“Globe International” is implementing a four-monthly project “Story-based Inquiry - Investigative reporting training” under the UNESCO, Oyu Tolgoi LLC and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) fundings.
The current project attempts to encourage the media practitioners to develop professional and independent investigative stories, based on editorial independence and solid professional ethical values.
The media legal framework is not favourable for journalsitic investigations since Mongolia is still missing some important laws: freedom of information and protection of confidential sources. The journalists still face demands to disclose their confidential sources as well as civil and criminal defamation law suits because of their critical materials. The Mongolian courts hear more than 30 defamation cases every year and number of media outltes loosing the court files is increasing. It is partially because of the professional journalism mistakes.
In 2005-2006, Globe International implemented the project Media for Transparent Governance under the UNESCO funding. We organized a basic investigative reporting training for the provincial reporters and a group of 20 Ulaanbaatar journalists wrote and published 12 corruption stories. Unfortunately, every single journalist refused to put the name under the article because the Mongolian journalists are highly self-censored. Now, it is very timely to come back to the training again because the UNESCO has produced a modern manual for investigative reporting and it is need to introduce it to as more journalists as possible. Secondly, the political situation and media landscape in Mongolia have changed since 2006.
So it is need to address the following problems by this project:
- Lack of knowledge and skills in investigative reporting
- Lack of knowldege on how to use open sources and digital tools
- Lack of knowldedge on the current media legal environment
- Lack of knowldege on protection of journalists
The proposed project will be an important instrument to develop the investisgative reporting in curbing corruption and making the public aware of wrong-doings. The action will be accompanied by training of trainers, training of journalists and establishment of online tools for self-learning.
Special attention will be paid to the building up a network of the Mongolian journalists to encourage each other and learn from each other while practicing experiences and skills obtained during the trainings.
According to the data of Press Institute of Mongolia, there are 1,781 journalists and practitioners work in 430 media outlets. In addition, there are nearly 20 journalism schools. In order to enhance quality of investigative journalism at journalism schools, the teachers have to be skilled. The project suggests to target the journalism teachers, too, to make them highly skilled in conducting their investigative reporting classes. The national trainers will be able to conduct the trainings for the working journalists in the future.
An establishment of self-learning online programme will provide the continued education for the Mongolian journalists on investigative reporting.
The project has the following objectives:
- 20 journalism teachers and Globe International trainers are trained as national trainers by an international trainer who will use the UNESCO manual for investigative reporting;
- 21 local journalists from 21 provinces trained by the national trainers and obtained knowledge and skills of investigative reporting
- 20 Ulaanbaatar journalists trained by the national trainers and obtained knowledge and skills of investigative reporting
- Self-learning tools are available for journalists through website and social media
The projects` outputs are as follows:
- Training curricula available for the training of trainers available for the journalism teachers
- Training curricula available for the journalism training on investigative reporting
- 200 copies of audio handbook available, distributed and posted at YouTube
- Web site and social media network available for self-learning and exchange of information and skills