Reed F. Richardson

Sanctions Evasion, Army Executions, and a Royal ‘Flying Palace’: 2025’s Best Investigative Stories from Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and the Caucasus Despite numerous obstacles, journalists from the region continue their investigative work through partnerships, cooperation with civil society, and open source research.

Today @gijn.org is in the home stretch of our annual Editor's Picks, recapping the best investigative reporting of 2025 across the world.
In eastern Europe, central Asia, & Russia, independent journalism is under withering attack but these exposés stand out for their courage, quality, & relevance.

What's striking to me is Bari Weiss says CBS News' future will depend upon "investigative scoops" & "revelatory journalism"… but then announces the hiring of:
a) contributors (talking heads?)
b) more exec staff
c) three 'social-first' reporters
Nothing about a new team of investigative reporters…

As @nytimes.com documents, Trump cabinet agencies have been brazenly posting white nationalist/supremacist themes on social media.
And while the DHS spox is a comically bad liar, kudos to the Times for getting her ownership on the record for future accountability.
www.nytimes.com/2026/01/27/u...

Federal agents in Minneapolis wrestled Alex Pretti to the ground and secured the handgun he was carrying moments before shooting him multiple times, according to a Washington Post analysis of video footage.

Read more: https://wapo.st/4qGOx8M

Complete, utter abdication of its civic duty by CBS News to recycle this fluff when the country is being torn apart by gov’t abductions of everyone down to toddlers and blood runs in the streets from state-sanctioned killings.

3 journalists killed in Israeli airstrike in Gaza, including cameraman who worked with CBS News An Israeli airstrike killed three journalists in Gaza on Wednesday, the territory's civil defense agency said. One of those killed, Abed Shaat, had worked for years as a cameraman for CBS News and oth...

A producer in the London bureau is the *only* CBS person quoted in their story about Israel killing its longtime freelance cameramen in Gaza—someone who once filed dispatches for them from an ambulance, while wounded.

Not quoted: The network’s editor in chief.

www.cbsnews.com/news/journal...

Screenshot of NYT story on how the White House apparently used AI to alter an image of a black woman arrested for a protest inside a MN church to make her appear sobbing and humiliated.

Kudos to @nytimes.com for this bit of reverse engineering in their reporting.
It drives home the point that AI tools are increasingly being employed by the powerful to spread disinformation & humiliate their targets, but also undermine real journalism & the truth.
www.nytimes.com/2026/01/22/u...

How Journalists Can Untangle Global Corporate Secrecy Speakers at this GIJC25 session dismantled the myth that offshore finance is inaccessible or unknowable and argued that the real barrier is not secrecy alone, but confidence, skill, and persistence.

In an era where corporations shield scrutiny through global subsidiaries, money crosses borders instantly, and tax havens are proliferating, investigative journalists need to call upon as many tools and partners as possible to pierce the veil of financial secrecy.
gijn.org/stories/gijc...

Screenshot of WaPo article noting even more deaths in Gaza from Israeli strikes but framed as happening “despite” a ceasefire, rather than another violation of it.

3 journalists doing their jobs killed in Gaza by an Israeli strike—and WaPo still keeps framing these deaths as “despite” a ceasefire, not as a violation of an agreement that is breached almost daily.

‘No Cavalry Is Coming’: How Investigative Journalism Must Rethink Money, Metrics and Survival This GIJC25 panel discussion surfaced a set of unresolved questions about what investigative journalism can sustainably support — and what it may need to leave behind.

At #GIJC25, experts on how investigative journalism must navigate an uncertain and challenging future pulled no punches. Survival is paramount — and funding sources will need to be diverse — if we want to keep the flame of accountability reporting well lit around the world.
gijn.org/stories/gijc...

Screenshot of NYT story on Trump's terrible polling, with a comment from a Trump supporter that goes all in on Dear-Leader-is-infallible, cult-of-personality thinking.

In its poll on Trump's second term, @nytimes.com finds a new low on job approval (40%) and only a third of voters (32%) say the country is better off now than it was one year ago.
But most striking to me was this tortured logic from a die-hard Trump supporter…
www.nytimes.com/2026/01/22/u...

Screenshot of NYT story that did data analysis of Grok's new AI feature that let users request sexualized changes to any image of a person. To do so, the Center for Countering Digital Hate collected a random sample of 20,000 images produced by Grok between Dec. 29 and Jan. 8, and found that about 65 percent of the images were sexualized. The organization identified 101 sexualized images of children. Extrapolating across the total, the group estimated that Grok had produced more than three million sexual images, including more than 23,000 images of children.

The @nytimes.com and @counterhate.com dug into the massive output of sexualized AI images created by X's AI chatbot, Grok.
Based on their data analysis, they estimated that, in just a few weeks, Grok had generated *23,000* images of sexualized children.

www.nytimes.com/2026/01/22/t...

And the dog that (still) isn't barking in this Post story on the FBI raid on Hannah Natanson's home…

No public comment or quote from the newspaper's owner, Jeff Bezos, on the outrageous, unconstitutional violation of one of his reporter's press freedom rights.

Screenshot of Washington Post story about its legal filing to have materials of one of its reporters, seized by the FBI, returned. The filing Wednesday said that “almost none” of the seized materials were relevant to the search warrant. Instead, the filing said, “the FBI seized Natanson’s newsgathering materials, stored on devices including her Post-issued laptop and cellphone,” which “contain years of information about past and current confidential sources and other unpublished newsgathering materials, including those she was using for current reporting.” “The government seized this proverbial haystack in an attempt to locate a needle,” the filing said.

