Many journalists get lost trying to find information and data quickly in the institutional labyrinth that is the European Union. Finding specific amendments, understanding the issues surrounding a piece of legislation, establishing the position of specific member states in negotiations or the approach of the European Commission... so much information is unknown or inaccessible to the layperson - who will easily become discouraged from pursuing their EU investigation.
In this session, we will will use concrete and practical examples to show you how to navigate the institutional triangle (Commission, EU Parliament and the Council), as well as the Court of Justice of the European Union. We'll explain how to track the European legislative process, quickly find the relevant players, information and data you need. This won't be an ex-cathedra lecture, but a practical deep dive session, with, as a take away, a list of useful links organised according to journalistic needs. After the session, you are also welcome to join us in the EU Cafe corner for a further discussion or get your specific EU questions answered.
If you are denied access to information, you can fight for your rights in court. What can you gain, and when is it worth the hassle? Staffan Dahllöf has taken the Swedish state to court for denying access to environmental information, invoking the Aarhus Convention.Eva Belmonte has repeatedly challenged Spanish authorities in court, seeking transparency on multiple fronts: the passengers of official planes, the true cost of government-procured medicines, the identities of public advisors, and most recently, access to the algorithms governing social policy decisions. Alexander Fanta has sued the German government for documents about its support for Ukraine, and inspired a court case in which the New York Times fought for access to text messages between Ursula von der Leyen's and the CEO of Pfizer during the Covid pandemic. Tarjei Leer-Salvesen won an FOI request from the US State Department, when civilian vessels from his area turned up in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard's navy. Hear their thoughts and tactics – and how they use the fight for transparency in their journalism.
Android Quick Forensics (AQF) and the Mobile Verification Toolkit (MVT) are tools widely adopted by the community that allow you to check your phones for spyware. In this hands-on workshop, participants will gain basic knowledge on how to install and use these forensic tools on their own systems and devices. We will also share troubleshooting tips for overcoming common challenges.
In this session , three speakers present skills or tools that could be valuable in your next investigation.
1) How to create compelling before-and-after visualizations of satellite images using free tools. We'll walk through a basic workflow and share tips to quickly visualize change over time — no prior geospatial knowledge needed!
2) How to reveal metadata and other hidden information in PDF documents. We will walk our audience through the command line tool that can be used to explore PDFs in depth, and address issues that a journalist faces when they upload a PDF to an investigative tool like the open source Aleph and discover that the OCR has produced no text output.
3) How journalists can use AI to build a customized assistant that digs through a large number of documents. In this skillshare, you will get examples of a combination of skills and tools to screen, systematize, and analyse content in a cross-border investigation.
4) AI-powered search through audio - how do you find what you want without falling prey to hallucinations? Using the example audio transcription with Whisper, we showcase the issues of search through audio and how we've solved it in several recent use-cases.
