An introduction to Reporters United
Reporters United is a network of reporters aiming to support investigative journalism in Greece, collaborate in cross-border projects with journalists and news outlets from around the world, and — when necessary — publish on its own platform the stories that struggle to find their place in the Greek press.
Reporters United is a non-profit organisation (Civil Non-Profit Company – AMKE) with offices in the Romantso incubator in the centre of Athens. Reporters United has the following objectives:
- To promote bold, independent investigative journalism through concrete and practical steps such as the setup of a platform for safe whistleblowing and the systematic filing of FOI (Freedom of Information) requests.
- To offer services and tools to assist the work of journalists in Greece, such as digital security workshops and — eventually — a desperately needed structure for pro bono legal support.
- To facilitate collaboration between journalists in Greece and their counterparts abroad, and participate in cross-border investigative journalism projects, including through European networks such as Investigate Europe and working with partners of the European Investigations Collaboration (EIC) network.
- To develop into a hub bringing together journalists, developers, legal experts, technologists and individuals from other fields which are shaping contemporary journalism — what the Logan Symposium of the Centre for Investigative Journalism (in which Reporters United participated) has called Collective Intelligence .
- To provide a physical meeting point at the Romantso incubator in the centre of Athens, where we organise regular meetings between journalists, workshops and public events curated by journalists of the network.
- To produce and publish investigative journalism in Greece and around the world, where possible in partnerships with international media outlets.
- To publish on its own internet channels, in Greek and English,
stories which struggle to find their place in other Greek media outlets. - To support, via its collaboration with its partners and experts from other fields, journalistic methods and practices which are still relatively unknown in Greece, e.g. a platform for whistleblowers with the Open Technologies Alliance (evangelists of open data and the open source culture in Greece), FOI requests with Vouliwatch (pioneers in filing FOI requests in Greece), the introduction of the concept of algorithmic accountability in partnership with Algorithm Watch.
- To connect, support and collaborate with journalists active outside Athens, in the (often problematic) field of local journalism in Greece.
- To restore a relationship of trust with the public based on practices which ensure transparency and independence: disclosure of our sources of funding, binding rules regarding our funding (no funding from the state or political parties, from corporations or from foundations which have a dominant position in the country’s public life), and disclosure of conflicts of interest for the journalists of the network.
- To engage the reporters of this network in the decision-making process of Reporters United and to establish a prototype of a fair sharing revenue model.
- To experiment with new models of creating and disseminating journalistic content with the aim of financial sustainability (e.g. membership model, agency model, syndication, etc.).
- To develop partnerships with organisations which are not primarily journalistic in nature, such as Open Technologies Alliance, Vouliwatch and HomoDigitalis in Greece, Arena For Journalism, Centre for Investigative Journalism, Whistleblowing International Network outside Greece.
Reporters United is a network of reporters aiming to support investigative journalism in Greece. It is a hub in a larger network with foreign journalists and international media. It is a platform for publishing stories which – for a variety of reasons – struggle to find a place elsewhere. Finally, it is a venue for experimentation, a laboratory for endeavours which in Greece are usually dismissed as naïve or futile but which we consider vital.
Reporters United has been registered as a Civil Non-Profit Company (AMKE) since 2019. Our Articles of Incorporation can be found here.
We chose to register as a Civil Non-Profit Company (rather than an Association or a Co-Op) because we believe this legal format best fits the nature of our project.
- R-U is a non-profit
- We are not interested in distributing profits among members
- It is not a closed project like a Co-Operative, but is open to all the investigative reporting community
- The AMKE format allows us to support ourselves sustainably through supplying services and content to cooperating media outlets, but also through fundraising
- We needed a functional and agile model when establishing R-U
At its establishment, R-U has two partners, Nikolas Leontopoulos and Christoforos Kasdaglis.
After an initial period of bedding-in, our aim is to experiment with different models of collective governance and ownership.
Different versions of the idea have been kicked about over time without ever materialising.
In 2011 we made the first attempt to found a journalistic organization with the same name, , but the endeavour foundered on bureaucracy.