Hard to see this as anything other than a test run sweeping up all of a reporter's confidential files under the flimsy pretense of a leak investigation.
Impossible not to have a chilling effect on sources who fear their identity could be outed by a gov't raid.
www.washingtonpost.com/national-sec...

Americans Are the Ones Paying for Tariffs, Study Finds New research contradicts President Trump’s claim that foreigners are footing the bill.

Not exactly investigative but this is some very necessary *accountability reporting* by the @wsj.com, dismantling Trump's primary economic claim.

"The $200 billion in additional US tariff revenue last year 'was paid almost exclusively by Americans'…is likely to fuel higher US inflation over time."

BW spiked a solid piece to score MAGA cred, demanded the addition of a Trump admin on camera response but got stiffed by both Noem & Miller and ended up with no editorial changes... and here we are: the piece that aired tonight was essentially the very same piece we all saw 1 month ago. Incredible.

Bezos wrote this days after the Post abruptly killed its planned endorsement of Harris for president.

His ongoing silence in the face of the Trump DOJ's chilling search of a Post reporter's home says plenty—if not more—about his free press "principles" & willingness to stand up to "intimidation."

Bari Weiss and Trump exchanged kisses on the cheek following ‘60 Minutes’ interview EXCLUSIVE: In a moment that sources said led to stunned reactions and dropped jaws, Bari Weiss excitedly introduced herself to the president and leaned in for a kiss on the cheek following his ‘60 Min...

Increasingly clear that CBS News staffers are going to leak every weird, elitist, and editorially compromising act that Bare Weiss does as network editor-in-chief.
And the aggregate picture these stories tell of Weiss' influence is a devastating one for the news network's integrity and future.

Screenshot of Stars & Stripes story on how job applicants for the newspaper are being asked how they would support President Trump's policies, a clear example of how the White House wants to kill independent journalism for and by service members in exchange for Dear Leader-type propagandists.

Crystal clear example of how this White House wants to kill editorially independent journalism for, and by, US military service members in exchange for Yes, Dear Leader-type propagandists.
www.stripes.com/theaters/us/...

The statement appears to challenge the editorial independence of Stars and Stripes, which while a part of the Pentagon’s Defense Media Activity has long retained independence from editorial oversight from the Pentagon under a congressional mandate that it be governed by First Amendment principles.

Tips to Investigate AI Labor Abuses in the Global South Workers in East Africa and South Asia are now paid low wages to perform behind-the-scenes data tasks are used to power AI-driven facial recognition systems around the world.

Today @gijn.org: We look at journalists uncovering how cheap labor in the Global South is fueling AI algorithms and facial recognition systems.
E.g.: Gig workers drawing rectangles around humans in CCTV footage were actually training a surveillance program used to crackdown on Russian protestors.

Why Journalists in Autocracies Should Report as If They’re in a Democracy In a RightsCon session hosted by GIJN, three editors shared survival strategies for independent newsrooms in authoritarian nations, as threats to the press, and institutions of accountability, grow a...

Related: It would be easy for the press in authoritarian countries to become discouraged or self-censor in an era of powerful impunity.
But Egyptian journalist Lina Attalah reminds us all to report "as if it's a democracy" & be the institutional memory about wrongdoing for *future* accountability.

Brilliant journalist Anna Wolfe of @mississippitoday.org won a Pulitzer Prize for exposing this scandal—up to $77 million from the state's welfare system was misdirected to Favre and others. The state's GOP governor, Phil Bryant, also filed a defamation suit against MS Today but it was dismissed.

The Performative US Airstrike That May Have Killed No Terrorists in Nigeria Despite claims of success by the US/Nigerian officials of the US airstrike in Nigeria, we found that the strike failed to reach its target.

Great investigative journalism here by Africa's HumAngle that analyzed the US Christmas Day airstrikes in NW Nigeria.

Surprise, surprise… despite Trump's bold claims of success, the reporters on the ground afterward found not a single "terrorist" was likely killed & the bombing was "performative."

F.B.I. Searches Home of Washington Post Journalist for Classified Material

Absolutely chilling.
The Trump administration clearly wants to attack & degrade the press' protected privilege to publish leaked documents to hold the gov't accountable.
If it really wants to demonstrate its commitment to the newsroom, WaPo leadership must come out strongly against this search.

If you're looking for powerful news moments that are both original *and* likely to be shared because they have real impact, you can't beat investigative reporting.
But Weiss has already demonstrated that she's willing to undermine hard-hitting reporting that doesn't traffic in both-sides tropes.

Trying to game coverage for viral moments only compromises your news judgment in an attempt to reverse engineer what you *think* your audience will like. So, it's notable that all the big names Weiss has had Dokoupil interview since taking over are pro-Trump figures.
www.nytimes.com/2026/01/13/b...

When one simple chart tells you more about the real state of the US jobs/hiring situation than all the spin coming from the White House.
#datavisualization

twp.ai 2026 Sigma Awards for Data Journalism Open for Entries

📣 Last year, the Sigma Awards received 498 submissions from around the world – and we can’t wait to see what 2025 brings.

Submit your best data journalism by Jan 11, 2026.

Questions? Email sigmas@gijn.org

Apply:

Exposing Forced Labor and Human Trafficking in the World’s Oceans Reporters exposing exploitation in the high seas use a combination of open source satellite imagery to track ships and documents to establish vessel ownership.

The maritime industry is as vast as the oceans but jurisdiction — and accountability — is often murky. That leaves workers vulnerable to exploitation and human trafficking. Today, @gijn.org looks at methods for uncovering these labor abuses in one of the most challenging reporting environments.