The Pandora Papers investigation amounts to the largest journalism partnership in history, drawing from the largest ever leak of confidential offshore financial documents. The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) documented numerous stories that revealed the secretive system that allows the world’s rich to hide money and dodge taxes. ICIJ’s reporting has instigated calls among dozens of countries for tougher laws, public hearings, and government investigations. This latest reporting partnership of ICIJ exposed tax havens within the U.S., a nation that has criticizedothers for enabling money laundering.
The judges noted, “As the most extensive collaboration in the history of journalism, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists merits special Izzy recognition for undertaking - and succeeding in - a cooperative endeavor considered virtually impossible by conventional journalistic wisdom.”
The Izzy Award is named for I. F. “Izzy” Stone., the dissident journalist who launched I. F. Stone’s Weekly in 1953 and questioned McCarthyism, the Vietnam War, racial injustice, and government deceit. This year’s judges were Jeff Cohen, founding PCIM director and founder of FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting); Linda Jue is editor-at-large for the investigate news site 100Reporters & contributing investigative editor for palabra., the innovative news site of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists; Robert W. McChesney, professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Raza Rumi, director of the Park Center for Independent Media; and Patricia Rodriguez, associate professor and chair of the Department of Politics at Ithaca College.