(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
Grave Journalism is a hot topic for the time being. The SKUP Conference on Investigative Journalism, with 600 media people in Tønsberg as participants, was organized the same week as the Panama Papers was released in the media. The University of Oslo also held a two-day seminar on the topic. And those who have seen the movie Spotlight, who is currently going to the cinema, knows what this is all about.
The Panama Papers were not dug up by journalists – it was a whistleblower who found them and leaked them to the press. An unknown "whistleblower" who hacked in and copied millions of files directly from the company Mossack Fonseca's hard drive. The recipient, the German Süddeutche Zeitung, received many other newspapers through the network of The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) – including the Guardian and Aftenposten – and in the coming months more will be dug.
But the question is what has actually been found. How illegal has it been for DNB to help clients hide their wealth from the tax authorities for ten years? The wealth tax is variable – but never very high. The companies in question are also recently closed down, due to stricter transparency rules. In the unholy and unfortunate alliance between state and capital, there are actually laws that allow for the kind of creative tax planning we've seen examples of in recent weeks.
Has Aftenposten, through its secret work with the Panama Papers since last summer – carried out by first three journalists, then 10, and finally 30 employees – really discovered serious crime?
Well, heads of state and politicians have a moral shared responsibility; therefore, it was right for the Prime Minister of Iceland to take his hat and go – even though it was probably his wife's family legacy.
But the "follow the money" method can bring worse circumstances behind the huge sums of money: illicit drug sales, arms sales to extremists, black profits from other people's extreme distress, or handouts from such as order killings or sex slave trafficking, to name a few.
At SKUP, Aftenposten told how they work, and Miranda Patrucic from the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) explained the international cooperation. It's been a long time since the 70's Watergate scandal. In today's network society, the Panama Papers are an example cross-over- Collaboration: Well coordinated, secret and directed, different media work together before issues are released everywhere, at the same time. The nearly 400 journalists who are now digging out, comparing records, checking information and going door-to-door to interview those affected may be able to find something far more serious than money stripped away.
When Ny Tid confronted Aftenposten that it could turn out that the individual was a major criminal, so how could they then hide them from publication, the answer was that they were looking for an overall picture.
But this remains to be seen, one will be able to see more than great graphic presentations of the large number of "gigabytes" that lie on Aftenposten's encrypted hard drive. Another thing is that Aftenposten has chosen to enter into agreements on anonymity with some of DNB's affected customers, because as they said on SKUP: "It makes them speak more freely." When Ny Tid confronted them that it could turn out that the individual was a major criminal, so how could they then hide them from publication, then the answer was that they were looking for an overall picture, but that they could possibly consider breaking a such promise later.
Disclosures are no longer just media. Interestingly, Greenpeace UK could tell that they have recently hired three burial journalists to uncover environmental crime. As Jim Footner admitted in Tønsberg, giving up or demonstrating with posters does not give the same political effect as before. With a network of 30 offices around the world, they have so far published just as many investigative articles on environmental crime. For example, they revealed several academics who can be bribed to trivialize the climate crisis. Another case is about builders who do not take into account impending flood hazards.
And what about the entertainment industry? Powerful Buzzfeed (which has published entertaining cat and dog videos to millions online) may have wanted to appear more serious and has therefore hired a group of "track dogs". Almost as an evangelist, editor Heidi Blake gave his speech about Buzzfeed in the Oseberg Hall in Tønsberg, prompting a TV chief among the audience to mention that there was actually a rumor that Buzzfeed was underpaid for his employees.
Finally, let me cite an exemplary example of digging journalism from the film Spotlight: The Boston Globe newspaper revealed after two years of meticulous journalistic digging a worldwide abuse of children and youth within the Catholic Church – boys sexually exploited by the elder priests. The victims were left with injuries to their soul, rather than having it refined by the church. The powerful church leaders tried to hide the actions of their criminals, but the journalists did not. Unfortunately, there was not just one rotten egg in the basket; as many as five percent (!) of the priests turned out to be abusers.
What does Ny Tid do at the SKUP conference? Yes, we also want to drill below the surface, as we dug up the case of the killed, deported asylum seekers in Chechnya. (For this, by the way, our SKUP-nominated excavation journalist Øystein Windstad suffered when he left for the country shortly afterwards.) Now we have four journalists who will dig up MØKK within our four main areas: Migration, Ecology, Control and Conflict. For this, however, we need to create a larger digging fund for the newspaper.
Feel free to contribute 🙂
