Iliana Papangeli: Independent journalism is a precondition for a functioning democracy

Local journalismpress freedom Iliana Papangeli: Independent journalism is a precondition for a functioning democracy Iliana Papangeli Independent Journalism Is A Precondition For A Functioning Democracy Relevant News Iliana Papangeli: Independent journalism is a precondition for a functioning democracy 26 July 2026 Vehicle mows down crowd at Berlin Pride festival, killing one 26 July 2026 Mountain showers forecast before temperatures rise next week 26 July 2026 Diana Aza 26 July 2026 FacebookXWhatsAppEmailPrintViber To shine a light on what those in power prefer to keep in the dark. That is the mission of Solomon, the Greek non-profit independent journalism organisation that has won international recognition for its revelations. Its Managing Director, Iliana Papangeli, spoke to us about months-long investigations, personal safety concerns, legal pressures, and the value of investigative journalism in restoring the human dimension to cases that political and public debate often push to the margins. At a time when trust in the media is being tested and pressure on independent journalism is intensifying, Solomon has chosen a different path: investing in investigations that look at the greatest distance between power and the people affected by it, and at the mechanisms, interests and violations of the law that lie behind that cost. It was founded in 2016, at the height of the refugee crisis, focusing on human rights violations at the Greek and European borders. Today, it investigates cases of corruption, state accountability, environmental issues and transparency, shining a light on stories that would struggle to find space elsewhere. Its Managing Director, Iliana Papangeli, left academic research behind in search of a way for knowledge to have a direct social impact. For her, investigative journalism is above all a tool of democratic scrutiny and transparency. That principle has led Solomon to major international honours, from the European Parliament’s Daphne Caruana Galizia Journalism Prize in 2023 for its cross-border investigation into the Pylos shipwreck, to the Special Award at the European Press Prize 2024 for the investigation “Unknown data: Over 1,000 unidentified graves at Europe’s borders”, through to the recent European Press Prize 2026 for the investigation “Unaccompanied children sleep on the floor in shifts at Greece’s ‘model’ camps. The EU knows.” When did you realise that the story wasn’t just the appalling living conditions of the minors, but the knowledge and complicity of the European institutions? The conditions aren’t something we saw for the first time. Solomon has consistently covered this issue for almost ten years now. We’ve been to Moria, to the facilities on the islands, to the streets of Athens, to the fields of Manolada, along the routes through the Balkans. We’ve seen up close the different versions of a reality that keeps repeating itself. In this particular investigation, through internal documents we obtained via public information access requests, photographic material from organisations, and dozens of interviews with children, lawyers and people who worked in the facilities, we were able to show that the European institutions and competent authorities knew, to a large extent, what was happening. There was reporting, records, awareness of the situation. And I think it’s precisely this repetition that sometimes leaves me in a kind of unease I don’t know how to manage on a personal level. In 2021 we published the investigation “The Moria Minutes”, which, incidentally, was the investigation that first brought Solomon a nomination for the European Press Prize. The investigation was based on a logbook kept by the International Organization for Migration, which we found among the ashes of the burnt-down Moria camp. It was the book that staff in Moria’s safe zone, the section of the camp housing unaccompanied minors, kept on a daily basis. There, we saw the unthinkable turned into just another entry in a notebook. One page recorded a 14-year-old child’s second suicide attempt; the next recorded a food delivery or an administrative procedure. Everyone knew. The staff, the International Organization for Migration, the Greek authorities, the European institutions. And then, after the investigation was published, everyone else, too. And that is perhaps what shocks me most, all these years on. The fact that the knowledge exists. And yet, despite that knowledge, the same conditions keep being reproduced. And for the most vulnerable category of people crossing the borders at that: unaccompanied children. The European Press Prize described your investigation as an example of journalism that highlights the distance between Europe’s commitments to protecting children and the reality they experience. Can international recognition bring pressure to bear? I think that, for our team, an investigation has a real impact when it activates oversight mechanisms or the justice system, when it mobilises citizens to claim something that concerns them, when it leads to a change in policy or practice, even when it forces an institution to confront a problem it could previously ignore. In this particular case, one of the moments we considered significant