De bijeenkomst 'Birma, verkiezingen & journalistiek - een (on)mogelijke combinatie?' had plaats in Pakhuis de Zwijger op 16 juni, van 15:00 tot 17:00. Interessante sprekers hebben hun entree gedaan.

Spreker Hans Hulst, journalist en schrijver van het boek In de schaduw van de generaals werd op 15 juni geinterviewd door Radio 1 over de bijeenkomst en de verkiezingen in Birma.

Political decision are made across borders. Business and trade goes across borders. Criminals establish networks to run their activities in various countries. But very, very few journalists do they same. Focused on each their national target group, journalists struggle with cut-backs at their media and with editors, who are reluctant to cover foreign affairs developments.

Cooperating with journalists from other countries, however, has proven to heighten the quality of the content and often bears enriching contact with committed colleagues.

The new European Fund for Investigative Journalism - Journalismfund.eu - will support journalists, who have good ideas for cross-border research. Support for travels, translations and simply time for research can be granted through the new initiative. Actually there are loads of stories to be written, and many others to be improved immensely by looking into the cross-border realities of today’s world.

Journalismfund.eu is rooted in the growing community of journalists who under the headlines of ’investigative journalism’ and ’research journalism’ work on sharing best experiences, developping good research methods and sharing them with colleagues and new generations of journalists.

The parent organisation of Journalismfund.eu is the Belgian Pascal Decroos Fund, which has a long experience in supporting journalism through research grants.

Organisations like Journalismfund.eu or the Pascal Decroos Fund are becoming increasingly important, according to a report of 2007 by Charles Lewis , founder of Public Integrity and president of The Fund for Independence in Journalism and professor and  founding executive editor of the new Investigative Reporting Workshop at the American University School of Communication, in Washington, D.C.