EIJC18 & Dataharvest

When journalists team up in massive cross-border teams to dive into immense datasets, we get powerful journalism suitable for our era. When several such networks are formed, with journalists in the network working for different national media houses, national media competition can tick in. Such media competition questions surfaced in recent years as networks such as the ICIJ, the EIC-network and OCCRP enlarged their teams of trusted journalists. Ahead of the EIJC18 Frederik Obermaier, Süddeutsche Zeitung and ICIJ and co-initiator of the Panama Papers, suggested to address the issue and sketched four points to consider. These four points will be the starting point for our debate at the EIJC18. The overall purpose is at the core of journalism: To share important information for the greater good of our societies.

1. Transparency. If you want use data from Collaboration A in Collaboration B the necessary thing to do is to ask the owners of the data in Collaboration A if it is okay to do that. Or even better: As soon as your media outlet gets into even evaluating to take part in a »competing » project, there should be an open discussion to prevent conflicts of interest. Owners of data/the initiators in Collaboration A may say: 1) yes, sure 2) no, for X reason we rather you don't do that 3) yes, sure, but we would like to join Collaboration B too. This should under all circumstances be accepted.
2. Appreciation. All of us should be aware of the fact that it is normally one media outlet « giving away » a scoop by sharing – for a greater good. Nevertheless, there is a certain development that some media outlets do share more than others. If those media outlets that do not share that much then try to « take » from as many networks/collaborations this might lead to frustration in the future – and might thereby endanger the whole model of collaborative journalism. « Taking » from OCCRP, EIC and ICIJ is easy, but to make collaborative journalism sustainable, it is also important to « give » - it must not necessarily be data, also ideas for future investigations do help.
3. Attribution. Many networks/collaborations do agree to mention the name of the outlet that shared information/data as well as the name of the network/collaboration in their pieces. This works normally very well at the launch of a project/investigation. Nevertheless, after some days/weeks collaborators sometimes partners tend to forget such agreements or take them more lightly. This – again – endangers the model of collaborative journalism as such credits are an important argument for individual reporters towards their editors for sharing data/information.
4. Communication. Networks like OCCRP, ICIJ and EIC cannot communicate enough among each other. A fair – and confidential – communication about possible conflicts of interests/overlapping projects can only be helpful. Nevertheless, such communication can only be possible if there is enough trust. In cases where trust has been lost in the past, it needs to be re-established.