‘iStories’: Russia’s newest investigative organization
Important Stories, or iStories for short, uses new tech tools and data-driven techniques to investigate corruption and abuse of power in Russia, not just at the Kremlin but at the local level.
OCCRP has built a network of journalists around the world — including in Russia, where independent investigative reporting is increasingly scarce.
There are only a few outlets in the country that report on issues that the Russian government might deem sensitive. Our longtime Russian member center, Novaya Gazeta, is one of them. Our newest member, iStories, intends to be another.
iStories launched at the end of April, during the height of the coronavirus pandemic. Its first investigation exposed potential corruption in government contracts for ventilators. Following reports focused on the rise of domestic and substance abuse in Russia under lockdown.
Much of the reporting team cut their teeth at Novaya Gazeta, including Editor-in-Chief Roman Anin, who spoke with a colleague at OCCRP about what it is like to start a new investigative outlet in Russia.
Note: iStories is a member center of OCCRP. This conversation was edited for brevity and clarity.
OCCRP: What’s the idea behind iStories?
Roman Anin, chief editor: The key idea behind iStories is collaboration — we don’t really believe in competition. When we started to see the number of independent media outlets in Russia shrink dramatically, we understood that if we don’t unite, we’ll disappear.
OCCRP: Can you say more about how independent media in Russia is disappearing?
R.A: For the past 20 years, since Putin has been in power, the government has been cracking down on the media. It started with one of the main TV channels, called NTV, and it’s been worsening ever since.
Frankly, we’re now talking about only two big online media outlets left: Novaya Gazeta and Meduza. Everything else is controlled by the Kremlin, especially TV. The only free space for reporters is the internet, and they’re trying to limit this as well.
What will iStories report on? Do you have a focus?
We will still publish big, global investigations. But simultaneously, we want to start focusing on local stories on abuse of power and corruption that happens on a much smaller scale.
We’ve realized that many people in Russia don’t really care about what’s happening in the Kremlin. Russia is big. We often say that Moscow is like a different country.
People who live in different regions really don’t care if Putin is corrupt. They already know it. What they do care about is what’s going on their street, their community, their regions. For us, these types of stories are no less important than the federal stories.
The other thing we want to do is share our knowledge and techniques. So, we started a special section on our website where we share all of our skills, all of our code, all of the apps we use for stories. We do show this in text, video tutorials, and on GitHub.
“People who live in different regions really don’t care if Putin is corrupt. They already know it. What they do care about is what’s going on their street, their community, their regions.” — Roman Anin, editor-in-chief of iStories
In the future, we plan on having lectures on how to use Python and javascript, so journalists can create cool interactives for their stories. The profession is changing very fast, but these changes aren’t really taught in Russia because of censorship in [journalism] universities.
Going back to what you said about the importance of local reporting: this reminds me of conversations happening in the United States.
When I spent my year at Stanford, we spoke a lot about news deserts and how dangerous they are for the future, health and decision-making of citizens. Russia is very similar in this sense.
Many of your investigations have a “Fact Check” option that readers can toggle on and off. What was the thinking behind this feature?
For investigative stories, you always try to find a balance. On one hand you want to provide as many documents as possible while simultaneously you don’t want to overcomplicate the story. We thought this toggle might be a good solution.
If you trust us, you can read the story and not touch the switch. But if you don’t trust us, you can switch it on and see the proofs, the documents and additional data to check our work for yourself… We are willing to share any documents as long as our sources are protected.
How do you plan on reaching the average Russian? What is your plan to build up an audience for iStories?
So far, we’ve gotten great coverage in the media and lots of followers on Twitter and other social networks. It has definitely gone better than expected.
But we still need to prove to people that our stories are important, and show that our stories could affect important decisions.
Unfortunately, this is hard… For the last 20 years, the majority of Russian journalists betrayed the profession by becoming propaganda warriors instead of truth-tellers. It can be difficult to prove that you’re not this type of propaganda warrior, but we will try.
“Corruption can actually kill. Corruption can make you poor. Corruption can make you sick.” — Roman Anin, editor-in-chief of iStories
The world is currently focused on COVID-19. You joined our recent investigation on antibody tests from China that have been relabelled and resold under misleading pretenses. What’s your strategy on covering the pandemic in Russia??
When the pandemic started, we had to cancel the investigations we were working on and start investigating COVID-related stories. And there have been important stories to cover.
Our first story was on mechanical ventilators because there’s a weird deficit of them in Russia. We found out that one of the reasons for the deficit was corruption.
On the eve of COVID, mechanical ventilators were sold through bogus companies that gave hospitals bad equipment. And hospitals had to cancel contracts, meaning they were left without mechanical ventilators.
One of our goals is to show people that corruption is not some [abstraction]. Corruption can actually kill. Corruption can make you poor. Corruption can make you sick. The pandemic, in this sense, has been an opportunity to show people why they should care about corruption.
When you live in a healthy environment where you have food to eat and money to shop, you don’t actually care about corruption, about people stealing money from your pocket. But when you get to the hospital, and you realize there’s no mechanical ventilator to save your life, then you start to realize the cost.
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