was when we learned that the facility we investigated was emptied so it could be repaired. I have no illusions that this solves the overall problem. But the fact that an investigation can help make a specific place safer for the children living there, even temporarily, matters. Journalism alone cannot solve a systemic problem. But it can make it harder for that problem to remain invisible and to continue without consequences. And perhaps that, in the end, is what matters most. In your speech for the Daphne Caruana Galizia prize you received in 2023, for the investigation “In front of the authorities’ closed cameras: Dying at the deepest point of the Mediterranean,” you said that the Pylos tragedy forces us to ask what European values mean in practice. You concluded by saying: “we hope these deaths have not gone unnoticed and will not go unpunished.” How do you read that hope today? The Pylos shipwreck, with more than 600 dead, raised in the harshest way possible the question of what the values Europe is supposed to be built on actually mean in practice: the concepts of human life, the protection of fundamental rights, accountability and the rule of law. Our investigation into Pylos tried to examine not only what happened that night, but also what followed: the investigative procedures, the responsibilities of the authorities, the gaps in the answers given, and the need for accountability. There were significant delays, contradictions, and attempts to shift the discussion mainly onto the people on board the boat, rather than fully examining the actions and omissions of the authorities responsible for the rescue. Today, the answer to whether these deaths went unnoticed is complex. They did not go unnoticed, thanks to the work of journalists, researchers, organisations and people who insisted on keeping the case in the public interest. But full accountability remains an ongoing, and to this day incomplete, process. The acquittal of the nine Egyptian survivors and the criminal prosecution of 21 officials were a significant development. And yet, two and a half years after Pylos, we find ourselves once again facing a tragedy with many deaths at Greece’s maritime borders, this time in Chios. And once again we are searching for answers to the same fundamental questions. What conclusions do you draw from this repetition of tragedies? For years we have watched people lose their lives on the same sea routes, under similar conditions. These are not isolated incidents, as they are often presented in public discourse by the authorities and those responsible. We are talking about a systemic problem. The Mediterranean has become a space where border management often appears to take precedence over the protection of human life. Every new tragedy is accompanied by a discussion that presents smuggling networks as the sole culprits behind the numbers, the “flows” or “irregular migration.” But behind these terms are people taking dangerous routes because safe and legal ones simply don’t exist. Any border management policy must start from one fundamental principle: the protection of human life cannot be negotiable. The role of investigative journalism is to keep pressing these questions and to search for answers. What happened? What are the facts and the evidence? Who was responsible? What failed? What mechanisms allowed it to happen again? From the hardening of migration policies to the genocide in Gaza, do you observe an international shift in how the value of human life is treated? On migration, public debate very often starts from the question of whether someone is “legal” or “irregular,” whether they have the right documents, whether they’re on the right side of the border. This creates the risk of forgetting that before any administrative category, there is a person. Someone with rights, with a history, in a specific set of circumstances. What we see internationally, from deaths at the borders to the genocide in Gaza, but also the broader rise of political practices and rhetoric that present entire groups of people as a threat, is the creation of a hierarchy of human worth: whose life is considered to deserve greater protection, and whose can more easily be ignored. The value of investigative journalism lies in restoring the human dimension where public debate often strips it away, in examining the consequences of policy choices, and in making sure people don’t become statistics or objects of public argument. On the other hand, and this is perhaps investigative journalism’s most fundamental contribution, it must investigate and shine a light on the mechanisms that produce this human cost. Who are the institutions and people making the decisions? How do the systems of power operate? Is there corruption, cover-up, violation of the law or of fundamental rights? Who is held accountable, and who isn’t? Journalism must look wherever there is the greatest distance between power and the people affected by it. We’re living in an era where the media faces intense financial and other dependencies. How is Solomon‘s independence safeguarded? In Greece, the media landscape is characterised by a series of dependencies. The big media groups belong to powerful business figures whose main activity is usually elsewhere. Media outlets themselves are rarely a particularly profitable