Month: August 2016
Workshop on high-risk reporting held in Mexican border city of Nogales
Workshop on high-risk reporting held in Mexican border city of Nogales
NOGALES, Mexico – This is a city of commerce, a bustling town leaning into the U.S.-Mexico border where billions of dollars of tomatoes and squash and peppers are shipped into the United States every year along with shiny Ford Fusions, computer electronics and parts for the aerospace industry.
Underneath this sunbaked city, another kind of product is crossing into the United States. Through a spider web of tunnels bored into a vast drainage system that connects Nogales, Mexico, to Nogales, Arizona, billions of dollars of marijuana and other drugs are being shipped to the U.S. market.
InquireFirst Executive Director Lynne Walker traveled to Nogales, Mexico, to meet with journalists to discuss new techniques for investigative and high-risk reporting. During the March 15-16 workshop organized by the U.S. Consulate in Nogales and the U.S. Consulate in Tijuana, Walker spoke about tools and methods for finding and interviewing sources as well as organizing and writing investigative reports.
Walker also focused on cyber security, noting that investigative journalists are at risk because they actively use digital tools to contact sources and share information. She told Nogales journalists that they are particularly vulnerable to cyber threats when covering corruption, organized crime, human rights issues and abuses by authorities.
In addition to taking widely recommended measures such as using strong passwords and anti-virus software, Walker also suggested using secure email with encryption and tools that help users remain anonymous on the Internet.
The intensive workshop was designed to encourage a frank exchange with investigative journalists about the challenges they face as they probe sensitive subjects and present them to their audiences.
“The information you provided was invaluable,” said Lorenzo De la Fuente, director general of El Diario de Sonora.
In a separate session, Walker discussed safety protocols with investigative journalists. She told the Nogales journalists that the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists has identified Mexico as one of the most dangerous countries outside a war zone for journalists.
As journalists report on dangerous subjects such as human trafficking and drug smuggling, Walker admonished them to follow protocols to ensure their safety. “No story is worth your life,” she said.
Walker also met with journalism students at the Nogales campus of the University of Sonora to discuss a code of ethics for reporting via social media.
Journalist security is the focus of symposium in Culiacán, México
CULIACAN, México — Journalists are under siege in the northern Mexico state of Sinaloa, where notorious drug trafficker Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera was captured in January after a fierce gun battle with soldiers.
Grenades have been hurled at El Debate, Culiacán’s largest-circulation newspaper. Gunmen have opened fire with AK-47s on the reception desk of Mazatlán office of the daily newspaper Noroeste. Journalists have been questioned at gunpoint. Some have disappeared. Others have been found dead.
In Sinaloa, a state described by a former governor as the “birthplace of drug trafficking in México,” InquireFirst Executive Director Lynne Walker led a two-day symposium on investigative journalism and journalist safety.
Walker conducted the Spanish-language symposium Feb. 23-24 at the invitation of the U.S. Consulate in Hermosillo and the U.S. Consulate in Tijuana. It was the first investigative journalism workshop held in Culiacán for reporters and editors working in Sinaloa’s major cities. Read more…
Executive Director Lynne Walker leads journalism symposium in Guatemala
GUATEMALA CITY — InquireFirst Executive Director Lynne Walker instructed a week-long series of journalism training symposiums in Guatemala in February — the first under our organization’s international journalism symposium program.
Reporters, editors, media owners and university students in Quetzaltenango, Huehuetenango and Guatemala City attended the symposiums, which focused on new techniques for investigative journalism. The symposiums, held Feb. 7-13, were organized by the Public Affairs Section of the U.S. Embassy in Guatemala.
Almost 700 journalists, university students and professors attended the investigative journalism sessions, which were instructed by Walker in Spanish. Among the subjects discussed were developing an investigative news story, interviewing sources and organizing and writing investigative stories.
Iris Pérez, a journalist with LaRed.com who attended Walker’s symposium at Universidad Mariano Gálvez in Guatemala City, said, “After your presentation, my perspective about journalism has changed.” Read more…
John Oliver on how journalism works (or doesn’t)
The comic delivered a bracing diatribe on what’s wrong with American journalism. A lot, it turns out.
Facts Plus Heart
Usually we think of investigative journalism as reporting that exposes wrongdoing, maybe even puts someone in jail. But deep reporting—combined with deep thinking—sometimes leads to stories outside that box. A recent New York Times story about a Syrian refugee who is traveling throughout Germany, trying to put a human face on his fellow refugees by playing a donated piano, falls into that category. Yes, this is the tale of one man. But by also investigating the wide-ranging ramifications of Aeham Ahmad’s story, the Times’ Beirut bureau chief, Anne Barnard, illuminates the world’s growing refugee crisis, one most of us might prefer to ignore. – Susan White, Executive Editor, InquireFirst
John Oliver, Investigative Comic
Want to know what’s gone wrong with American journalism? John Oliver explains it all for you in his “Last Week Tonight” show on HBO. —Robert P. Laurence, InquireFirst.