Mining the web
By Gina Bramucci Posted Jan 1 2003
The breadth of Web-based sources available to journalists has profoundly changed the shape of international investigations. Online databases, statistics and documents add context and depth to stories, provide the numbers to strengthen investigations, and spark countless new ideas and leads. As research organizations, advocacy groups and governments increasingly make information available electronically (and often for free). The benefits for journalists are immense.
When reporting stories that are international in scope, the Internet is not only as an information source. It is an invaluable vehicle for communication with colleagues around the world. Nothing can replace this network of fellow journalists and researchers, said Noemi Ramirez, resource librarian for Spain’s Diario el Mundo. “They prove to be extremely useful when trying to understand how the administration or the system works in a particular region of the world, or who might be the right people to talk to when you need to illustrate a data story with some human aspects.”
Professional organizations such as the U.S.-based Investigative Reporters and Editors, Inc., IRE (www.ire.org), and its counterparts in Mexico (http://investigacion.org.mx) and the Philippines (www.pcij.org), connect members through listservs and regional and global conferences. In Europe, the European Journalism Center (www.ejc.nl) offers journalists support and training in pan-European issues such as migration and the European Union’s integration process.
An organization dependent on Web-based communication, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, ICIJ (www.icij.org), takes on large, multi-country investigations through a global network of reporters.
“Without the Internet, only those journalists with the deep-pocketed resources of major media corporations would be able to undertake cross-border investigations,” said ICIJ director Maud Beelman. “The spread of the Internet—its increasing number of primary research sources, databases, secondary reporting, e-mail, listservs, newspaper and corporate Web sites—has democratized the reporting process and opened the world to anyone with a computer and imagination.”
Even with a computer and an imagination, most journalists could use a map to help navigate. It’s easy to get lost in the vast amount of information online, but colleagues can help point to the right online source or database. This is particularly important when working with data sets that can be overwhelming and unwieldy. The National Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting, NICAR (www.nicar.org), a joint program of IRE and the Missouri School of Journalism in the United States, and its Danish counterpart, DICAR (www.dicar.dk), train reporters on how to get access to and interpret raw data.
As Michele Leon of South Africa’s Times Media pointed out, records and electronic data are often still closed or inaccessible in many countries. Because of that, Brant Houston, executive director of IRE and NICAR, stressed that it is crucial to think beyond your own country’s borders when searching the Internet.
“The electronic door to information may be closed in one country’s Web, but wide open in another,” he said. “We know of many reporters who routinely check the information that one country may have about another.”
For this reason, researchers well-versed in the Internet are careful not to limit their hunt for information.
“I have the habit of looking once a month at what new documents have been declassified in the U.S.A. or in the U.K.”, said Ramirez.
DECLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS
One of the best known sites for declassified documents is the National Security Archives (www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/), which has used the U.S. Freedom of Information Act to build a library of more than 20,000 records on international affairs. The NSA, founded in 1985, also offers a subscriber-based digital archive with nearly 40,000 documents linked to U.S. foreign and military policy since 1945. In all, the NSA holds more than two million pages of material.
In a similar vein, Paperless Archives (www.paperlessarchives.com) offers a collection of declassified documents, photos, audio and video recordings, all of which can be ordered for a fee. And the Cold War International History Project (http://cwihp.si.edu/default.htm) and the Parallel History Project on NATO and the Warsaw Pact (www.isn.ethz.ch/php/) work to declassify documents related to specific eras or topics.
These non-governmental efforts to declassify information have been an immense asset for investigative journalists.
DICAR director Nils Mulvad has also seen a trend toward transparency from the multilateral organizations themselves. The United Nations and the World Health Organization are just two examples of international bodies that have started to open up their electronically-stored data, Mulvad said.
CENSUS DATA and STATISTICS
Rich statistical information is now available through the U.N. Department of Economic and Social Affairs (http://unstats.un.org/unsd/databases.htm) and the International Labor Organization (www.ilo.org). International census data is available through the U.S. Census Bureau (http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/idbnew.html); and the Council for European Social Science Data Archives (www.nsd.uib.no/cessda) can be searched for data from Europe and the United States.
“For European statistics, the best site is the one run by the European Union,” said Sofia Basso, a reporter for Italy’s online news outlet Il Nuovo. The EU site (http://europa.eu.int/comm/eurostat/), which also covers EU candidate countries, has data on topics ranging from population and social conditions, to agriculture and fisheries. While some of its data is limited to subscribers, journalists can register for free to receive studies and online publications, Basso said.
