Prize-winning CAR

Investigative Reporters and Editors, Inc. The IRE Journal, Winter 2009 by de Toledo, José Roberto

Among the six Brazilian finalists, at least two extensively used CAR techniques. Working for Brasilia's main newspaper, Correlo Braziliense, Lucio Vaz and a team of reporters used Excel to examine more than a mi 'lion financial transactions connected to the 2006 Brazilian elections. It took a huge effort by the journalists to filter and analyze the information to discover that most of the money used by candidates for president, governor, senator and member of congress came from 200 companies, most of them federal and 1(KaI public contractors.

Brazil's most celebrated use of CAR skills came in 2004 from seven journalists at O Giono, the major newspaper in Rio de Janeiro. The journalists tracked and documented how 27 state lawmakers used their political and business connections to enrich themselves soon after taking office. Under the leadership of Angelina Nunes (who wol Id became ABRAJI's board president a few years later), the reporters and editors used their free time to dig into many public databases, asset declarations by 1 13 legislators, Brazilian and U.S. Web sites, and social networks to follow the money and trace the connections. They put their data into Excel worksheets and calculated how much each lawmaker's assets had grown after winning election.

The series probably won the most prizes in Brazilian journalism history.

In addition, the series changed the newspaper's approach to investigative work, Nunes recalled. Reporters learned the value of sharing information with their coworkers (for example, through Web bookmarks), working as a team and investing time in CAR courses. The company learned that a few bucks spent in training and software licenses could result in massive doses of prestige and credibility for the newspaper.

By José Roberto de Toledo

Brazilian Association for Investigative Journalism

José Roberto de Toledo has been teaching CAR techniques for ABRAJI for seven years in Brazil and abroad. Previously, he took many IRE courses during the 1990s while working as a reporter for the Folha de S.Paulo newspaper.