Summer in the City: Journalists meet to brush up on their investigation skills
Tuesday, 13 July 2010 12:32 | Author: Natasha Loder | 
Now in its eighth year, the Centre for Investigative Journalism’s Summer School, based at City University in London, attracted record numbers of participants this weekend. Between July 9th and 11th over 140 journalists, film makers, researchers and NGOs chose to spend the hottest days of the year learning the latest tricks of the trade, and the oldest tricks in the books.
Much of the weekend focused on computer and internet tools of various kinds, whether this was searching for information on the internet, requesting it from governments, or processing and analysing it with packages such as Microsoft Excel and Access. For light relief, there
were also glorious tales of derring-do in journalism from Julian Assange (Wikileaks), David Leigh (The Guardian) and Andrew Jennings. The stories ranged from super injunctions by Trafigura and tussles with lawyers Carter Ruck, to racketeering within FIFA.
Raj Bairoliya, a chartered accountant and managing director of FTI Forensic Accounting, spent much of a day explaining where to find the bodies in reports. He says if you want to find out what has happened to a company in the last year, to ignore the front part of its annual report and go straight to the notes to the Financial Reports. Profit and loss, balance sheets, and cash flow statements were all picked apart in detail. Tounge in cheek he commented that the importance of the information in the annual report is inversely proportional to the size of the text. In other words, look for the small print.
Another theme showed journalists how to define and organise their investigations, right from the start. Drawing on knowledge from journalists and information professionals, and their own investigations over the years, the strand by Luuk Sengers and Mark Lee Hunter proved to be a rich seam of insight into the mistakes made by journalists--and how to correct them.
Justin Walford, the deputy legal advisor at The News of the World and The Sun, provided a recap on the laws regarding libel and privacy. During this talk came useful reminders about the basics. He emphasised the legal importance of keeping a tidy notebook and following the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) Code of Practice to the letter. While the PCC may be fairly toothless, lawyers, he says, will be looking to see that you have not followed this code and show a weakness in your position.
Notebooks, too, are a dangerous area, as they may well be produced in court as evidence. Make sure you time and date each interview, and keep it neat. If you are starting an important investigation, you will also want to keep a separate notebook, says Walford. He adds, "a notebook can tell a lot about you. You need to look good.”
Useful tips and tricks picked up during the Summer School are being written into a number of existing and new Wikis on the ABSW’s member areas. Do look out for our new Investigations wiki, and please add your own material and ideas.
Much of the weekend focused on computer and internet tools of various kinds, whether this was searching for information on the internet, requesting it from governments, or processing and analysing it with packages such as Microsoft Excel and Access. For light relief, there
were also glorious tales of derring-do in journalism from Julian Assange (Wikileaks), David Leigh (The Guardian) and Andrew Jennings. The stories ranged from super injunctions by Trafigura and tussles with lawyers Carter Ruck, to racketeering within FIFA.
Raj Bairoliya, a chartered accountant and managing director of FTI Forensic Accounting, spent much of a day explaining where to find the bodies in reports. He says if you want to find out what has happened to a company in the last year, to ignore the front part of its annual report and go straight to the notes to the Financial Reports. Profit and loss, balance sheets, and cash flow statements were all picked apart in detail. Tounge in cheek he commented that the importance of the information in the annual report is inversely proportional to the size of the text. In other words, look for the small print.
Another theme showed journalists how to define and organise their investigations, right from the start. Drawing on knowledge from journalists and information professionals, and their own investigations over the years, the strand by Luuk Sengers and Mark Lee Hunter proved to be a rich seam of insight into the mistakes made by journalists--and how to correct them.
Justin Walford, the deputy legal advisor at The News of the World and The Sun, provided a recap on the laws regarding libel and privacy. During this talk came useful reminders about the basics. He emphasised the legal importance of keeping a tidy notebook and following the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) Code of Practice to the letter. While the PCC may be fairly toothless, lawyers, he says, will be looking to see that you have not followed this code and show a weakness in your position.
Notebooks, too, are a dangerous area, as they may well be produced in court as evidence. Make sure you time and date each interview, and keep it neat. If you are starting an important investigation, you will also want to keep a separate notebook, says Walford. He adds, "a notebook can tell a lot about you. You need to look good.”
Useful tips and tricks picked up during the Summer School are being written into a number of existing and new Wikis on the ABSW’s member areas. Do look out for our new Investigations wiki, and please add your own material and ideas.
Natasha Loder and four other journalists attended the CIJ summer school thanks to funding from the Research Councils UK.
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