Income or standard of living disparities almost always come into play when census data is used in reporting. The same is true for cross-border investigations.
The U.N. Development Program and the United Nations University came together to develop a World Income Inequality Database, WIID (www.undp.org/poverty/initiatives/wider/wiid.htm), a database on income inequality across countries and periods of time. The data used for WIID stretches from 1950 to 1998. It was drawn, in part, from the World Bank, which has its own ample data supply online (www.worldbank.org/data), as do most regional development banks.
MULTILATERAL ORGANIZATIONS
In an age of globalization, many international journalists are turning their investigations toward the multilateral bodies themselves.
Nonprofit watchdog groups and policy think tanks have made significant headway in this area. Global Policy (www.globalpolicy.org) monitors policy at the United Nations, while the Washington-based Bank Information Center (www.bicusa.org) and freedominfo.org are great places to start for researching the World Bank, regional development banks and the International Monetary Fund.
Don’t underestimate the sites of the agencies themselves for this kind of data. The Web site of the U.N. Procurement Division (www.un.org/Depts/ptd/), for example, allows searches for any company that has contracted to provide goods or services for U.N. departments, peacekeeping missions, regional commissions and international tribunals.
INTERNATIONAL TRADE AND CONTRACTS
Any look at the World Trade Organization will inevitably draw from watchdog groups such as freedominfo.org, but for pure trade statistics the WTO itself is the central source (www.wto.org/english/rese/statis_e/statis_e.htm). For a focused look at trade in developing countries, the International Trade Center site (www.intracen.org), operated by the United Nations and the WTO, has databases on international import and export from 1996 to 2000. And for information on U.S. economic and trade sanctions placed on foreign countries, check with the U.S. Department of Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets (www.treas.gov/offices/enforcement/ofac).
Poring over U.S. federal contracts can almost always point to an international story that’s been overlooked by the mainstream. NICAR’s federal contracts database includes information on companies that do business with the United States, the location of their headquarters, the nature of the work, where it’s being carried out, and the money involved.
IMMIGRATION
Other U.S. data available through NICAR, like statistics from the Immigration and Naturalization Services, allow international journalists to do searches on immigration trends from their country. NICAR is in the process of updating its INS data, which gives a snapshot of demographics, occupation information, and intended region of residence in the United States. Reporters could, for example, take an in-depth look at whether their country is losing a major part of its workforce in a certain field, NICAR director Jeff Porter said.
HEALTH ANDENVIRONMENT
The World Health Organization and the United Nations point to HIV/AIDS as one of the most significant threats facing the world population.
According to a 2002 U.N. report, the regions now at highest risk are China, the Russian Federation, Eastern Europe, Western and Central Africa. It is one of the biggest international stories journalists are confronting. The raw data and graphics are online through UNAIDS (www.unaids.org) and WHO (www.who.int/whosis/).
WHO is an essential first stop for health- or disease-related research, but statistics on health and the environment can also be accessed through the Virtual Library on International Development (http://w3.acdi-cida.gc.ca/virtual.nsf). For environment specific data, check in with the U.N. Environment Program (www.unep.org) and the European Environmental Agency (www.eea.eu.int).
INTERNATIONAL SECURITY, TERRORISM AND CONFLICT
International security, terrorism and conflict are likely to remain the biggest stories for journalists around the world, and the sources are infinite. Il Nuovo’s Basso and researchers at ICIJ place the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (www.sipri.se) at the top of their list for in-depth reports and databases on issues such as military expenditures, arms transfers, patterns of conflict occurrence and costs of conflict. Further statistics are now available, through FIRST (http://first.sipri.org/), a joint project of SIPRI and the International Relations and Security Network. FIRST, an acronym that stands for Facts on International Relations and Security Trends, gathers its information from research institutes around the world. The databases, free for journalists, cover the fields of international relations, armed conflicts, peacekeeping, arms production and armed forces.
The Federation of American Scientists (www.fas.org) and the Norwegian Initiative on Small Arms Transfers (www.nisat.org) also hold comprehensive databases on arms-related issues. The independent Center for Defense Information (www.cdi.org) researches global military spending and activity, and highlights “hot spot” issues such as missile defense and nuclear weapons.
