The International Journalism Festival weekly round-up. Stay up to date by subscribing to our newsletter, by following our Telegram channel, or by joining us on Facebook and Twitter.
Golden Pen of Freedom awarded to Gazeta Wyborcza and the Gazeta Wyborcza Foundation. The award recognises “a news organisation that stands as a beacon of independence and as a bulwark against authoritarianism; a paper of record that demonstrates its values daily, across its pages, through support to young journalists, in the promotion of local news, and through work across borders in solidarity with colleagues in need.”
How we unearthed Uber’s controversial playbook from a cache of employee communications. ICIJ’s data team explains what it took to extract bombshell findings from a leak of personal emails, text messages, calendar items and more from the rising tech giant.
Doppelganger: media clones serving Russian propaganda. EU DisinfoLab has exposed a Russia-based influence operation network that has been operating in Europe since at least May 2022 and is still ongoing. Doppelganger, the name given to this campaign, uses multiple “clones” of authentic media (at least 17 media providers, including, Bild, 20minutes, Ansa, The Guardian or RBC Ukraine) and targets users with fake articles, videos and polls. To do so, the malicious actors behind it bought dozens of Internet domain names similar to the ones of authentic media and copied their designs.
Lina Attalah on Mada Masr’s future: “I can’t make any big statements about how Mada takes over my life. I’m not a victim. I like it. I would like the time spent on creativity, knowledge-making, editing, and writing to supersede the time spent on legal battles. But I guess we’re shaped and formed by this crisis, as well. In the end, I still happen to be very lucky to be able to do this job when many others are lingering in prison right now.”
Daniela Pinheiro, Brazilian journalist: “Bolsonaro wins in Lisbon. There is a Brazilian immigrant profile that identifies with him.” Pinheiro worked for the largest Brazilian newspapers until she was persecuted by the Bolsonaro clan and received threats on social media. She has resumed her career in Lisbon without losing track of the powerful, now on both sides of the Atlantic.
Celebrating the success of 47 European news innovators. The 47 recipients from 21 countries of the first Google News Initiative Innovation Challenge for Europe have been announced. Innovation Challenges, which have previously been run by GNI in other regions of the world, provide funding to help news organizations develop new paths to business sustainability.
Court acquits Kyrgyz journalist on most charges and calls investigation prejudiced. About 150 journalists and activists held a peaceful protest in support of Temirov in front of the courthouse. After the verdict was announced, they greeted him with cheers.
Uncovering a plagiarism scandal among the Romanian elite. “They can put their money into accounts in Switzerland and other countries, they can put their properties in the name of another person or their family, but they can’t hide their doctoral dissertations which are in the library and are public,” says Romanian investigative journalist Emilia Șercan. She has spent the last seven years writing about alleged plagiarism in the doctorates of Romania’s top brass.
Seven lessons on running a successful journalism membership program. Daily Maverick’s publisher and CEO on how membership can be a viable model for public interest journalism, even in a challenging environment like South Africa.
Newsnow-funded project to examine how to improve UK local news without simply ‘parachuting in money or solutions.’ A news aggregator and journalism charity are teaming up in an attempt to examine the differing ways in which local news gaps need to be tackled across the UK.
Poland has a problem with a media pluralism. Media pluralism is an important component of a thriving democracy – but recent years saw media concentration becoming a growing problem throughout Europe. The situation is particularly visible in Poland; the country is ranked third in terms of risks to media pluralism in the Media Pluralism Monitor 2022 General Ranking.
Russia: over two dozen journalists detained while reporting on anti-mobilization protests. Relentless crackdown on independent reporting shows no sign of abating.
Hundreds of jobs to go as BBC announces World Service cutbacks. Corporation to end production of radio output in 10 languages, including Chinese, Hindi and Arabic, as it blames licence fee freeze.
Shifting power to support communities to tell their own stories. We believe journalism – that’s reimagined and reclaimed – can be a source of community power and that’s what we sought to explore with our People’s Newsroom pilot in Wales over the course of a year.
Image credit: Gazeta Wyborcza’s Joanna Krawczyk and Piotr Stasiński accepting the 2022 Golden Pen of Freedom, via video screenshot