By: Alexander Nicolas Khan
“I know that my work, by itself, doesn’t account to much. It is by being part of a
community of like-minded people that keep working and sharing information and
resources that my work becomes significant, important, and in some ways even
real.”
Photo: Private
Born: Ibi/Spain
Lives: Berlin
Work: Freelance investigative journalist
Awards: European Press Prize Innovation & Dario
D’Angelo Award
Jose Miguel Calatyud, the only Spanish freelance journalist in Sub-Saharan Africa for a
time. Jetting from country to country in search of stories. Being embedded with rebels
in Syria. Getting computer equipment hacked in Turkey. Following the money trail of
landlords and investment funds in numerous European countries. “But, most often, it
looks like a very conventional working day”.
“Travelling to far-away places, covering conflicts and situations of crisis, and
writing about it, sounded like an ideal job.”
Jose started his long professional journalistic freelancing career by basing himself in
Nairobi/Kenya, in 2009. Jose always worked as a freelancer his whole journalistic life
and in 2014 moved to Istanbul/Turkey where he travelled to and reported from
rebel-held Syria.
“Travelling to far-away places, covering conflicts and situations of
crisis, and writing about it, sounded like an ideal job.” In East Africa Jose won the Dario
D’AngeIo Award for his breathtaking story of a 14-year-old boy being sentenced to death
in South Sudan.
“While in practice I was a foreign correspondent for El Pais, the reality
of me being a freelancer meant that I had to cover all my work expenses and the pay for
my work was ridiculous and I could hardly make a living.”
In 2015 Jose took a break from journalism and took up a more stable job with Doctors
Without Borders (MSF) in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) where he worked as
a Human Affairs Officer, traveling around the country collecting reports for the NGO
rather than to news outlets.
Working for a big organization like MSF allowed Jose access to some very hard-to-reach places and people who were and are deeply affected by the conflict in that region. But Jose was there as a humanitarian worker, not as a journalist which led to many interesting ethical questions.
“You see some evidence of crime or evidence of abuse, or you hear and then you say, do I have a moral obligation to publish this? That will always be a dilemma.”
Jose contemplated if he would perhaps be doing well by publishing his stories from sources that he acquired while working for MSF in the DRC. “But I’m not a journalist right now. I’m a humanitarian worker. This person is talking to me. This person is talking to a humanitarian worker. This is a private
conversation. So, whatever they think, I cannot publish.”
He chose to keep to his principles of reporting stories when approaching them and his sources exclusively as a journalist and so he left the Congo to pursue journalism properly the way he wanted to.
“You see some evidence of crime or evidence of abuse, or you hear it and then you
say, do I have a moral obligation to publish this?”.
Jose now lives in Berlin where he works on various cross-border investigations. His
collaboration on the investigation named Cities for Rent won the European Press Prize
Innovation and has been a part of cross-border investigative journalism organizations
such as Dataharvest, ARENA, and many others.
“I know that my work, by itself, doesn’t account too much. It is by being part of a community of like-minded people who keep working and sharing information and resources that my work becomes significant, important, and in some ways even real.”