Summer Conference Events

Romanian investigative journalist Emilia Șercan has won a niche reputation for uncovering plagiarism in the putative PhD theses of her country’s leading politicians. At the CIJ she talks about how she found the truth, and how to deal with the backlash; in her case, an organised, state-level campaign of intimidation and harassment.

Before the start of the war, Ukraine had a thriving investigative journalism scene, both on the national and local level. How did the war change it? What do Ukrainian journalists investigate now, especially when many were forced out of the country by the war?

A conversation between Gabriela Löffel and Aisling Rusk. We have invited Gabriela Löffel, a Swiss artist whose multi-channel video installation "Inside" explores the concept of art freeports. She will show excerpts of her work and discuss her approach and strategies to exploring investigative themes through art.

Poverty and inequality sit at the heart of a huge range of issues in both the US and UK and yet so much of journalism features at best a superficial view, at worst exploitation and condemnation of people experiencing poverty.

In 2017, Wa Lone, a journalist in Myanmar for Reuters, was arrested with his colleague Kyaw Soe Oo while reporting on military abuses of the Rohingya people in Rakhine State. Their ordeal included eighteen months in prison; for their investigation, they were awarded the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting in 2019.

What’s it like trying to do in-depth reportage on a government deeply intolerant of criticism? British author Michela Wrong, who has published a controversial new book on Rwanda, and Tanzanian journalist Erick Kabendera, jailed under the presidency of John Magufuli, discuss the challenges of working in sub-Saharan Africa with fellow writer Rosalind Russell.

Sources play a vital role in alerting journalists to wrong-doing, but how should investigative journalists go about cultivating them? And how should you work with them once you’ve got your story? How can journalists protect their sources?

In April 2019, using open-source intelligence and secret government documents, a team of journalists at the new French investigative outlet Disclose published a scoop on French arms sales to Yemen – as a result of which they faced harassment by French military intelligence and now a possible jail sentence.

Robert Hunter is a solicitor advocate, who made interviewing techniques his lifelong interest. Having done many a cross-examination himself, he also analysed political interviewing and even attended the US police interrogation course.

How has crime reporting changed, and what are the new challenges of the beat? In a rare and wide-ranging conversation Fiona Hamilton, Crime and Security Editor of The Times, talks to Duncan Campbell, veteran crime reporter at the Guardian, and author of the new book Underworld: The Inside Story of Britain’s Professional and Organised Crime.