"The Mapping Digital Media research confirms that digital television and the internet have had a radical impact on media businesses, journalists, and citizens at large. As might be expected, platforms distributing journalism have proliferated, media companies are revamping their operations, and citi
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zens have access to a cornucopia of news and information sources. Other findings were less foreseeable: digitization has brought no pressure to reform state broadcasters, less than one-third of countries found that digital media have helped to expand the social impact of investigative journalism, and digitization has not significantly affected total news diversity. The Global Findings reveal other common themes across the world: Governments and politicians have too much influence over who owns, operates, and regulates the media. Many media markets are rife with monopolistic, corrupt, or untransparent practices. It’s not clear where many governments and other bodies get their evidence for changes or updates to laws and policies on media and communication. Media and journalism online offer hope of new, independent sources of information, but are also a new battleground for censorship and surveillance. Data about the media worldwide are still uneven, unstandardized, and unreliable, and are often proprietary rather than freely accessible." (Website Open Society Foundations)
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"This toolkit is designed for journalists working in any media – newspapers, radio, and television – as well as bloggers and other information professionals who need to get access to information held by public bodies for their stories. The toolkit is for journalists making requests in their own
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country or considering submitting a request in another country. It is based on a comparative analysis of the access to information laws in the region covered by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which has 56 participating states in Europe, Central Asia and North America; of these 48 have legal provisions on the right of access to information held by public bodies; the law of Kosovo is also analysed." (Overview, page 7)
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"Investigative Reporter des afrikanischen Netzwerks FAIR decken in transnationalen Teams skandalöse Missstände auf. Trotz ihrer Erfolge gibt es kaum Grund zur Euphorie – auch wegen der Europäer." (Seite 10)
"Digitization has had profound effects in Brazil. In journalism, information flows faster than ever, and from a greater number of sources; journalists have to adapt to an environment that demands immediate coverage of events, sometimes privileging speed over content. The internet has become the seco
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nd main source of news, and the number of people reading newspapers online has nearly tripled over four years. Brazilians are heavy users of social media and user-generated content platforms, with Facebook and YouTube being the second and fourth most accessed URLs in September 2013. Access to mobile telecommunications is widespread, and there are more SIM cards circulating in Brazil than there are Brazilians. However, serious gaps in internet regulation topics such as net neutrality, ISP liability, privacy, and user rights still have not been addressed by legislation. In an attempt to fill these gaps, the Civil Rights Framework for the Internet (Marco Civil da Internet), a draft bill produced through a process of public online debate carried out by the Ministry of Justice, was sent to the National Congress in 2011. The text faced strong opposition from some quarters, and the bill has not yet been introduced in Congress." (Publisher description)
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"In summary, the findings show that more than half of the analysed newspapers do in fact seek to expose potential wrong doings of government and business and as such are important actors in promoting local accountability. Yet, the findings also show that a lot of the reporting is not as extensive, a
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ccurate and thorough as it could be. Some of the reasons for this are given below alongside recommendations as to how independent publishers could in future be supported to fulfil their mandate better." (Introduction)
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"The first component of this report focuses on the improvement of the performance of public sector broadcasters. Based on evidence that the team gathered during field research, and the preparatory survey of the existing body of knowledge, 23 main problems were identified in this component [...] The
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second component deals with media self-regulation. Although the push to strengthen selfregulation is high on the agenda of the media communities in the region, such institutions have either not been established or the existing ones need to be overhauled and strengthened [...] Component three concentrates on judicial practices in freedom of expression cases and capacity building of the judiciary in this regard [...] Component four assesses the options for the introduction of an EU award for investigative journalism in the Southeast Europe IPA region." (Executive summary, page 9)
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"This guide follows a regional conference hosted by FAIR during September 2012 in Nairobi (Kenya) where more than 40 journalists, editors and media representatives discussed issues around ‘War on Terror in East Africa: security, elections and transparency. The programme also combined regional case
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study presentations with technical skills training. Ron Nixon (New York Times and founder of the Ujima project) provided insight on ‘how to follow government spending through public information’. His session demonstrated there is a lot of data about African state spending freely available on the internet, such as US department databases, service contracts, legal documents and US aid agency websites. Although termed ‘classified’ by some Ministries, data on government programmes can be obtained via the US Freedom of Information Act, for example. The selection of websites and documents presented by Ron Nixon at the Nairobi workshop, and also contained in this guide, is meant to enable investigative journalists to dig deeper using various tools and sources without getting into trouble. The ultimate objective is to show how data from external sources can be used by African journalists to expose forms of secret lobbying and foreign aid that do not help development." (Foreword)
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"El presente manual es una guía de métodos y técnicas básicas para el periodismo de investigación que busca expresamente llenar un vacío existente en la literatura de la profesión. La mayoría de los manuales dedicados al tema tratan extensamente al problema de dónde encontrar la informació
