At least $280 million – this is the amount of US Christian right spending overseas which Tracking the Backlash exposed ahead of the US elections in November. openDemocracy scoured thousands of pages of financial filings of Christian right groups, many of them linked to the Trump administration.
The Guardian, the Daily Mail, the Spanish press agency EFE, Deutsche Welle, TIME, Mother Jones and Reuters were among the more than 120 outlets from around the world that covered this investigation’s findings.
This month, a follow-up investigation by the Tracking the Backlash team found that dozens of US anti-LGBT groups are fundraising on Amazon’s donations platform, despite the company’s participation agreement which forbids intolerance and discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.
This story was picked up by the LGBT-rights publication PinkNews in the UK, as well as by NBC, Business Insider, Gizmodo, and The Hill in Washington DC.
In total, in 2020 openDemocracy’s feminist investigations were cited at least 410 times by other media outlets based in more than 60 countries and publishing in 20 languages including Russian, Spanish and Ukranian.
These investigations were cited more times in Latin America than in any other world region (almost 140 times), followed by Europe (more than 110), and Eurasia and Africa (90 between them). Team members were also nominated for a 2020 “Javier Valdez” Latin American Investigative Journalism Award.
Each of these major projects was led by women and LGBT people, including six earlier career investigative reporters who joined the team for professional fellowships, developing their skills while working on special investigations.