In 2012 we started from a nucleus of five journalists – the idea belonged to Tassos Telloglou, and was implemented by Kostas Efimeros of ThePressProject, HarryKaranikas, Nikolas Leontopoulos and Jean Souliotis – to try and form an association of investigative journalists. Around 15 journalists ended up contributing to the project, however the discussions were inconclusive, largely because of personal differences among the participants (right-wing vs. left-wing, establishment vs. anti-establishment, pro-bailout vs. anti-bailout etc.).
During the Greek crisis, while the country was the focus of international media reporting, we believed that Reporters United could act as an agency connecting Greek journalists, photographers and videographers with foreign media outlets. Many of us collaborated on such work informally, sharing ideas, contacts, access to foreign outlets, fixing jobs.
This time around, we seem to be more successful than on previous attempts, dedicating time and resources to our legal incorporation, financial management, the development of web pages, partnerships with other organisations, global networking.
We picture Reporters United as comprising three circles:
Firstly, the Team which runs it. Our contributors to date include Nikolas Leontopoulos, Christoforos Kasdaglis, Georgia Nakou (editors); Stavros Malichudis (community editor); Thodoris Chondrogiannos, Myrto Boutsi, Eurydice Bersi, Corina Petridi (reporters); Sotiris Sideris (data analysis); George Sgouros (finance); Komninos Doulgeris (IT developer); Kostas Polatoglou (logo and web design); Alexia Barakou (animations, illustration), and lawyer Clio Papapantoleon (legal support).
The second circle is the Network which is made up of journalists supporting the project,, who have a number of rights and obligations (relating primarily to ethics and transparency). Look out for a list of participants coming soon.
Reporters United is not a closed system, in fact we aspire to be the broadest and most open journalist ecosystem in Greece. Let’s call this circle our Community.
There are two more circles we envisage: Partnerships, and our Advisory Board. More about them in later sections.
We set three main conditions:
- Members must be a professional reporter or photojournalist
- Members must not be a publisher or have an executive role at a major media outlet
- Members must not have a disqualifying conflict of interest (such as a professional relationship with a political party, major company, state body, etc.)
- Members must comply with R•U’s principles concerning transparency and funding.
In our experience, conflicts of interest have not been adequately acknowledged or addressed as part of professional journalistic practice in Greece. It is central to the Reporters United project that we explicitly address this crucial ethical issue in a mature, active and conscious manner.
Our members and partners are obliged to provide information regarding potential conflicts of interest stemming from their political and economic ties. In practical terms, this means members and contributors:
- must not have any disqualifying conflicts of interest (a professional relationship with a political party, major company, state body or NGO)
- must disclose in their bio on the Reporters United site any potential conflict of interest
Our Conflicts of Interest policy will be under constant review in response to comments and debate with the membership and wider community of Reporters United.
Naturally. It is clear that we are trying to build a network, a community which will comprise professional journalists of all types, from journalists on the staff of media outlets to freelancers and unemployed reporters. In other words, participation in the community:
- Is not incompatible with working or contributing to an information medium
- Does not equate to responsibility for (or even knowledge of) reports produced or published by Reporters United.
The endeavour is open to any journalist, photographer and videographer, as long as they have none of the conflicts covered in the relevant section of the FAQ.
We do not believe in apolitical journalism or in absolute objectivity. As journalists we have political views and these are reflected in our choice of subjects, our reporting priorities, and where we choose to publish our work.
We do nevertheless believe in the possibility of coexistence and communication between journalists who hold different political views, and even more so in the necessity of this coexistence despite the challenges it brings. We would like the Reporters United community to express a broad pluralism with respect to political views, age, sex, professional status (freelancers, permanent staff, unemployed), nationality, and the format and genre of journalism that members practice.
It is, in the sense that it publishes journalistic content, but for us it is equally important to intervene on issues to do with education, collaboration, networking, and ethics in journalism. As you can see from our introductory note “What is Reporters United?”, most of our aims relate to issues of institutions, culture, technology, ethics and education.