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n y asumen que, una vez que el periodista encuentra la información buscada será capaz de redactar una historia viable. Los autores, sin embargo, no compartimos este supuesto. No consideramos que el problema central sea el hallazgo de la información sino la tarea fundamental de contar una historia. Esto lleva a la principal innovación metodológica presentada por este manual: utilizamos las historias como el cemento que une cada paso del proceso de investigación, desde su concepción hasta la indagación, redacción, control de calidad y publicación. También nos referimos a este enfoque como “investigación basada en hipótesis”, porque comenzamos por formular la historia que esperamos redactar como una hipótesis que será verificada o refutada. Se trata del primer paso de un proceso integrado: Al analizar una histora hipotética el periodista puede detectar con mayor facilidad qué información necesita buscar. Al editor se le facilita la tarea de evaluar la factibilidad, costos, recompensas y avances del proyecto de investigación. A medida que avanza la investigación el periodisata o el equipo de investigación pueden ir organizando el material para su redacción, y componiendo segmentos específicos de la historia final. Esto, a su vez, facilita el control de calidad y permite considerar en qué medida la historia cumple con criterios legales y éticos. Al final del proceso se obtendrá una historia que puede resumirse en unas pocas frases contundentes, una historia que puede ser promocionada, defendida y recordada." (Introducción)
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"Global and regional networks of investigative journalists, backed by donors and fueled by globalization and an explosion in data and communications technology, are growing increasingly effective and sophisticated. Journalists are linking up as never before to collaborate on stories involving intern
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ational crime, unaccountable businesses, environmental degradation, safety and health problems, and other hard-to-report issues. Strategic investments into investigative journalism programs can have significant positive impact in a wide range of countries, including those in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. Such funding will be most effective if it is long term and integrated into broader initiatives that include legal reform and freedom of information. Despite its frontline role in fostering accountability, battling corruption, and raising media standards, investigative reporting receives relatively little support - about 2 percent of global media development funding by major donors. Nonprofit investigative reporting organizations, now numbering 106 in 47 countries, have been pivotal drivers of the global spread of investigative journalism. These include reporting centers, training institutes, professional associations, grant-making groups, and online networks." (Executive summary)
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"Nearly 200 investigative journalists converged from all corners of the US-Mexico border at the salmon-colored Hotel Lucerna in Ciudad Juárez to discuss their targets: corrupt politicians, contaminators, criminals, rogues and wrong-doers of all stripes. The gathering came in late 1997-a high point
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in the halcyon days of border journalism. After seven decades, the ruling PRI party had loosened its iron grip on the Mexican media, and muckraking border reporters had won backing from powerful media moguls in both the United States and Mexico. Some of us quaffing Coronas around tables covered with white linen in the reception room that night believed we might finally be about to break some of the biggest untold stories of binational crime and corruption without facing much-if any-threat of retaliation." (Abstract)
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"This article presents a comparative study of investigative journalism in nine countries in the Central and Eastern European region (Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, and Slovakia). The purpose is descriptive and analytical. Descriptively, the articl
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e charts the presence and provision of investigative journalism across the region and inventories and assesses the various funding forms that exist against the background of the recent (2008–2009) financial crisis. Analytically, the article focuses on assessing the relative autonomy (defined as autonomy from external actors) and effects (defined as the removal from office and sentencing of political actors revealed to be engaged in legal and moral transgressions, commonly various forms of corruption). The article finds investigative journalism across the region in general to be weak in terms of autonomy and effects, but stronger in countries that have had more stable and richer media markets (notably Estonia, Poland, and the Czech Republic). The article further finds that in some countries (notably Romania and Bulgaria), alternative news online sources play an increasingly important role as providers of investigative journalism." (Abstract)
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"A compilation of 13 articles that discuss social media developments and trends in Asia. For this publication we invited eleven alumni from the Konrad Adenauer Asian Center for Journalism (ACFJ) at the Ateneo de Manila University in the Philippines to share their views on social media issues based o
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n their inside knowledge and hands-on experience. The authors from six different countries provide insight into various new media trends and present diversified approaches, ranging from Cambodia, with comparably low Internet penetration, to Indonesia, which is considered the second biggest Facebook “nation” in the world. Topics include: Integration of social media in traditional newsrooms; Issues and challenges of social media; Social media and newsprint advertising; Social media and television networks; Ways to maximise and monetise social media; Investigative journalism and social media; Censorship and social media." (Back cover)
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"Developments in digital media in South Africa are densely intertwined with political factors. The Government has sought to be the driver of digitization, but it has also caused repeated delays in digital roll-out. In addition, the Government has had contradictory interests such as promoting competi
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tion while also favoring large enterprises in which it has controlling or monopoly shares. In addition, political in-fighting has seen a succession of leaders at the Department of Communications (DoC), the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC)—the biggest (and state-owned) broadcast organization—and the Universal Service and Access Agency of South Africa (USAASA), established to promote the goals of universal access and universal service [...] The challenges are very great in terms of bringing access to digital benefi ts across a large landmass, in which more than a third of people live in rural areas, even more are too poor to be an attractive market for advertisers, and where diverse people use more than 12 mother tongues. In the absence of success by the State in promoting digitization, the media system remains mainly mainstream and analog, apart from the rapidly growing business of digital satellite pay-television. Radio has the greatest reach in society and, within this sector, community radio is making strides. Pluralism of ownership and an increase in broadcasting stations has occurred, but by using analog rather than digital means. Print is shrinking in terms of sales, although its share of advertising has been holding up." (Abstract)
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