Day Two of BIRN’s Summer School of Investigative Journalism looked at the importance of proof, how to visualise an investigation for multimedia and methods of tracking offshore companies.
In the Montenegrin coastal town of Herceg Novi, lead trainer Blake Morrison put 30 reporters from the Balkans, Belgium, Hungary and the United States through their paces in trying to prove the stories they were reading were fake.
“Get rid of possible, leave provable,” said Morrison, investigative projects editor at Reuters.
After a short break, the journalists spent three hours with US cinematographer Andrew Baker, who looked at ways to make investigative journalism visual.
“Know your story and follow it. Know your scene”, said Baker. “You have to be flexible, to know to pick up a camera or microphone, even if it is not your job. And always have a sound guy.”
Those attending the weeklong course, the 10th edition of BIRN’s Summer School, also heard from Dragan Peco, an investigative journalist with Serbian KRIK and the international Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, OCCRP, about how to track hidden offshore firms.
BIRN’s Summer School is organised in cooperation with the Media Program South East Europe of the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, The Balkan Trust for Democracy and Austrian Development Agency, the operational unit of Austrian Development Cooperation, and with support from the European Union.