In any case, our relationship with Greek media outlets is complex and contradictory:
Firstly, many members of our community work for media outlets as permanent staff or freelancers. It is clear that participation in Reporters United is in no way incompatible with having a professional relationship with a media outlet.
Secondly, media outlets, both Greek and foreign, are for us potential partners as end publishers. We will seek to publish our reporting with them, much as the Bureau of Investigative Journalism does in the UK, or collaborate on co-productions, as ProPublica does in the US.
Thirdly, on the other hand, we are all familiar with the limitation on independence faced by most media outlets in Greece, and the role they (or their owners) play in the country’s political and economic life. These issues fall well within the scope of our intended subject matter. In other words, the fact that media outlets are potential clients will not prevent us from publishing stories about them.
Yes – however, while this our main raison d’être it may take some time to produce a steady flow of content.
We propose to manage content in two ways, although we recognise that from the point of view of the public these two ways are not clearly distinct:
- Stories under the Reporters United banner
These are reports that will be published on the Reporters United platform, for which R•U assumes the responsibility of production and publication, often in collaboration with other media, Greek or international. These reports follow a conventional editorial process, in which R•U has an active role. Where possible, the publication will include primary sources such as documents, FOI requests, transcripts or audio of interviews, diaries etc.
- Stories under the Reporters United banner
- Articles by journalists in the R-U network published in their personal blogs within the R-U platform
Reporters United will not have any editorial role or intervention, and, correspondingly, the content of the publications will not bind Reporters United. We view the blogs as a platform for the exercise in freedom of expression and press freedom.
- Articles by journalists in the R-U network published in their personal blogs within the R-U platform
The writer of each blog takes full responsibility for their publications.
In extreme cases, if the editorial team deems that the published material contains inaccuracies, defamations or hate speech, it can refuse to publish it (it may make sense for such materials to be referred to the reporters in the network to deliberate and vote on whether to publish).
Reporters United and its reporters will also be given the opportunity to respond to published blogs, comment on it or express their disagreement.
In the final analysis, this is the price of exercising our freedom of speech.
It will be open.
Up until now, the endeavour has been self-funded, supplemented by revenue from collaborations with foreign media. Already in the first two years since the foundation of Reporters United, our collaborations with international media and networks have allowed us to cover a portion of our costs. We will keep searching for other sources of funding, while trying to maximise our revenues through collaborations.
At the back of our mind is the belief that an endeavour that can demonstrate its independence (see more on our strict funding guidelines below), while proving that it can produce strong journalism on difficult topics under any political administration, can find supporters willing to pay for its continued existence. Reporters United readers can support our endeavour through donations or voluntary subscriptions.
We would prefer to fail and close shop than to do something which resembles something which already exists or replicates the weaknesses we see in our space. We will either do something truly independent and transparent or we will do nothing at all.
In practice, this means excluding funding which comes from:
- The Greek state
- The private sector (including individual business people and businesses)
- Political parties
- Large foreign states (including the USA, China, Russia, Germany, the UK, France and any permanent members of the UN Security Council, as well as the European Commission)
- Greek charitable foundations with a dominant presence in the social, cultural and economic life of the country (namely the Stavros Niarchos Foundation and the Onassis Foundation)
- Foundations connected with large business interests in Greece (for example, the foundations linked to the Latsis, Vardinoyannis, Leventis, Laskaridis and Daskalopoulos families)
- Foreign foundations with a dominant role in social, cultural and economic life (for example, the Open Society Foundation)
- Foreign foundations with a direct or indirect relationship to large political parties (for example the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung). Regarding foundations linked to smaller political parties, Reporters United will decide on a case-by-case basis. This should not be construed as a loophole: in October 2020 we rejected one such opportunity on ethical grounds.
It goes without saying that independent investigative reporting funded by the State Department (or the Kremlin, the German Chancellery etc.), Coca-Cola or the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is inconceivable.
Many colleagues consider this approach futile. We believe that it is the only possible approach, the only path to true independence and sustainability.
Reporters United is our attempt to test our principles in practice, and we intend to pursue it with transparency and integrity. If the project fails, it will be an honest failure and it will leave its mark through truly independent journalism with real impact.
