Investigative Journalism Workshop

On 14 March, 36 investigative journalists from 20 organizations from all over Europe met at the EBU's Brussels office to discuss better cooperation within the newly established EBU Investigative Network.

The participants pitched their stories that could benefit from working together with one or more EBU members with many strong possibilities amongst them.

Examples of concrete stories that emerged include cross-border investigations into value added tax fraud, work by Swedish Radio and ZDF in Germany that uncovered a clear link in social media between the Stockholm truck attacker and an international Jihadi financier wanted by Interpol and an investigation by DR and SR into the targeting of Turkish dissidents in Scandinavian countries.

The next phase will be to build on this successful networking effort and decide how to best coordinate this expanding cooperation. The EIPN steering committee which met the following day on 15 March discussed the outcome and recommended that another workshop should take place ideally in 6 months' time considering the substantial interest in further cooperation.

Why cooperate in investigative journalism?

We live in a world, where democracy is under attack in many places, where climate change is challenging our civilization, and where terrorism and international crime are growing threats. Therefore, there is a great need for investigative reporters from Europe’s public media companies to join forces to expose the wrongdoings of those in power or others threatening our existence and our lifestyle.

The envisaged model of cooperation in investigative journalism will give your team access to skills and topics that are hard to find as a single unit. It will provide a network of resources that has already proven very helpful in reporting difficult transnational stories and will help give your publication a wider international audience.

Investigative journalism is a core task for all public service media. And in a time when our companies often get questioned, joining forces in this field can provide better value for audiences.

Background

In 2017 a project group for investigative journalism was formed by the EBU. The project group, includes members from United Kingdom (BBC) Belgium (VRT and RTBF), Germany (ZDF), Netherlands (NPO), Sweden (SR), Denmark (DR), Norway (NRK) and Finland (YLE).

The project group is exploring different ways of cooperation in investigative reporting and the enhanced contacts between IJ-reporters have proven important on several high profile stories. Project manager is Daniel Ohman from the Swedish Radio, and he will give a brief overview of the activities and experiences so far.

The other part of this initiative is a wider Network where all EBU members are encouraged to provide contact details for serious investigators. The contact list already contain around thirty companies.

The goal of the workshop is to include more countries and organizations in the cooperation of investigative journalism. For more about the network click here.

Venue

EBU Brussels. 56, Avenue des Arts, B-1000 Brussels