Regional Arab investigative forum kicks off in December
The seventh annual forum for Arab investigative journalists opens in Jordan from 5-7 December, bringing over 30 panels and trainings on safety of journalists, and coverage of topics including pollution, closed political groups, off-shore fraud and human rights abuses.
More than 250 Arab Journalists, editors and media academics will attend the three-day conference held under the theme, “Arab Media: The Battle for Independence”, amid a growing crackdown on free speech in the region.
The annual event is organised by the IMS-supported Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism (ARIJ), the region’s leading investigative journalism organisation.
“Unfortunately, independent media in our region is minimal and lacks financial and professional resources,” says ARIJ Chairman Daoud Kuttab. “The push for democratic, transparent and pluralistic societies in our region will not succeed without nurturing the role of independent media to confront established media institutions owned or supported by governments, royal families and a coterie of businessmen.”
American journalist Seymour Hersh, who has investigated atrocities like the massacre of unarmed villagers in the Vietnamese city of My Lai in 1968, and torture and abuse at the Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq in 2004 is one of three keynote speakers.
“What ARIJ is doing is very important in the Middle East. This is one of the many reasons why I make it a point to speak at events like it to talk about investigative journalism and how to do it after years of deconstructing what politicians and newspapers say about current events,” says the Pulitzer Prize winning Seymour Hersh.
Speakers at the two other plenary sessions are Marwan Muasher, a leading Jordanian pro-reform diplomat, politician and author, and British award-winning journalist Tim Sebastian, long-time moderator of BBC’s HARDtalk programme.
ARIJ-trained journalists who have produced over 300 hard-hitting print, radio and TV investigations across the region will share working methodologies and discuss political, legal, professional, societal and religious challenges impeding the spread of investigative journalism in the Arab media.
During the three-day conference they will exchange tools of the trade with award-winning journalists like Craig Silverman, editor of a new handbook on verification of user-generated content; Eliot Higgins, the founder of online citizen journalism tool Bellingcat; Abigail Fielding-Smith, senior reporter with the London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism; as well as Jonathan Calvert and Heidi Blake of the Sunday Times who exposed Qatar’s secret plot to win the right to host the 2022 world football cup.
Other sessions will focus on tracking information, crowdsourcing, multimedia storytelling, interview techniques, and tips for producing compelling investigations for both radio and print.
On the sidelines of the conference, ARIJ is holding four specialised three-day training workshops on computer assisted reporting (CAR) tools; the safety of journalists and the security of newsrooms in hostile environments; advanced skills for ARIJ coaches; and how to follow the money trail in cross-border corruption cases.
ARIJ has trained over 1,200 journalists and nearly 100 media professors in Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Iraq, Palestine, Yemen, Bahrain and Tunisia. It has also supported the creation of several investigative units at established media houses in Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine and Tunisia. Several Arab media faculties are using its manual in Arabic for teaching a three-credit hour investigative journalism course to undergraduate students.
ARIJ is supported by International Media Support, the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida), the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Open Society Foundations (OSF).