We MAY receive funding from:
- Foundations of the Greek diaspora
- Foreign foundations that support journalistic initiatives, provided they do not have ties to the governments of the major powers mentioned above
- Crowdfunding in Greece, among the Greek diaspora and other international sources
With regards to the Greek diaspora and other international sources, funders/sponsors must not have any business interests in Greece, ties to the Greek state, and professional activities that they are involved in must not have interests seriously affected by policies of the Greek state (e.g. the shipping sector).
It is hard to have complete transparency, especially in a multifaceted, collective project. It is not possible to police what any journalist does or what any entity like Reporters United does, and nor do we set out to do this. However, we can agree on some basic rules of transparency, where this pertains to the two dimensions of the problem, the transparency of Reporters United, and conflicts of interest:
- All donations above a certain threshold will be published, both in terms of the amount and the identity of the donor
- Publication of financial information (income, expenditure, source and size of funds)
- Obligation for journalists in the community to disclose potential conflicts of interest
Reporters United is a non-profit endeavour, meaning that by law it does not distribute profits to its partners. All potential profits are reinvested in the project.
Most of our contributors are paid. Indicatively, in 2020 at least 15 journalists and other contributors were paid for the work they contributed (reporting, production, fixing, filming etc.).
There is however a smaller group of people who contribute on a voluntary basis.
Our legal advisors and the members of our Advisory Committee all contribute on a pro bono basis.
It is our strategic choice to build partnerships with organisations outside the sphere of traditional journalism, both in Greece and abroad, as the demands and challenges of journalism today extend way beyond the skills of a traditional reporter.
Our partnerships are always formed with the aim of delivering a particular project – for example digital security workshops with the Open Technologies Alliance, FOI seminars with Vouliwatch and Open Technologies Alliance, Whistleblower Meter with Whistleblowing International Network, and others.
Working in partnership with an organisation does not automatically mean that Reporters United accepts and adopts all views and actions of that organisation. Accordingly, the organisations with which we partner are not bound by the same strict funding policies as Reporters United.
The list of partner organisations will continue to grow, but below is an indicative list to date:
- In Greece: Open Technologies Alliance, Vouliwatch, HomoDigitalis, The Manifold, Romatso.
- Global: Investigate Europe, Arena for Journalism, Whistleblowing International Network, The Black Sea, Centre for Investigative Journalism, Algorithm Watch, The Outlaw Ocean.
The role of our advisory board is not decorative as is often the case which such bodies. Its members, both journalists and non-journalists, help with the evolution of Reporters United by giving advice and help around issues in which they have specific knowledge. Their contribution has already been crucial for the creation of the endeavour.
To date our Advisory Committee has included the journalists Brigitte Alfter (Arena for Journalism / DataHarvest), Stefan Candea (co-founder and coordinator of EIC), Stéphane Horel (Le Monde) and Ian Urbina (New York Times / The Outlaw Ocean). Over the coming period we will formalise our relationship with other people who have been helping us with our endeavour on a more informal basis.
Hmm, let’s call it an office for now. Our small office is located at Romantso, Anaxagora 3, 10552 Athens, close to Omonia Square.
We believe that not all journalistic activities can be online or digital. Although we do not set out to create a new Frontline Club, it is central to our vision that the Romantso venue can become a physical meeting place for journalists, both among themselves and with the wider public. With the valuable support of the people at Romantso we have been using the space to:
- Hold meetings of our “community”
- Conduct seminars and workshops
- Organise public events
Greekleaks is the first platform for whistleblowers in Greece. It is an online environment which offers citizens the opportunity to communicate safely and provide materials (documents, video, audio, photos) or information in a secure environment to Reporters United or the journalists of their choice from within the Reporters United Network. The Greekleaks platform is currently in the test stage, and will be made available shortly.
