About

The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists tells stories that punch through the noise, showing how the world really works, triggering positive change.

We are driven by the belief that citizens have the right to be better informed, that access to independently-sourced facts is not only essential for democracy but is also a fundamental human right.

Transparency is at the center of everything we do.

We are operating at a time when investigative journalism has never been more important, or more challenged.

The biggest threats to our societies, and to all of us, have gone global, stretching the capacity of traditional newsrooms. Vital public interest reporting must compete against a flood of misinformation that confuses, alienates and divides.

To fight these forces, ICIJ has directed the largest cross-border reporting initiatives in history, convincing reporters across the globe to set aside traditional rivalries to uncover corruption, abuses of power and grave harms inflicted on the world’s most vulnerable people. 

Our track record of breaking stories that rock the world has made ICIJ an indispensable news source, and a leader in the global battle for truth.

WHAT WE DO

Our model represents a new departure for journalism, persuading the biggest and the smallest media organizations in the world to work together to do the watchdog journalism they used to do alone.

We have collaborated with more than 140 newspapers, television and radio stations, and online media outlets, including The Washington Post, Le Monde, the BBC, El Pais, The Guardian, the Asahi Shimbun, the Canadian Broadcasting Corp., the Australian Broadcasting Corp.,  along with small, regional nonprofit journalism organizations in Europe, North America, Africa, Asia and Latin America.

Our earth-shaking stories about injustice and abuse of power are made available — and relevant — to billions of people each time we publish.

ICIJ relies entirely on donations to fund our work. We do not pay media partners. Nor do they pay us for publishing our projects. Our donors are our rock stars — we would not exist without them.

OUR IMPACT

ICIJ has redefined what investigative journalism looks like in the 21st century. We have repeatedly conducted journalistic collaborations so big, so visionary and so aspirational that they are unlike any others in history.

We have shined a light on the deadly effects of agrochemicals in the sugarcane fields of Latin America, on the brutal confinement of immigrants in detention centers in the United States and the failure of the World Bank to protect people living in the path of large development projects in Asia.

We brought together more than 75 journalists from 14 countries to reveal how Uighurs and other Muslim minorities were subjected to surveillance and mass internment without charge in the Xinjiang region of China.

We showed how two decades of corrupt deals made Isabel dos Santos Africa’s wealthiest woman while oil-and-diamond-rich Angola remains one of the world’s poorest countries. We did this by sharing more than 750,000 secret documents with more than 120 journalists from 20 countries, leading to a worldwide freeze of her assets.

A team of more than 250 journalists from 36 countries exposed the human cost of defective and poorly-regulated medical devices, leading to the worldwide withdrawal of textured breast implants linked to a rare cancer in women.

Our Offshore Leaks, Panama Papers, Paradise Papers, Pandora Papers and FinCEN Files investigations were the biggest cross-border journalism projects ever. They revealed secrets of the rich and powerful and involved separate teams of hundreds of reporters spread across 80 countries, working in more than 30 languages and combing through more than 25 million documents.

Our work has shaken the establishment and led to public protests, multiple arrests, sweeping legal reform and official inquiries in more than 70 countries, and to the resignations of the leaders of Pakistan, Iceland and Malta after allegations of corruption.

We helped bring about the Corporate Transparency Act in the United States, hailed as the biggest anti-corruption measure since the Patriot Act of 2001. Our work has also been credited for helping bring more than 130 countries together to sign a worldwide minimum tax rate as a measure to stop giant corporations avoiding their responsibilities.

Our work has been honored repeatedly at gatherings to bestow the world’s most prestigious journalism awards, including the Pulitzer Prizes. In 2021, ICIJ was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for reporting that made it harder for arms dealers and people smugglers to launder their profits.  

OUR NETWORK

ICIJ retains a network of trusted journalists, which has grown by invitation to more than 290 of the best investigative reporters from more than 100 countries and territories.

Collaboration promotes greater accuracy and depth in our work, through peer scrutiny across cultural, linguistic and journalistic traditions. It leads to journalism that is more transparent and less likely to be dismissed as biased, erroneous or inconsequential.

We provide a layer of security to journalists and media outlets in an era when press freedoms are under attack. Stories suppressed in one country can appear in another. Journalists under threat know they are never alone.

Our radically collaborative and technology-driven approach gives reporters the opportunity to uncover things that the public should know but doesn’t. We collectively alter political and legislative landscapes by challenging the way people see and understand the world.

We also give financially-stressed media companies the ability to tackle large, complex projects without one newsroom having to bear the entire cost.

OUR TEAM

ICIJ is headquartered in Washington, D.C., and has core team members in the U.S., Egypt, Australia, France, Spain, Belgium, Hungary, Serbia, the U.K. and Ireland. We have regional coordinators in Asia, Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, Europe and Eastern Europe.

We build and maintain cutting-edge tools that can pick apart massive and complex data sets, using machine learning and other aspects of artificial intelligence. We train hundreds of reporters each year, many from poorer countries. ICIJ also contributes to conferences and events, passing on tips and techniques, and makes its technology free for other journalists to use.

Our methods allow us to operate across language barriers, time zones and cultural differences to make our journalism as globally representative as possible.