Shining a light on power and money

Paradise Papers more proof of journalism’s importance to democracy

If you like investigative journalism, the kind they talk about in movies, it was a good week in the real world.

The release of the so-called Paradise Papers was, for journalists and media watchers, a triumph.

Coming from a leak to a German newspaper, but overseen by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, it involved 13.4 million records, with the co-operation of 380 journalists from 96 news organizations around the world, including the Toronto Star and the CBC.

The papers contain the names of more than 120,000 people and companies, including the Queen, U.S. Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross, rock star Bono, and Stephen Bronfman, a top fundraiser for Canada’s Liberal party, with data about how they use offshore entities to protect money from tax collectors.

Those named in the papers, including such companies such as Apple or Nike, and especially the offshore law firm Appleby, where the documents originated, have strenuously denied anything untoward. Further, they claim the socalled leak was in fact a professional hack.

Many of the stories leave it to the reading and viewing public to make up their own minds.

Tax experts who were shown the documents raise some disturbing questions that would not be raised without the journalists. And the rest of us have our own questions: like why rich folks feel the need to keep their money in exotic places far beyond our borders?

You could view the entire affair as an invasion of privacy, or an outlaw operation, or some kind of elaborately timed sting, or just journalists behaving badly.

Or you could see it as another reason we need this reporting now more than ever, especially in a progressively more secretive and complex world where journalism is increasingly under attack.

This kind of high-profile, international journalism is exhausting and difficult, but it is done every day on a smaller scale at thousands of smaller news agencies around the world. Whether it’s questioning local politicians or bureaucrats who break the rules, calling out companies that don’t play nice, scrutinizing the methods of the rich and powerful, or simply questioning the status quo.

It is always difficult. In the case of the Paradise Papers, the data, even with the leak, was impenetrable. It required expertise and old-fashioned hard work.

Again, it is the kind of work all journalists at all news agencies face regularly.

Most of it goes unappreciated. Many of the questions go unanswered. Much of the wrongdoing is never righted.

But some of it opens windows and lets in light, light that sometimes makes others uncomfortable, often in the worlds of power and money, where decisions affecting many are made by only a few.

It’s a reminder of why journalism is so important to democracy, and why journalists keep trying to improve the world, and why people like you keep reading.