From supporting whistleblower Maria Efimova in 2018 to the first wave of FOIs in 2020, this is a provisional “have done” list
Reporters United was legally registered and established a physical presence (in Romantso) in May 2019. Prior to this, before becoming an official entity, it had begun supporting investigative journalism, networking and collaboration between journalists in Greece. All initiatives of Reporters United to date have been self-funded or supported by revenues from collaborations with international media. Here is an indicative list of what we count as our most important achievements as Reporters United.
After approaching Antapodotiki Anakyklossi SA, the company operating buy-back recycling facilities with the approval of Greece’s Ministry of Environment and Energy, for comment on a story we were about to publish regarding their performance, inspection and financial records, we received an “out of court action” from their legal counsel threatening legal action.
Up until October 2020, Reporters United published its stories and investigations in collaboration with media partners in Greece and abroad. Now that we have our own website we can also self-publish when required. Within two months of launching the site we published five investigations: The logbook of Moria by Stavros Malichudis and Iliana Papangeli, an investigation into the Laskaridis Brothers fishing business, The fight to keep the Mediterranean free of oil-drilling by Euridice Bersi (published in English by The Nation), China’s Invisible Armada by Ian Urbina, and an investigation into Greece’s buy-back recycling scheme.
As part of an initiative by Homo Digitalis, a Greek non-profit defending digital rights, we wrote to the Chief of the Greek Police to request access to documents regarding the police operations during the anniversaries of the Polytechnic uprising and the death of Alexandros Grigoropoulos.
Reporters United is the exclusive Greek-language partner of the Outlaw Ocean Project, an ongoing multimedia investigation by writer and Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times reporter Ian Urbina, who is also advising us as a member of the R•U Advisory Board on stories related to shipping and the fishing industry. More about our collaboration here. Ian’s first investigation published with Reporters United available here.
Reporters United participated in the 4th Logan Symposium, a biennial investigative journalism conference alongside speakers such as Edward Snowden and Ai Weiwei. In cooperation with the CIJ (Centre for Investigative Journalism) we hosted a panel on the Trial of Golden Dawn, the trial of the Greek neo-Nazis which concluded in late October with the criminal conviction and sentencing of the organisation’s leadership. The panel included Yiannis Papadopoulos from Kathimerini newspaper, Stefanos Levidis, a researcher with Forensic Architecture, Ioanna Meitani, founding member of Golden Dawn Watch, and Chrysa Papadopoulou, a lawyer representing the family of murder victing Pavlos Fyssas.
Transparency International Greece, Vouliwatch, Reporters United and 16 more organisations launched #Speak-out, an initiative for the protection of whistleblowers in view of the implementation of the new EU Whistleblowing Directive into Greek law. On November 11th, we sent a letter to the Prime Minister and the Minister of Justice calling on them to take action to create a strong, inclusive, progressive and up-to-date institutional framework for the protection of whistleblowers.
The following journalists have worked on collaborative projects with international media in 2020 within the framework of partnerships formed by Reporters United: Eurydice Bersi, Myrto Boutsi, Pavlos Zafiropoulos, Stavros Ioannidis, Christoforos Kasdaglis, Nikolas Leontopoulos, Stavros Malichoudis, Anastasia Moumtzaki, Sotiris Sideris, Alexia Tsagkari, Thodoris Chondrogiannos, graphic designer Alexia Barakou, sound engineers Panagiotis Papagiannopoulos, Alexis Koukias-Pantelis and Aris Athanasopoulos, cinematographer Fanis Karagiorgos, editor Giorgos Kolios.
In 2020, stories by Reporters United’s reporters were published in Mediapart (France), Buzzfeed (Germany), VICE (Germany), Diario De Noticias (Portugal), Aftenbladet and Klassekampen (Norway), Open Democracy (UK), WP Magazyn (Poland), while Reporters United collaborated on the production of Eurydice Bersi’s research «Oil and Water Don’t Mix», that made a cover story for The Nation (USA).
Reporters United undertook production and field research in Greece for a 25’ TV series documentary on the Greek-Turkish crisis for the French-German public network Arte . Reporting and location filming took place in Athens and the island of Kalymnos. The Greek contribution to the documentary included interviews with State Minister George Gerapetritis, academic Konstantina Botsiou, and the mayor of Kalymnos, and reporting on the situation at sea near the islets of Imia with fishermen from Kalymnos. Journalists Alexia Tsagkari, Thodoris Chondrogiannos and Stavros Ioannidis were involved in production and research.
