The Pulitzer Center Will Participate in Five Panels in the Perugia International Journalism Festival 2023

The Perugia International Journalism Festival (IJF) is the biggest annual media event in Europe. This year marks the seventeenth edition of IJF which will take place from Wednesday 19 to Sunday 23 April 2023. The Pulitzer Center will participate in five panels. 

All festival sessions are live-streamed. The live-streams will be available for viewing on the festival website.

See dates and panels below:

Thursday, April 20, 17:00 - 17:50 CET

Suspicion Machines: Investigating Fraud Prediction Algorithms

Panelists: Gabriel Geiger (Investigative reporter for Lighthouse Reports); Daniel Howden (Managing director for Lighthouse Reports); Dhruv Mehrotra (Investigative reporter for WIRED); Marina Walker Guevara (Executive Editor of the Pulitzer Center)

Description of the panel:

Across the world, experimental technology is being deployed that promises to recover hundreds of millions of euros in alleged welfare fraud. Some of the most vulnerable members of societies are being stripped of benefits and placed under investigation after being flagged by opaque systems whose inner workings are impossible for them to question. An international team of journalists gained unprecedented access to one of these "suspicion machines" and revealed the extent of discrimination and bias encoded within. How can more journalists interrogate these predictive algorithms and the claims of accuracy and fairness being made about them? What skills and support are needed for this form of accountability reporting?

Organized in association with Lighthouse Reports.

Friday, April 21, 11:00 - 11:50 CET

Radical Sharing: 15 Years of Cross-Border Collaborative Journalism

Panelists: Bastian Obermayer (Investigative reporter and author); Laurent Richard (Director of Forbidden Stories); Gerard Ryle (Director of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists); Drew Sullivan (Co-founder and publisher of OCCRP); Marina Walker Guevara (Executive Editor of the Pulitzer Center)

Description of the panel: 

As more and more reporting partnerships take hold across the globe, it’s almost hard to imagine a time when journalists were not working together. But it wasn’t always so. Industry pioneers talk about the early days of cross border collaborative investigative reporting, how it got started, and what’s on tap for the future.

Organized in association with Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project.

Saturday, April 22, 12:00 - 13:00 CET

Environmental Investigations: Forensic Work With Geospatial Data

Panelists: Gustavo Faleiros (Environmental Investigations Editor at the Pulitzer Center); Kuek Ser Kuang Keng (Data Editor at the Pulitzer Center); Fernanda Wenzel (Fellow Rainforest Investigations Network)

Description of the panel: 

A hands-on workshop with a detailed case study of an investigation in Brazil. Using high-resolution satellite images and data on deforestation and land properties, journalist Fernanda Wenzel has published reports showing the step-by-step process of land grabbing. The project is the series Ladrões de Floresta (Forest Thieves), published by The Intercept Brasil in partnership with the Rainforest Investigations Network (RIN), in which the journalist overlays several layers of information such as deforestation data, land ownership, and records of environmental crimes by Brazilian authorities. The results of this investigation are beneficial for journalists working on environmental investigations worldwide. The audience will preferably be journalists interested in geospatial analysis and applying it to environmental degradation and climate change projects.

This activity is based on the methodology used by Fellows of the Rainforest Investigations Network. The network, created by the Pulitzer Center, has been working for about three years with journalists from countries in the Amazon, the Congo Basin, and Southeast Asia.

Saturday, April 22, 17:00 - 17:50 CET

The Importance of Community Networks for Climate Journalism

Panelists: Gustavo Faleiros (Environmental Investigations Editor at the Pulitzer Center); Jessica Davis (Senior Director Data Initiatives & News Automation USA Today); Katharina Kropshfer (Co-founder of Austrian Climate Journalism Network); Mitali Mukherjee (Director of journalist programs at RISJ)

Reporting about the climate crisis can feel incredibly lonely, but it does not have to be. Communities of climate change journalists have multiplied in the past couple of years, ranging from country-wide initiatives to large international programs, including the Oxford Climate Journalism Network. This panel will explore the different ways these initiatives take, why their founders saw a need to create them, and what added value they bring to audiences, media organizations and individual reporters. We will explore how a national climate journalism network operates in Austria, the inner workings of a global investigative reporting network on rainforests, and how the largest U.S. newspaper publisher is connecting innovation to climate reporting.

Organized in association with Oxford Climate Journalism Network.

Saturday, April 22, 17:00 - 17:50 CET

Truth Decay: Science Misinformation and Journalistic Responses

Panelists: Kat Eschner (Affordability reporter at TVO); Corey Powell (Co-founder of OpenMind magazine); Ben Rein (Postdoctoral scholar in neuroscience at Stanford University); Seema Yasmin (Director of the Stanford Health Communication Initiative) 

Description of the panel:

This panel will feature a conversation about the many urgent challenges of scientific misinformation and the role journalists might play in exposing and countering pseudoscience and science denialism. Attendees will hear perspectives on misinformation in mass media and societal and journalistic techniques for covering misinformation. Attendees will also learn about a new Pulitzer Center grant opportunity for innovative journalism projects that tackle science denial and misinformation.

Sponsored by Pulitzer Center and HHMI’s Science and Educational Media Group.