HUMAN RIGHTS
Discussions of conflict are virtually impossible without tackling questions of human rights and international law. The office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights (www.unhcr.ch/tbs/doc.nsf) has a database of documents related to torture, discrimination, cultural rights, children’s rights and the rights of migrant workers. The United States Institute of Peace library (www.usip.org/library/diglib.html) holds its own digital collection on peace agreements and truth commissions, as well as special initiatives dedicated to the Balkans, religion and diplomacy, and virtual diplomacy. The Research Guide to International Law on the Internet (http://www2.spfo.unibo.it/spolfo/CRISIS.htm) gives a generous list of other links on international law, conflict and humanitarian crises.
CORRUPTION AND GOVERNANCE
Finally, investigating corruption and governance is an evergreen national and international story. The Utstein Anti-corruption Resource Center (www.u4.no) is a collaborative project managed by Transparency International and Norway’s Chr. Michelsen Institute, a private research foundation working in development and human rights. Transparency (www.transparency.org) is one of the best-known non-governmental organizations working in this arena.
Transparency’s searchable online database, CORIS, (www.transparency.org/coris /index.html), is loaded with bibliographical references and full-text documents.
Databases like these have the potential to enrich international reporting. With multilateral bodies showing signs of openness, it’s more important than ever for journalists working internationally to keep the pressure on authorities, DICAR’s Mulvad said. “We face an evolution right now… but the process is slow and needs to be helped by journalists.”
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Web Site Users: BEWARE
David Kaplan of U.S. News & World Report has a handful of invaluable Web sites for reporting on terrorism, crime and government. As with all reporting, however, journalists need to be aware of where the information is coming from. “When reporting online, journalists need to use the same good judgement they use offline: Find reliable sources, check your facts, and get confirmation,” he says.
It’s best to rely on Web sites that are linked to established organizations such as government agencies, respected non-governmental organizations and professional associations, Kaplan says. “And source it just as you would with an offline document or interview — readers deserve to know where your information is coming from.”
Remember: Anyone can start a Web site. Just throwing data online doesn’t assure accuracy, he says. “I don’t care how many hits the site gets.”
Here are a few of Kaplan’s favorite sites for researching security issues and terrorism:
Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies
http://cns.miis.edu
Nuclear Threat Initiative
http://www.nti.org
U.S. Department of State Counter-Terrorism Office
http://www.state.gov/s/ct/
The International Policy Institute for Counter-terrorism
www.ict.org/il/inter_ter/frame.htm
Conflicts: Special Concerns
Keep in mind that when reporting on conflict, it’s always wise to consider the source. This is even more important on the Web, where it’s not always clear who is behind the information. Still, sources that focus on conflict can be very useful. Here are a few noteworthy sites:
Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information
www.ipcri.org
Founded in 1988, IPCRI calls itself the only joint Israeli-Palestinian public policy think tank in the world. The site holds documents related to the conflict and the peace process.
Conflict Archive on the Internet
http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/
CAIN is dedicated to material on conflict in Northern Ireland from 1968 to the present. It includes databases, photo and art collections, political posters, maps, and government reports.
The International Policy Institute for Counter-terrorism
www.ict.org/il/inter_ter/frame.htm
This think tank/research institute was set up to serve as a source on international terrorism and to seek to effect policy at the global level. Its documents and profiles are good leads, but as with all Internet research, the source itself should be carefully investigated and considered.
Center for Defense Information on Terrorism
www.cdi.org/terrorism/
CDI’s terrorism project has analysis and facts on the U.S.-led war on terrorism, foreign policy challenges and long-term international security.
Take a Tip: Help for free
The IRE Resource Center has thousands of tip sheets available to investigative journalists around the world. These are typically available for free to IRE members or for a fee to non-members. As a special offer, IRE has selected four of its best 2002 tip sheets to offer for free to the readers of IPI Global Journalist. To order, just contact the IRE Resource Center directly by e-mailing rescntr@ire.org or by calling (573)-882-3364.
Be sure to include your full name and media organization, and provide the order code “IPI READER-ONLINE.”
Tip sheets offered free of charge:
- No. 1663: Advice on teaming up with journalists in other countries and a few helpful Web sites (Maud Beelman, ICIJ)
- No. 1536: Tips on accessing and using international databases (Noemi Ramirez, Diario el Mundo)
- No. 1534: International data on terrorism (Margot Williams, The Washington Post)
- No. 1626: Leads on several Web sites that are useful for international investigations (Pedro Enrique Armendares, Centro de Periodistas de Investigacion)
Also, check out the IRE International Beat Page for links:
http://www.ire.org/globaltips/