In 2020 we launched, in cooperation with two organizations that have pioneered open data in Greece, Vouliwatch and the Open Technologies Alliance, a series of workshops to educate, for the first time in Greece, journalists on the use of Freedom Of Information (FOI) requests, based on the constitutional right for Access to Public Information. We have so far held two workshops in the series, the first with Helen Darbishire from AccessInfo! και the second with award-winning Le Monde journalist Stéphane Horel. We plan to resume workshops as soon as the pandemic situation allows, with a third speaker from abroad. At the same time, journalists from the Reporters United community have started to submit FOI requests, both independently and in cooperation with Vouliwatch. In a recent high-profile case, we supported the request to the government to publish in full, as it is obliged by law, the sums of money granted to the Greek media for the “Stay at Home” campaign.
Reporters United is the exclusive partner in Greece of Investigate Europe, a team of journalists from 10 European countries. Within the framework this cooperation, four reporters from the Reporters United network (Nikolas Leontopoulos, Stavros Malichoudis, Thodoris Chondrogiannos, Sotiris Sideris) have so far participated in cross-border media research projects on detained minor migrants in Europe, the race for the vaccine for COVID-19, fossil fuel subsidies, the natural gas trap and the Secrets of the Council.
Since June 2020, Reporters United has been part of the WhistleblowingMeter project by global network WIN (Whistleblowing International Network), with the aim of monitoring the transposition in Greek law of the EU Directive for the protection of whistleblowers. The project’s ”Country editor” for Greece is Reporters United’s lawyer and pro bono legal advisor, Clio Papapantoleon.
As part of its collaboration with Investigate Europe, Reporters United has taken on the Greek part of the research for the project “Secrets of the Council”, which aims to highlight and address the secrecy and opacity surrounding the workings of the most important and powerful decision-making body in Europe the Council of the European Union. Our goal is to monitor and analyse the behaviour of Greek governments behind closed doors within the Council: Who are their allies? What changes do they promote and which do they obstruct? What interests do they serve?
In April 2020 Reporters United co-signed, along with other organisations from all over the world, an open call to highlight the importance of witnesses that act for the public interest during the Coronavirus crisis (Coalition to Make Whistleblowing Safe During COVID-19 and Beyond).
Reporters United participated, together with 10 other organisations, in the public consultation by international initiative Open Government Partnership (OGP) for Open Governance in Greece. You can read more here.
Starting informally in 2018,, and officially since2019, Reporters United has been producing (script, animation design, sound design, narration – under the instruction of Alexia Barakou) the animations used by Investigate Europe to visualise their investigative projects. You can browse the animations here.
From 2018 onwards, Reporters United, together with GFOSS (Open Technologies Alliance), has initiated a series of seminars on digital security. To date, we have trained more than 35 journalists in Greece in various aspects of digital security.
In 2018, Reporters United activated an informal network of support for whistleblower Maria Efimova (whose revelations shed light on the murder case of Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia), from appointing a lawyer to represent her, to organsing a public event (in cooperation of Hellenic League for Human Rights) to raise awareness for her case. A Reporters United journalist testified as a defence witness for Efimova before Areios Pagos (the Supreme Court of Greece). A number of current members of the Reporters United network were involved in the support effort, as were the two lawyers we cooperated with (Ioannis Ktistakis and Clio Papapantoleon). We are proud to say that in a decision of historical significance Areios Pagos ruled against the extradition of Ms Efimova to Malta.
We are trying to gradually establish practices and behaviours that foster a culture of cooperation and transparency during journalistic research. For example, we use an open source platform for internal communication (an alternative to Slack), so that journalists can discuss and collaborate online on specific projects. Reporters United has also been accepted on the DocumentCloud platform which will allow our journalists to work together, exchange, process and finally publish in the public domain documents and evidence from their research.
