Center for Investigative Journalism Summer School 2011

July 6, 2011

The Centre for Investigative Journalism summer school is now in its ninth year. It is the UK’s only annual investigative journalism forum that offers hands-on training to journalists, researchers, charity workers and journalism students. This year the summer school will focus on whistleblowing and taxation as well as our usual programme of cutting edge data journalism training. Our keynote speakers for this year are Kristinn Hrafnsson, Annie Machon, and Kathryn Bolkovac. Please note that Julian Assange is unable to attend as previously advertised. You can read a message from Julian on the main tcij.org website.

With stories from WikiLeaks dominating the news agenda over the last year, the main strand for summer school 2011 will be whistleblowing. In a practice both praised and condemned, WikiLeaks aims to challenge secrecy and hold governments to account. But it didn’t start with WikiLeaks and we will bring some of the best-known whistleblowers to tell their stories. As a journalist you will learn about protecting sources and how to advise potential informants on securing their information and staying anonymous. We hope to have a speaker from WikiLeaks to demonstrate their tested methods of protecting sources, winning legal battles and preparing redactions. We will also look at the issue of taxation and how the big corporations avoid large tax bills by moving their profits to offshore tax havens. At a time of massive cuts, layoffs and collapsing public services we will show you how to investigate the way companies legally protect their profits. You will learn what happens when you knock on the door of offshore accounts, how to differentiate between tax avoidance and tax evasion and how the rich hide their fortunes and minimise their tax bill. Drawing upon a recent investigation into a multinational company we will examine what it revealed about its tax havens around the world. Once again this year, we will be repeating one of our most popular annual offerings; the story-based inquiry track. This series of talks looks at tools for the conception, strategy, organising and composition of investigative projects. Each session in the track may be taken separately or combined with others and all have been updated with the latest research from the authors. There will be sessions in:

  • Private and public finance
  • Using the Freedom of Information Act
  • Computer assisted reporting (CAR) techniques
  • Digital security and anonymity
  • Undercover reporting
  • Libel and privacy law
  • Scraping and data visualisation
  • Statistics

To register, please fill in the Bursary Application Form.

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