Pandora Papers certify the importance of collaborative journalism

Journalists participating in the Pandora Papers, The deep cross-border investigation that revealed the concealment of wealth in tax havens from hundreds of wealthy people and political leaders, highlighted this Friday the importance of collaborative journalism and quality content.

During the panel “The Pandora Papers, quintessence of quality journalism ”, which was held today within the 77th General Assembly of the Inter-American Press Association (IAPA), the moderator, María Llorente, highlighted that“ cooperation is key to fighting censorship , the attacks and even the murders of journalists ”.

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“Quality journalism is more and more important than ever”, The director for Latin America of the AFP agency reiterated, and then put as an example the scope of the investigation of the so-called Pandora Papers, which involved the participation of 600 press men from 117 countries.

“It was a tsunami of (computer) data,” acknowledged Emilia Díaz-Struk, coordinator for Latin America of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), who on October 3 published this work in which 2,9 terabytes of data, almost 12 million documents.

In his case, Díaz-Struck had to coordinate more than one hundred journalists from 19 Latin American countries who were part of this work that required two years of investigation.

“There is a great responsibility to take care of all of us,” he said, after recalling that some of those who participated in the project work in countries where the situation of press freedom “is complicated”, and therefore there is a confidentiality agreement not to put at risk to none of them.

Compared to the so-called Panama Papers, another of the ICIJ investigations, Díaz-Struck stated that the latest publication, which is the “largest journalistic collaboration” that they have made to date in the consortium, involves more than 300 leaders politicians and heads of state, which is almost double what is disclosed in the Panama Papers.

Among those who have hidden fortunes to evade taxes are 14 active world leaders, including three Latin Americans: the Ecuadorian Guillermo Lasso, the Chilean Sebastián Piñera and the Dominican Luis Abinader, according to Pandora’s papers.

Precisely, this Friday Ecuadorian media announced that the Prosecutor’s Office of that country opened on October 18 a preliminary investigation against President Lasso for alleged tax fraud, after the scandal caused by the journalistic investigation.

Lasso, who has also said that he will not appear before a commission of the National Assembly (Parliament) of his country considering that he has no competence to investigate it, has expressed himself in harsh terms against the newspaper El Universo, of Ecuador, which published the investigation , and against the journalist of that medium Mónica Almeida.

“When this happens in contexts of polarization, journalists who publish these things consider that we serve this or that interest,” said the journalist, who was part of the panel.

He recalled that in the case of the Panama Papers, during the government of President Rafael Correa, the names, photos and Twitter accounts of the Ecuadorian journalists who were part of the investigation were published, and some demonstrated in front of the newspaper’s headquarters claiming “the papers.”

“It was intimidating, they took out all the ‘trolls’,” he acknowledged.

In turn, Hugo Alconada Mon, from the Argentine newspaper La Nación, explained the great work involved in manual or electronic searches of the almost 12 million folders, “some of which could have dozens of documents and files in PDF”, and that in his case it was key to have a data engineer who is not a journalist.

The 77th General Assembly of the IAPA, which this year was again in virtual format, celebrates today the last of its four days with the approval of its reports on press freedom in the countries of the region, conclusions and resolutions.

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Deshawn