Uncovering Asia: The First Asian Investigative Journalism Conference

Welcome to Uncovering Asia! Your hosts will offer brief opening remarks, including ideas on how to get the most out of the packed two days of workshops, panels, and special events we've put together for you. Next comes a showing of Investigative Impact, a five-minute video just released by the Global Investigative Journalism Network on the extraordinary impact of investigative reporting around the world. 

Not too long ago, investigative reporting was little known in the Asian media and a conference such as this would have drawn just a few dozen devotees. Today we are in a midst of an investigative ferment. Despite intimidation and violence, Asian journalists are digging into corruption, the environment, food and product safety, trafficking, and human rights abuses as never before. New freedoms, new technologies, new markets and new laws are helping make this happen. 

Journalist Sheila Coronel -- co-founder of the pioneering Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism and now academic dean at the prestigious Columbia Journalism School -- looks to the past as well as the future, and sees that Asia's journalists are also drawing from the well of their own traditions as they move into the future. She finds them building an edifice of accountability reporting on the foundations of their own histories and cultures, and mobilizing citizens, helping them keep their watchful eyes on power.

Investigative journalism has spread around the world in the past 20 years. Extraordinary work is being done in China, India, Korea, Southeast Asia. But even in Western societies with long traditions of "muckraking", the practice of investigative reporting has risen and fallen, often with movements for reform and changing economic times. What does 21st Century Asia have in store for investigative journalism, and what do investigative journalists have in store for Asia? How will changing technology, citizen journalism, and open government affect the future of in-depth journalism? Will even closed governments have to open up to engage in global trade and development? Will Asian media finds ways to adapt to new technology and not lose their financial base like Western media? Can sensational, daily-driven media develop an investigative tradition?

To address these questions and more, we've assembled a prestigious group of top editors and thinkers on journalism representing six countries at various stages of development: China, India, Japan, Myanmar, Nepal, and Thailand. Their answers may surprise you.

Thanks to the Omidyar Network for special support of this plenary session.