Salvador Rizzo joins InquireFirst Board of Directors

InquireFirst is pleased to announce that Salvador Rizzo, crime and justice reporter for The Washington Post, has joined our Board of Directors.

Salvador reports on complex racketeering trials, financial fraud and espionage, international terrorism cases and major crimes in the Washington metro area. He previously was a reporter and deputy editor for The Washington Post Fact Checker from 2018 to 2021 and is co-author of “Donald Trump and His Assault on Truth” (Scribner, 2020).

His journalism career began at The Post, as a summer intern on the copy desk in 2008. In New Jersey from 2011 to 2017, Sal covered Chris Christie’s governorship and presidential campaign for the state’s major news organizations: the Star-Ledger and then the Bergen Record. He went on to be editor of New Jersey’s top politics blog for a year before rejoining The Post in 2018.

Salvador was a member of The Fact Checker team that documented Trump’s false and misleading statements while he was president, 30,573 of which were collected in a Washington Post database. With Glenn Kessler and Meg Kelly, he received an honorable mention for this work from the organizers of the Robin Toner Prize for Excellence in Political Reporting in 2019.

Since 2019, Salvador has been a regular contributor to InquireFirst’s programs, speaking to journalists about fact-checking and other issues in journalism.

He grew up on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border and is a native Spanish speaker with a degree in English from Emory University. He lives in Alexandria, Va., a couple of blocks away from the federal courthouse.

Meet the other members of the InquireFirst Board of Directors

Photos by Lalo de Almeida/Folhapress

National Geographic Brazil publishes Historias Sin Fronteras environmental investigation

National Geographic Brazil has published our cross-border environmental investigation on Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro’s plans to build an international highway that will cut through the most biodiverse region in the Amazon and divide the territories of 10 indigenous communities in Peru and become a bridge for illegal activities of loggers and drug traffickers.

The investigation was conducted by Fabiano Maisonnave, Amazon correspondent for Brazil’s Folha de S. Paulo, and by Alexa Vélez, editor of Mongabay Latam, and Mongabay reporter Vanessa Romo in Peru as part of our Historias Sin Fronteras initiative.  With the support of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s (HHMI) Department of Science Education, InquireFirst launched the Historias Sin Fronteras cross-border science journalism grants program in Latin America last year.

To tell the visual story, photojournalist Lalo de Almeida traveled with Maisonnave to the Amazon to capture the breathtaking beauty of the untouched region and record the lives of indigenous people who live on the banks of the Moa River.  In 2021, de Almeida was named Ibero-American photographer of the year by Picture of the Year (POY) LatAm.

In Peru, photojournalist Sebastián Castañeda took readers to four indigenous communities in the Amazon that are terrorized by drug traffickers who have taken control of the territory.

Maisonnave and de Almeida sailed for more than 16 hours along the Moa River to reach Brazil’s Serra do Divisor National Park and meet with indigenous communities living in and around the park.

On the Peruvian side, Romo and Castañeda traveled along the Abujao River to visit four indigenous communities that live in fear of drug traffickers.

The journalists reported that the highway project is being proposed under the pretext of economic development.

But the project inevitably evokes the ghost of the Interoceanic Highway, a costly road built by the Brazilian company Odebrecht, which was supposed to stimulate commerce between Brazil and Peru and which ended up being investigated for mismanagement and which resulted in the loss of almost 500,000 acres of forests.

Why build a highway in the middle of the Amazon if everything indicates it will result in deforestation, drug trafficking, loss of biodiversity and illegal mining?

Despite all the questions, the project continues. On May 6, two weeks after Historias Sin Fronteras published the cross-border project, the Bolsonaro government renewed its promise to build the international highway.

During the inauguration of a bridge over the Madeira River, where Bolsonaro was greeted by a few thousand supporters, Minister of Infrastructure Tarcísio Gomes de Freitas told the crowd that the Brazil-Peru highway project is one of the government’s infrastructure priorities.

But money, for the time being, does not exist. Senator Márcio Bittar included $8 million in this year’s federal budget for “studies and projects” to expand the highway, but Bolsonaro vetoed the expense amid cuts to balance the budget during the pandemic.

We’ll continue to monitor the situation and provide you with updates.

Our thanks to National Geographic Brasil for publishing our Amazon project and to HHMI’s Department of Science Education for supporting our cross-border journalism on the health and environmental challenges facing Latin America.

Historias Sin Fronteras project is shortlisted for award for Outstanding Investigative Reporting

We are thrilled to announce that “Transgender in Latin America,” a cross-border science journalism project reported and written by Latin American science writers Valeria Román, Debbie Ponchner, Margaret López and Carmina de la Luz Ramírez has been shortlisted by the Fetisov Journalism Awards for Outstanding Investigative Reporting.

“Transgender in Latin America” was our first cross-border science journalism project under our Historias Sin Fronteras initiative, which we launched in July 2019 to provide grants to Latin American journalists for cross-border science, health and environmental projects.

H/T to Mexico-based science journalist and editor Ivan Carrillo, who edited the project and who is the co-founder of Historias Sin Fronteras.

Read the project on our website historiassinfronteras.com and join us in congratulating the team.

A special thanks to the Department of Science Education at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute which supports Historias Sin Fronteras and believes in the power of science journalism when we work together across international borders.

The winners will be announced in February (fjawards.com/finalists) so stay tuned!

Tune in to our new radio program on science, health & the environment reported by indigenous journalists for Mexico’s indigenous communities

We’re thrilled to announce the launch of En Común: conocimiento en voz viva, our new radio program on science, health and environment for Mexico’s indigenous communities. During our first season of En Común, we have partnered with indigenous journalists throughout Mexico who are reporting 9 of the 15 episodes.  You can hear all the episodes on our website: encomun.mx.

This is a first for Mexico – a radio program focused on science and reported primarily by indigenous journalists for indigenous communities and rural audiences.

Mexico’s indigenous people form a multicultural mosaic of diverse ethnic identities, ancestral knowledge and cultural values. But their communities and their unique stories have been overlooked by traditional media organizations and particularly by science, health and environment writers.
As a result, Mexico’s indigenous people – an estimated 15.7 million in 68 communities across the country – do not have access to carefully curated and reported information that could help them combat inequality, disease, pollution and ecological damage caused by the misuse of natural resources. Nor do they have the opportunity to share their generations-old knowledge on issues such as wildlife protection, the impact of illegal logging and the role of medicinal plants in disease prevention.

Iván Carrillo, a prominent Mexico-based science writer and editor, is the executive producer of the project.  He is joined by an experienced production team based in Mexico.

During our first season of En Común, we’ve taken on fascinating and little-reported science, health and environmental subjects.  For example:

InquireFirst has forged an alliance the World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters (AMARC) and its Mexico affiliate, Red de Radios Comunitarias de México to broadcast our program across Mexico.

In addition, the Instituto Mexicano de la Radio (IMER) will be broadcasting the program on its affiliates in Sonora, Coahuila, Michoacán, Oaxaca, Chiapas, Yucatán and Mexico City. 

Tune in to our first season of En Común: conocimiento en voz viva at encomun.mx!