New technology enables investigative journalists to access and organise information more rapidly and efficiently than ever before. But it does not negate the need for the legitimate financial and legal backing of a media organisation, and a code of ethics to ensure the confidentiality of contacts.

This was the conclusion of a recent seminar on investigative reporting held at the European Journalism Centre in Maastrich in The Netherlands in March this year (2001). The seminar was attended by 12 journalists from Israel, Canada, Montenegro, Denmark, Serbia, the Netherlands, Finland and the UK.

Alain Lallemand, the veteran organised crime reporter for the Belgian newspaper Le Soir, led the seminar. He said the internet allows him, within weeks, to become more knowledgeable about a subject than his local police, who are not online. And it is not just a matter of background information, the internet allows communication over great distances with policemen, intelligence agents, lawyers and even criminals.

In fact, according to Mr Lallemand, first-hand contact with potential criminals is the only way to put "flesh on the bones" of a story. Readers want to know how a suspect lives, talks and walks. Without the criminals' side to the story, he argues, "investigative" journalism is little more than government agency propaganda.

Even the worst criminals, according to Mr Lallemand, "have the right to be reported fairly". But direct contact with criminal organisations can be dangerous, he warned. Without the time, resources and legitimacy, it can lead to conflict.

If a criminal contact is "good" in the context of organised crime, they are likely to be already under the scrutiny of the police and intelligence services. To avoid being caught in the crossfire, journalists must ensure that communication with criminals, and other parties, is done on the common understanding of the role of the journalist and in secrecy.

Mr Lallemand favours face-to-face meetings with sensitive contacts in public places. But email, he said, now provides a convenient alternative to coded telephone calls when arranging face-to-face meetings. A known criminal's telephone service may be tapped, but emails make such intrusion more difficult.

Mr Lallemand recommended visiting an internet cafZ to register email accounts with Yahoo! or HotMail and to use false personal details. Any third party that intercepts the exchange is unlikely to find out much about the participants other than the location of the café they use (assuming the code of the communication is secure). Mr Lallemand used this method in a recent investigation into weapons trafficking.

An alternative to the internet café method is to use an anonymous re-mailer which strips the 'from' address out of an email, although some harbour suspicions about the people who run such services. Encryption technologies such as PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) are also available and can be downloaded for free from sites such as www.pgpi.org/ . Again caution is advised as senders are always dependent on the recipient to maintain the security of their messages.

Anonymous email accounts can also be used to store sensitive information remotely, rather than on local hard drives. With the added security of PGP encryption, the information becomes both untraceable and unreadable by unwelcome third parties.

Having gathered extensive information on a topic, journalists should use databases to organise it. Subsequent searches of such databases can reveal connections that otherwise might have gone unnoticed. Again data encryption is recommended.

Using such methods allows investigative journalists to provide extra material to support their stories at relatively little expense to their publishers. Quoting links to some of their more general sources is also an invaluable service to the reader, making them as Mr Lallemand put it, "part of the investigation". But is important to remember that the level of anonymity the internet provides is still limited by the resourcefulness of the reporter.

NB. This story was taken from the first issue of a new email newsletter called E-Legality Bulletin. To subscribe to this free monthly publication send an email with the subject heading 'subscribe' to esubs@e-legality.org.
Tags: Click tag to find related articles; click icon for feed

Free daily newsletter

If you like our news and feature articles, you can sign up to receive our free daily (Mon-Fri) email newsletter (mobile friendly).

Related articles