Pulitzer Center's Call to Whistleblowers

Editor's Note: The "secure infrastructure" mentioned below has been replaced with communication methods mentioned here.

This week, the Pulitzer Center is launching a call for action to whistleblowers to share information with the Rainforest Investigations Network (RIN). Formed in 2021, the RIN is a leading group of investigative journalists from 10 countries. The network partners with global outlets, such as Bloomberg, NBC, The New York Times, and influential journalism organizations, such as Armando.info in Venezuela and Tempo magazine in Indonesia, among others.

As the RIN journalists investigate the root causes and actors behind the accelerated destruction of the tropical forests in the Amazon, Congo, and Southeast Asia regions, we have established a secure infrastructure to receive information from anonymous sources.

Documents and other sensitive information can be submitted to the network via SecureDrop, a repository only accessible using TOR browser and connected to a dedicated server, managed by a small group of editors at the Pulitzer Center. SecureDrop was developed by the Freedom of the Press Foundation and has been adopted by major media outlets around the world, such as The Washington Post and The Intercept.

All information received by RIN will be reviewed internally by network editors at the Pulitzer Center. This will allow us to identify who among the network members are best positioned to verify, validate, and, if merited, report out the leads shared with us.

Please check our page with detailed instructions on how to leak information to the RIN at https://pulitzercenter.org/leak

Why This Is Important

Some of the most important stories of the past decades were done with the collaboration of brave people who decided to denounce wrongdoing by sharing sensitive information of public interest with investigative journalists.

In our current climate emergency, we believe that the Rainforest Investigations Network can provide a crucial venue to unveil environmental crimes and their impact on local and global communities. The RIN team is made up of editors, researchers, and data analysts with vast experience in cross-border investigative collaborations related to money flows, corporate and government wrongdoing, and environmental crimes.

The Pulitzer Center’s executive editor, Marina Walker Guevara, co-led some of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists’ (ICIJ) most consequential investigations, including the Panama Papers and the Paradise Papers.

“We are excited to be able to offer whistleblowers and other concerned citizens secure ways to share information of public interest with our network of investigative reporters,” said Walker Guevara. “We will use the power of cross-border, collaborative investigative journalism to hold the powerful to account and to raise awareness about the scale of the destruction we are witnessing.”