“The homecoming was but an exceptional experience. I had lost hope that I would be able to to visit Syria again.” This month on #Backlight, we speak to Syrian journalists Bashar Deeb and Mais Katt about their first investigation in a newly free Syria. Listen to the episode here:

🧵REVEALED: Afghan troops who served alongside US and UK forces continue to be tortured and killed by the Taliban as Western nations weaken protections for their former allies.

🧵What’s the biggest lie the surveillance industry tells? That they only sell to legal clients. That there are red lines. But what do these companies say when they think nobody is watching? We went undercover to find out

Revealed: How Tony Blair is lobbying on behalf of tech billionaire Larry Ellison We expose former PM’s unprecedented influence over the UK govt & how this is shaped by the interests of his Institute’s largest donor & one of the world’s richest men www.newstatesman.com/politics/202... Thread

La policía francesa provocó decenas de ahogamientos al interceptar violentamente pequeñas embarcaciones que intentaban llegar al territorio de ultramar de Mayotte. Nueva investigación coordinada por @lighthousereports.com www.lighthousereports.com/investigatio...

REVEALED: French police have caused dozens of drownings by violently intercepting small boats trying to reach overseas territory Mayotte. Similar tactics are being proposed for the Channel, to try to stop people from reaching the UK.

At just a few days old, little Mohammad Ghbeis was detained inside the ICU in Damascus, his first days were marked by detention, not nurture. He was quickly moved from the ICU to an orphanage, and later to SOS Children Villages. All while his mother remained behind bars for 3 years

When Assad’s security state collapsed, locked doors opened, spilling decades of secrets. Among them: 100s of stolen children, hidden in orphanages & used to blackmail parents. We’ve done the deepest dive yet into this cruel system. Here’s what we found 🧵 www.lighthousereports.com/investigatio...

A critical EU security database with biometric info on 1.7m people is in chronic disarray, exclusive docs from @lighthousereports.com and @bloomberg.com show www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Honoured that our investigation Poison PR won the Environmental Reporting prize at @oneworldmedia.bsky.social last week, and to see key collaborator Cynthia Gichiri shortlisted as Journalist of the Year for her amazing work with Africa Uncensored.

You’ve seen the “don’t share this code with anyone” SMS messages when you log in to your most sensitive online accounts: banking, messaging, #Google , #Meta, #Amazon. But who else might have seen them before you?

Most reporting on AI examines worst-case systems deployed under the guise of efficiency. But what would a good faith effort at Ethical AI look like? For two years, we’ve been looking over the shoulder of a city trying to do things differently.

What would journalism look like if it wasn’t written for an editor, but for your best friend over dinner? In this Backlight episode, we dive into how news content creator-journalists are redefining the way stories are told and what traditional journalists can learn from them.

It’s always nice when the govt is forced to release docs/info that show they were hiding the truth from you before Evidence disclosed in court this week reveals what was going on behind the scenes as 100s of Afghan commandos were being wrongly denied relocation to the UK 🧵

Proud that our investigation with @lighthousereports.com is a finalist for this prestigious award - alongside other amazing, mostly consortium-led projects. A testament to the power of collaboration

This is somewhat concerning in light of the fact that Jenkins oversaw the rejection of resettlement applications from Afghan commandos who served alongside the SAS, many of whom were present during night raids where alleged unlawful killings by Brit troops took place www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

AI Accountability Fellow @gabrielgeiger.bsky.social revealed how #welfare systems around the world are deploying faulty #algorithms to rank people based on their risk of fraud, leading broken lives, and financial ruin. Read this story for @lighthousereports.com. pulitzercenter.org/stories/algo...

Satellite imagery analysis corroborates whistleblowers' testimony exposing widespread greenwashing across the Philippines’ national reforestation program. Davao Today, @thibico.bsky.social and Lighthouse prove instead of restoring forests, it’s often fueling deforestation. 🧵

More evidence that the UK's mass rejection of Afghan commandos was part of a war crimes cover-up We contributed to this BBC Panorama report indicating that the Afghan 'Triples' were denied relocation to Britain to prevent them testifying about unlawful killings www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/epis...

Excited that our Poison PR investigation is shortlisted for the Environmental Reporting Award!

🎙️ New episode of #Backlight is out! Want to dig deeper into financial investigations, but not sure where to start? In our latest episode, @margotgibbs.bsky.social and @giacomoza.bsky.social share how reporters can use financial clues to crack open investigations.

The Video Division I Award goes to @lighthousereports.com, La Verdad and El Paso Matters. This was a “gripping and graphic” investigation of the deadly fire inside a migrant detention center in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. www.lighthousereports.com/investigatio...

This is a v cool job in a v cool organisation, and you'd work with me and lots of v cool people

Help turn our investigations into powerful visual content. You’ll work with our media partners to create high-impact videos for social media & more and help shape how investigative journalism reaches new audiences. Remote | €40K–€50K | Full-time apply.workable.com/lighthouse-r...

Europe frames migration as a crisis—but this masks the reality of its aging population and skills shortages. Over 18 months, with 20+ journalists, across 7 countries we answered: What’s the true cost of shutting migrants out of jobs? Hear from the reporters:

Exciting news! Our investigation Smoke and Lies has been shortlisted for the @cen4infores.bsky.social Open Source Film Awards. A collaboration with La Verdad Juárez & El Paso Matters. www.info-res.org/film-awards/...

