• by Ray Schultz , February 16, 2023

The Washington Post is participating in “Story Killers,” a global investigative project to report on disinformation, the reputation management industry and online abuse against women journalists. 

The project, led by Forbidden Stories, involves more than 100 journalists from 30 news organizations worldwide, including The Guardian, Der Spiegel, Le Monde, Haaretz and El País.

The initial story in the series, “These women journalists were doing their jobs. That made them targets,” appeared on Monday.  

Forbidden Stories is an international consortium that pursues the work of assassinated journalists. This investigation was prompted by the work of Gauri Lankesh, who was killed in 2017 after her reporting on disinformation in India. 

 “Global partners make these critical investigations more powerful, and in this case allowed us to carry on the work of an assassinated journalist who for years had warned of the dangers of rising online extremism and disinformation,” states Craig Timberg, senior editor for collaborative investigations for The Post. 

The Post has also participated in other consortium projects, including the Pegasus Project, the Pandora Papers, the Facebook Papers and the Uber Files.

Post reporter Lizzie Johnson recently went to Nevada to finish an investigative project by Jeff German, a reporter who was killed, allegedly by a local politician, last year.