Abraji announces nine international guests for its international conference

The impact of artificial intelligence on journalism, projects that investigate racism in law enforcement and the judicial system, Russian journalism in exile, collaborative associations in Africa, international initiatives supporting whistleblowers who expose human rights abuses and corporate misconduct, and the growth of non-profit outlets in the United States and Latin America.

These are some of the topics to be addressed by nine foreign professionals confirmed to attend Abraji's International Congress of Investigative Journalism, the largest journalism event in the country. The 18th edition will be held in São Paulo from June 29 to July 2 (Thursday to Sunday), in a hybrid format, with simultaneous online transmission of part of the content and remote participation of some speakers.

Wesley Lowery, one of the most active investigative reporters in the United States, who worked for the Washington Post and Boston Globe newspapers, and for the team of the CBS network program "60 Minutes", is coming to Brazil for the first time to talk about his field of expertise: crimes against the black population. In 2016, he won the Pulitzer Prize with the project that surveyed statistics of deaths of Afro-Americans by police officers. Lowery has covered all the protests organized by the Black Lives Matter movement and was even arrested in 2014 in Ferguson, Missouri, while following the demonstrations against the death of young black man Michael Brown. He is an editor, columnist, and author of the bestseller "They Can't Kill Us All", still untranslated in Brazil. He is currently a fellow at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism, in New York.

Another keynote speaker is scientist Ilica Mahajan, from the Marshall Project, a non-profit news organization focused on criminal justice issues in the United States. She recently worked on the "Testify" project, which analyzed tens of thousands of Ohio court files to find out why 75 percent of convicted prisoners in the region are black and brown.

Dorothy Tucker, investigative reporter for the CBS O&O in Chicago, is another confirmed American guest. A veteran journalist who has been honored numerous times throughout her career. In 2021, she won two regional Edward R. Murrow awards and was part of the news team that won a national Murrow for overall excellence. Tucker is also the recipient of the 2021 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Chicago Association of Journalists.

To talk about how independent Russian journalists work in exile, Abraji invited Roman Badanin, founder of Agentstvo, a collaborative agency created in 2021 that brings together reporters targeted for repression and persecution by the Putin government. He emigrated to Stanford, California, after Proekt, a website he created to do independent reporting, was classified by the Russian Prosecutor General's Office as "undesirable." In effect, his freelancers and sources could be criminally prosecuted. Before leaving Moscow, he led a major investigation that showed connections between Russian officials and businessmen in shady transactions. He had his home raided by the police and articulated the departure of his team to neighboring countries.

One of Abraji's first supporters, Rosental Calmon Alves is another confirmed speaker. A Knight Center Professorship of Journalism and director of the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas at the University of Texas School of Journalism in Austin (US), he is a pioneer of online journalism: in 1995 he directed the launching of the first Brazilian outlet on the Internet, Jornal do Brasil. He is also a founding member of the American Journalism Project, a more than $100 million fund that invests in local journalism start-ups in the US to help them become economically sustainable.

The threats and other impacts of Artificial Intelligence on journalism will also be discussed by foreign speakers from prestigious universities. Jonathan Soma, an American programmer who has developed major projects in the field of data journalism and who worked for ProPublica and several newspapers like the New York Times, teaches at Columbia University in New York. Tshepo Tshabalala runs a research and training group at Polis, an international think-tank anchored at the London School of Economics and Political Science in England and has worked for several media outlets in Africa.

The first Nigerian to be invited to the Abraji Congress is Motunrayo Alaka, one of the best-known advocates of collaborative and independent journalism in her country. She founded the Wole Soyinka Centre for Investigative Journalism which brings together 1,050 reporters in 100 different media organizations and has published 210 special reports on girls' education, health, oil and gas exploration, politics, and governance. She advocates ethical and sustainable journalism that strives for good governance, inclusion, and social justice.

French journalist Delphine Halgand-Mishra will be attending the event remotely to share her experiences with the Signals Network, which advocates for public transparency and supports journalists and whistleblowers who leak secret information of public interest kept secret. A former director of Reporters Without Borders, she is specialized in violations of freedom of speech and press freedom, and for years was an economics correspondent for French newspapers such as Le Monde.

"The names confirmed so far demonstrate Abraji's effort to make an event increasingly plural and diverse, including in terms of region, race and gender. Several viewpoints only enrich journalism", says the executive secretary, Cristina Zahar.

A record of suggestions

Based on the 300 suggestions sent —a record of proposals coming from the external public, the board of directors, the team and partners— Abraji is now preparing the congress program. Since its creation, 18 years ago, Abraji's Congress was conceived as a collaborative conference: made by and for journalists. "There were very good ideas that we are still processing, analyzing and distributing in 15 axes, such as threats to democracy, disinformation, environmental issues, specialized coverage, scoops and the events linked to the January 8th coup acts", says Katia Brembatti, Abraji's president.

This year, the Congress honoree is Caco Barcellos. Registration to participate in the event will open at the end of April. In addition to the three days dedicated to several journalism themes, Abraji will hold two parallel events: the X Investigative Journalism Research Seminar and the 5th Data Sunday.