On this episode of #Backlight, award-winning reporters @karenhao.bsky.social and @gabrielgeiger.bsky.social explain how to report on #AI.

New episode of #Backlight is out! This month, we are talking about how journalists can incorporate AI reporting into their beat and hold companies and governments to account.

Impact! The Missouri PR firm that secretly profiled hundreds of food, health and environment advocates has removed the profiles from its members-only website after @lhreports.bsky.social and partners exposed their activities and potential breach of privacy laws. #PoisonPR

Disappointing news today from Croatia regarding our 2021 @lhreports.bsky.social et. al. Masked Men investigation: The State Attorney's Office concluded (3+ years later) that there is no reasonable suspicion that the officers "tortured migrants or treated them cruelly" www.index.hr/vijesti/clan...

The crimes you’re convicted of should determine your punishment, not who you are. But even in Norway – one of the “fairest” criminal justice systems – @lhreports.bsky.social & NRK reveal that there are disparities in sentence length by income and gender www.lighthousereports.com/methodology/...

Over the past few months, we have been trying to understand whether who you are plays a role in how you are sentenced in the world’s most vaunted criminal justice system: Norway bsky.app/profile/lhre...

Accessing verdicts and data for rigorous investigative reporting is hard to do in Europe. But in a new @lhreports.bsky.social investigation w/ NRK we built a database with 1000s of verdicts & conducted a rigorous analysis, providing a rare look inside www.lighthousereports.com/methodology/...

In 2022, two men were convicted for driving under the influence. Frank in a cheap, old car, unemployed with debt. Jakob in a new, expensive Audi, worth millions. Their cases were nearly identical, but their sentences could not have been further apart.

A joint piece with our friends at @lhreports.bsky.social and our own @nikolajnielsen.bsky.social, looking at how US climate-change denial and anti-vaccine protests have spread across the Atlantic — making even such a benign concept as the '15-minute city' into a battleground for conspiracy theories.

1. Facebook reminds that on these days, two years ago, we published the investigation into the secret "prisons" on board the ships of the Greece-Italy line, where refugees are illegally detained. @lhreports.bsky.social @wearesolomon.bsky.social wearesolomon.com/mag/focus-ar...

Really cool to see that our Desert Dumps collab. investigation was named as one of the 14 "(highly subjective) best of the best investigations selection from across the globe published in 2024" by @gijn.org www.linkedin.com/pulse/best-i...

Across Europe college-educated migrants are locked out of the skilled workforce due to policy failures. @publico.pt & @lhreports.bsky.social reveal how Portugal mitigated brain waste, as well as the limits of this success

Cerca de 40% dos imigrantes com formação superior estão sobrequalificados para as funções que desempenham. Uma análise do PÚBLICO, em parceria com a @lhreports.bsky.social , El País, Financial Times e Unbias the News

Another strand of a larger investigation of how US govt used corporate pr firm to advance GMO approvals in countries around the world.

The Premium Times reveals how the US government program on GMOs in Nigeria steamrolled resistance from health+environmental advocates. We discovered derogatory profiles of Nigerians who raised concerns about GMOs, the activist Nnimmo Bassey + Labour Party candidate Gbadebo Rhodes-Vivour among them.

The Rio Grande on the Texas-Mexico border has become a graveyard for migrants. In the latest episode of Backlight, we speak to @mdelbosque.bsky.social about the human toll of US border militarization and untold stories of those who drowned. 🎙️ Listen now: www.lighthousereports.com/investigatin...

A year ago, I pushed off with a kayak down the Rio Grande in the great company of Jesse Fuentes and @mdelbosque.bsky.social We entered the water from what used to be the park in Eagle Pass, Texas

And for those interested in the technical details of how the data was collected and analyzed, a very detailed write-up of our methodology on the @lhreports.bsky.social site: www.lighthousereports.com/methodology/...

It’s 5yrs and waiting since the EU boasted that a €142mn “smart borders” system would see it biometrically track people in/out of the bloc. Atos, a French IT firm cosy with Brussels, was supposed to do the bulk of the job. Documents obtained by @lhreports.bsky.social @bloomberg.com reveal a fiasco

Very proud to have coordinated this binational investigation with @washingtonpost.com @eluniversalmx.bsky.social & the @lhreports.bsky.social team!

Awesome, deep collaboration by investigative journalists on both sides of the border. Special shout-out to their determined use of open records laws to get the data.

At least 1,107 people drowned trying to cross the Rio Grande btw 2017-2023. Last year, more than 1 in 10 victims was a child. Most of the deaths in Texas occurred in Eagle Pass, the focus of Gov. Abbott’s border crackdown. Via @washingtonpost.com @lhreports.bsky.social El Universal. bit.ly/3OKqx3a

Here’s what it looked like in print in two countries today. Huge thanks to @lhreports.bsky.social & @eluniversalmx.bsky.social and the team @washingtonpost.com for the exhaustive work over a long year.

Texas has become the blueprint for the militarization of the US-Mexico border. This politically-driven show of force has sent the Rio Grande death toll soaring. We reveal for first time the true human cost of this