By Alex Phillips*
Top investigative journalist Giannina Segnini has resigned from Costa Rican newspaper La Nación, where she worked for 20 years. According to The Tico Times, Segnini departed shortly after the Feb. 2 presidential elections in protest of the paper’s election coverage and its decision not to publish an election poll by the firm UNIMER.
In a statement, Segnini cited the decrease of spaces available for independent journalism as a factor in her departure. “A series of editorial decisions by this newspaper that were based on reasons I consider far from journalistic have made it impossible for me to continue working for this company,” Segnini said.
In 1994, Segnini founded La Nación’s investigative unit where she later implemented an advanced data collection process she called “zero-waste”. Last year, Segnini was chosen to lead a transnational project for ICIJ that the organization called “the most ambitious cross-border investigative project in history.”
According to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), “under Segnini’s leadership, La Nación’s investigative team has disclosed 10 cases of international corruption, including the Alcatel bribery scandal and a Finish bribery case that sent two former Costa Rican presidents to jail.”
“La Nación corporate Director Armando Gonzalez did not comment on Segnini’s resignation,” the Tico Times reported.
*Alex Phillips is a student in the class "Journalism in Latin America" at the University of Texas at Austin.
Note from the editor: This story was originally published by the Knight Center’s blog Journalism in the Americas, the predecessor of LatAm Journalism Review.
