The Long, Hard Road of Investigative Reporting in Latin America

This editorial explores recent trends in investigative reporting in Latin America. Author Tina Rosenberg contends that Latin American journalists who investigate crimes such as corruption and drug trafficking "are routinely" threatened, sued, or even killed. Rosenberg explains that this is especially true of journalists working in rural areas, but that "even prominent journalists in capital cities must live as if behind bars and occasionally go into hiding." The author, who is one of the judges for a prize given to the best investigative report on corruption, sponsored by Transparency International and financed by the Open Society Institute, observes that - not surprisingly, in this context - there has been a notable recent decline in reporting from Argentina, Colombia and Peru (all places with strong investigative traditions).

In Colombia, a group of journalists sought to protect themselves against this infringement on their right to speak out. (In many countries, Rosenberg explains, journalists must contend with laws that make libel a criminal offense and that use a very broad standard to define libel.) Whereas "in most investigations, reporters guard their information jealously and compete to be first", in 2005, a group of reporters and editors from Colombia's 19 leading magazines and newspapers banded together to all publish the results of an investigation about paramilitary power on the same day - with not a single author's name attached. The idea was to deprive the paramilitaries of targets for retaliation.

Rosenberg stresses that - in part due to such creative, collaborative strategies - good investigative reporting persists in Latin America despite the obstacles, even at regional newspapers. In 2006, she reports, the Transparency International/Open Society Institute awards went to 2 Venezuelan journalists who, "working in a climate of public hysteria, uncovered evidence undermining a case the government was trying to turn into a political show trial. A second prize went to a provincial newspaper, El Imparcial, published in Hermosillo, the capital of the Mexican state of Sonora. It exposed classic old-style corruption..."