big tech companies such as Google.

For the grand finale, conference participants were given the chance to discuss and watch an exclusive preview screening of “Beyond the Headlines” – a feature-length documentary showing how Süddeutsche Zeitung’s Bastian Obermeyer and Frederik Obermaier (no relation) of Der Spiegel worked together with Austrian colleagues, transcending the traditional rivalry between the German-language titles. The film gives intimate glimpses of them contacting whistleblowers and verifying a secretly-filmed sting that brought down the Austrian government. It showed that the then-Deputy Chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache was talking to a couple in a villa on the island of Ibiza about taking Russian money to buy political influence.

Corruption charges

Just hours before the screening at #UNCOVERED, Strache was charged with bribery by Austria’s Economic and Corruption Prosecutor. It was another example of the impact of collaborative cross-border journalism to add to the Impact Award winners and many other projects that were showcased at the conference.

Yet this was not a time for resting laurels or self-congratulation. Summing up, ECPMF Managing Director closed #UNCOVERED with a reminder of the physical perils and political machinations that independent journalists face:

Firstly: We will not rest until the murder of our colleague Giorgios Karaivaz, an investigative reporter in Athens, is fully investigated. Secondly: Poland’s constitutional court has forced Adam Bodnar, the Commissioner of Human Rights, to leave office. Bodnar is an ardent fighter for press and media freedom and the government is not. We will not let them get away with this.”

Tomorrow’s struggles are still to be tackled. #UNCOVERED gave us two days of encouragement, achievement and a sense that we are working together in those struggles.

You can read about the Day 1 debates and #IJ4EU Impact Award here.

The #UNCOVERED conference is part of the IJ4EU programme funded by the European Commission. It is organised by the European Centre for Press and Media Freedom (ECPMF), in partnership with the International Press Institute (IPI) and the European Journalism Centre (EJC).

IJ4EU (Investigative Journalism for Europe) is a fund for cross-border investigative journalism in the EU. It provides grants to teams of journalists or news organisations in Europe investigating topics of public interest.

The content of this website and the topics discussed during the #UNCOVERED conference reflect the views of the authors and speakers, and the European Commission is not responsible for any use that may be made of the information contained.

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Day 1 of #UNCOVERED 2021

Celebrating cross-border journalism with praise and prizes

By Jane Whyatt (ECPMF)

There were sad and sombre moments at the #UNCOVERED 2021 online conference, remembering murdered journalists Giorgios Kavaitaz, Daphne Caruana Galizia, and Jàn Kuciak.

Yet the atmosphere was mostly one of celebration, with top-level speakers stressing the importance of cross-border investigative journalism and four teams collecting handsome trophies as well as 5,555 euros each in the first-ever IJ4EU Impact Award.

Sabine Verheyen MEP, who chairs the European Parliament Culture Committee, stressed in the opening panel discussion, chaired by European Centre for Press and Media Freedom Lutz Kinkel:

“We have increased the budget – nearly doubling it – for Creative Europe. To support investigative journalism is one of the core tasks we should concentrate on”

Backing up this promise, the European Commission’s Anna Herold told the online audience of more than 300 registrants:

”We’re extremely proud of this project where full independence of the media is ensured by the arm’s length approach”.

The FinCEN Files

Global teamwork defying the COVID-19 pandemic

Discussing how the FinCEN Files exposed massive money laundering, Fergus Shiel of the International Center for investigative Journalism (ICIJ) told the conference how  – in spite of the pandemic lockdown – they were able to track a billion dollars from Turkmenistan to Scotland, and follow another money trail from Hong Kong to California, where it led to the death of a man. “This is what investigative journalism is about” he commented.

His colleague Ariel Kaminer of BuzzFeed News found it a sobering experience, noting that some of the reporters involved work in settings where they were literally putting their lives on the line to do this work.

The next panel on Political Influence provided more examples of the dangers and difficulties facing the cross-border teams.

Moscow-based freelancer Anastasia Kirilenko told how one of their whistleblowers survived an assassination attempt and another received death threats, too. Zoltán Sipos of Átlátszó Erdély described how he and ethnic Hungarians like himself living in nearby countries such as Romania, Slovenia, Slovakia, Serbia and Croatia live in “a parallel reality” which is funded directly from Budapest by Viktor Orbàn’s government with the aim of spreading illiberal values and undermining democracy.

Those values spilled onto the streets of Poland’s cities when the new anti-abortion law was passed in October 2020, forcing the team investigating the ultra-conservative TFP global network to publish earlier than planned. In the panel debate chaired by Timothy Large of the international Press Institute (IPI), Anna Gilerwska explained that the TFP was collecting millions of euros from a base in Kracow by selling rosaries and pictures of saints. Then they traced the money – and political influence  – to its branches in Brazil. Slovakia, Croatia and France – where her colleague traced them to a château and found they were living in it!

