European Investigative Collaboration DER SPIEGEL and Eight Other Media Found Investigative Network
News reporting is and remains at the core of DER SPIEGEL's mission. Finding the news and then placing it in the larger context is the primary duty of any newsmagazine. Increasingly, reporting on stories goes beyond national borders, which is why investigative reporting of the quality sought by SPIEGEL often involves international networks in which journalists from several countries exchange reporting and information. In the same way that SPIEGEL has the best access to secret or classified information in Germany, other media organizations have similar sourcing in their own countries. By combining this joint reporting power, you can uncover unreported news stories, get better access to documents and information and also provide the real background and context behind stories.
For this reason, SPIEGEL has taken the step of founding the European Investigative Collaboration (EIC) together with media organizations involved in investigative reporting from eight European countries. SPIEGEL's partners include Der Falter (Austria), El Mundo (Spain), Le Soir (Belgium), Mediapart (France), L'Espresso (Italy), Newsweek Serbia (Serbia), Politiken (Denmark) and The Black Sea/RCIJ (Romania). A first meeting of the network took place at SPIEGEL headquarters in Hamburg in at the beginning of December. "EIC will continue to grow and it will further bolster our work in investigative reporting," says SPIEGEL Editor in Chief Klaus Brinkbäumer.
The first joint reporting project of the alliance is research into the origins of the weapons used in the Paris terrorist attacks that took place in January and November. SPIEGEL reporters and their international partners followed the trail in Serbia, Slovakia, Belgium, Denmark, Sweden, France and Germany. Reporters Jürgen Dahlkamp, Jörg Schmitt, Andreas Ulrich, Wolf Wiedmann-Schmidt and Stefan Candea were able to obtain among other things classified ballistics reports, French police reports on raids and interrogations as well as Danish and German court files. The reporting resulting from the initiative shows that the EU's weapons policies in recent decades have been a failure. Despite police warnings of a present and deadly threat, the EU did not move to close critical loopholes in gun laws.