There was a surprise fourth IJ4EU Impact Award winner.

Winners of the IJ4EU Impact Award

The high point of #UNCOVERED was the prizegiving ceremony. This rewarded four cross border investigations that have resulted in criminal charges or political change or changed European society in some other way.

Jury chair Shaun Walker, the Guardian newspaper’s central and eastern Europe correspondent, praised the high quality of all ten shortlisted projects. On the Lost in Europe project, he commented that all the jury members were both impressed and saddened. The team tracked the movements of Vietnamese children who had disappeared from refugee reception centres across Europe and been trafficked into the illicit drugs business and prostitution. Accepting the award on the line from the Netherlands, Geejse van Haran commented: “We learned how vulnerable children are, how important our journalistic ethics are and how important cross-border working is, because the criminals don’t respect border”.

Jury member Theresa Ribeiro, High Representative for Freedom of the Media at the organisations for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), announced the prize for The Daphne Project which continued the investigations started by murdered reporter Daphne Caruana Galizia:

“The Maltese journalist who paid the highest price for her journalists work. In times of mistrust, this work is more important than ever”.

Accepting the award on behalf of himself and the 45 journalists on the team, Jules Giraudat paid tribute to Daphne’s family, saying “I have a special thought tonight for sons Matthew, Paul and Andrew. They are a true inspiration.”

For the fourth winner, the prize came as a surprise, since only three were originally planned. Mattias Carlsson of the organized Crime And Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) explained that their project The Fraud Factory exposed a Ukraine-based global scam that was defrauding pensioners of their savings by claiming to invest them in Bitcoin. Yet although they had a whistleblower – who is now in a witness protection programme – no-one has been charged and there have been no arrests.

As conference host Ali Aslan remarked, there’s a need for a follow-up. The prize money will go to continue all the investigations, since as Lutz Kinkel rightly observed “This is money to keep on working. As we all know, the investigations are costly”.

#UNCOVERED continues on Thursday 15 April 2021. Register here or free. Registrants get access to an exclusive film screening.

2021 #IJ4EU Impact Award winners announced

The Investigative Journalism for Europe (IJ4EU) fund announced on Wednesday four winners of its inaugural #IJ4EU Impact Award celebrating excellence in cross-border investigative reporting.

In no particular order, the winning investigations were:

Selected by an independent jury, the team behind each investigation receives €5,555.

Shaun Walker is The Guardian newspaper’s central and eastern Europe correspondent and chair of the inaugural #IJ4EU Impact Award jury.

“We were all in agreement that The Daphne Project was a deserving winner, coordinating many journalists to continue Daphne Caruana Galizia’s work and having a clear and important impact,” Shaun Walker, central and eastern Europe correspondent for The Guardian newspaper and jury chair, said.

“Lost in Europe shone an important light on the terrible story of missing migrant children. The Troika Laundromat was impressive for the sheer size of the team involved, matched by the size of the vast sums of money it was investigating. The Fraud Factory was a tenacious piece of work that put human faces to a sad story of cross-border fraud.”

Walker announced the winners during a ceremony on April 14 at #UNCOVERED, the annual conference of the IJ4EU fund.

The #IJ4EU Impact Award recognises the best investigative journalism carried out by teams collaborating across frontiers in EU member states and candidate countries.

Managed by the European Centre for Press and Media Freedom (ECPMF) in cooperation with IJ4EU partners the International Press Institute (IPI) and the European Journalism Centre (EJC), the prize was open to investigations published in 2019 and 2020.

Jury members praised the overall quality of nominations but singled out the four winners as exceptional examples of watchdog journalism on transnational subjects.

The Daphne Project was one of the #IJ4EU Impact Award winners.

Dozens of journalists

The Daphne Project picked up the unfinished work of Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, who was killed in October 2017 by a car bomb just metres from her home.

Led by Forbidden Stories, a group of 45 journalists representing 18 news organisations from 15 countries, the investigation changed the course of political life in Malta while raising awareness of the dangers facing journalists.

The Troika Laundromat was another winner of the #IJ4EU Impact Award.

The Troika Laundromat is an investigation into an $8.8 billion network of offshore companies used by Russian politicians and criminals to acquire shares in state-owned companies, buy real estate, purchase luxury yachts and more.

Led by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), it involves 1.3 million leaked banking transactions from 230,000 companies, with stories published in 19 media outlets in Europe and elsewhere.

Lost in Europe also picked up €5,555 in prize money.

Lost in Europe sought to discover what had become of thousands of migrant and refugee children who had gone missing in Europe, some falling into the hands of drug gangs and sex traffickers.

The team of investigative journalists from Belgium, Britain, France, Germany, Greece, Italy and the Netherlands succeeded in bringing widespread attention to a pressing issue that transcends borders.

Fraud Factory won an #IJ4EU Impact Award too.

Fraud Factory is another OCCRP-led investigation, this time exposing the work of a Kyiv-based scamming group that targeted elderly people in Europe to defraud them of their savings.

The project includes a 15-minute video containing secret footage shot by a whistleblower at great personal risk. The jury hailed the investigation as an impressive piece of old-fashioned, cross-border journalism.

‘Fantastic shortlist’

The jury chose the IJ4EU Impact Award winners from a shortlist of 10 nominations drawn up by independent evaluators assembled by ECPMF.

“It was a fantastic shortlist to choose from and it took some time to come to agreement because all of the entries were strong in different ways — some were wide-ranging cross-border cooperations involving dozens of journalists, while others were much more narrow in focus but nonetheless brilliant pieces of journalistic work,” Walker said.

“None of these stories could have been reported in only one country and all four winners showed, in different ways, the benefits of working across borders in our interconnected world.”

In addition to Walker, the jury members were Christian Jensen, executive editor-in-chief of Danish newspaper Politiken; Nassira el Moaddem, an award-winning French journalist, author and TV show host; Teresa Ribeiro, representative on freedom of the media for the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe; and Andrzej Rojek, a Polish-born US philanthropist and freedom-of-speech advocate.

The complete #IJ4EU Impact Award jury also consisted of Christian Jensen, Nassira el Moaddem, Teresa Ribeiro, and Andrzej Rojek.

Now in its second year, IJ4EU provides grants and other forms of support to teams of journalists or news outlets in Europe investigating topics of public interest across borders.

It is led by IPI, in partnership with EJC and ECPMF, and funded by the European Commission with co-funding from Open Society Foundations, Fritt Ord, Luminate and the City of Leipzig.

In 2020, the IJ4EU fund disbursed almost €1.1 million in grant funding to 49 investigative projects. That followed a successful pilot year in 2018 during which it gave €350,000 in grants to 12 projects.

To be eligible for the IJ4EU Impact Award, teams need not have received support from the fund, but two of the winners — the Daphne Project and Lost in Europe — were grantees during the first edition of the programme.

The #IJ4EU Impact Award is part of #UNCOVERED conference.

Documentaries associated with three of the winning projects were among videos screened on the first day of #UNCOVERED.

The conference brought together journalists, funders, policymakers and civil society members to explore the highs and lows of cross-border investigative journalism.

Free registration is open for day two of the conference on April 15. See the agenda here.

See #UNCOVERED events on Thursday 15th April

#IJ4EU Impact Award jury announced

The European Centre for Press and Media Freedom (ECPMF) is proud to announce the remaining members of the #IJ4EU Impact Award jury. 

The jury met on Monday March 22 to choose three winners from a shortlist of investigations nominated for Europe’s first award devoted to cross-border investigative journalism. Winners will be announced on April 14. 

The jury met on Monday March 22 to choose three 5,555 winners from a shortlist of investigations nominated for Europe’s first award devoted to cross-border journalism. Winners will be announced at the #IJ4EU Impact Award ceremony on Wednesday April 14, starting at 6pm CEST, as part of #UNCOVERED virtual conference.

Register for the #IJ4EU Impact Award ceremony

Shaun Walker, The Guardian’s central and eastern Europe correspondent

Shaun Walker is The Guardian’s central and eastern Europe correspondent, and chair of the #IJ4EU Impact Award. Previously, he spent more than a decade in Moscow and is the author of The Long Hangover: Putin’s New Russia and the Ghosts of the Past.

Teresa Ribeiro, OSCE’s Representative on the Freedom of the Media

Teresa Ribeiro is Representative on Freedom of the Media for the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). She was previously Secretary of State of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Portugal and President of the National Commission for Human Rights.

Christian Jensen, editor of Politiken

Christian Jensen is Executive Editor-in-Chief of Danish newspaper Politiken, a role he has had since 2016. Before that, he had an extensive career across Danish journalism.

Nassira el Moaddem, French Journalism Prize 2020 Nominee

Nassira el Moaddem is a French journalist whose book Les Filles de Romorantin was nominated for two of France’s most prominent journalism book prizes in 2020. Nassira is also the host of TV show Arrêt sur Images and has worked across French journalism.

Andrzej Rojek, philanthropist focusing on Freedom of Speech

Andrzej Rojek is a Polish-born US philanthropist with a focus on freedom of speech. He serves as Chair of the Board for the Jan Karski Educational Foundation and helps numerous charitable initiatives in education, scientific exchanges and freedom of speech.

Register for the #IJ4EU Impact Award ceremony