business on their own, and that reality reasonably raises questions about how issues touching powerful economic or political interests get covered. Add to that many outlets’ reliance on the advertising market, as well as the close relationships that can develop with political centres of power, and you get an environment that objectively creates pressures and constraints. That doesn’t mean, of course, that journalists don’t do their jobs professionally, or that there aren’t great examples of reporting and investigations within these outlets. But it does mean they work within a framework that can affect the conditions under which journalism is produced. Solomon is a completely different case. We are a small, non-profit independent journalism organisation, with no hidden owners or business interests. We’re funded by foundations that support independent journalism, as well as by our readers’ subscriptions and donations. No funder has any involvement in our editorial decisions. Our editorial line is entirely independent, and we don’t receive funding from governments, political parties or companies. What makes a story worth a months-long investigation? Our resources, clearly, aren’t unlimited, which in practice means we can’t pursue every investigation we’d want to at the same time. There are far more stories worth telling than we can actually take on. So every choice is also a decision about where to invest time, people and money. Our first and main criterion is always the public interest. Does this story affect many people? Does it reveal something citizens have a right to know? Does it shed light on how power is exercised, how public money is managed, or how fundamental rights are affected? If the answer is yes, we go ahead. Alongside that, another factor always applies: if we believe that, should we not do this investigation, there’s a real chance it won’t be done elsewhere, then we consider ourselves to have an even greater responsibility to take it on. The second criterion is whether we can document it, whether we can find documents, data, testimonies and independent sources that let us prove what we’re going to publish. In investigative journalism, suspicion can be the starting point of an investigation, but it can never be its final product. You take on powerful interests in particularly difficult environments, rejecting official narratives. When an investigation points to possible responsibility on the part of the police or other state authorities, do you feel there are sufficient institutional safeguards to protect you? I think that to answer this question, you first have to look at the wider context. Greece has recorded a consistently problematic picture on press freedom in recent years. International organisations such as Reporters Without Borders have flagged issues including strategic lawsuits against journalists (SLAPPs), surveillance, violence against photojournalists and journalists covering events, as well as the fact that the murder of Giorgos Karaivaz remains an open wound for the journalistic community and a reminder that the safety of journalists and the delivery of justice cannot be taken for granted. This is the environment we work in, too. In 2021, it was revealed that our colleague Stavros Malichoudis had been placed under surveillance by the EYP (Greece’s National Intelligence Service) because of his journalistic work. Since then, and to be honest I often feel these past few years have packed in a disproportionate number of experiences, we have faced different forms of pressure: cyberattacks, attempted buyouts, cease-and-desist letters, legal threats. Right now, for example, there is an active court case against us brought by the deputy mayor of Piraeus, who accuses us of defamation. At the same time, we have repeatedly been the target of public discrediting by government officials. It’s telling that the government spokesperson has publicly questioned even whether we are journalists at all. That’s an interesting feature of the current climate. It’s a form of delegitimisation we’re seeing more and more often. If your journalism doesn’t fit within the dominant media system, if it investigates issues that are uncomfortable for those in power or for powerful interests, then it’s not just your findings that come under attack. It’s your very status as a journalist that comes under attack. All of this, obviously, creates pressure. It makes you think more about the safety of your colleagues, your sources and your digital infrastructure. But I wouldn’t say it’s made us more hesitant. On the contrary, it’s made us more careful, more organised, and even more convinced that independent investigative journalism is necessary. If investigations serving the public interest are abandoned because they carry costs or pressures, then what’s ultimately being limited isn’t just press freedom. It’s citizens’ right to know. You’ve spent years covering stories involving deaths, wars, displacement and human rights violations. How do you manage the psychological toll? This is a part of journalism that wasn’t discussed enough for many years. There was often a view that journalists simply had to “cope,” to move on to the next assignment or investigation and leave behind what they’d seen and heard, even if that meant exposure to death, violence, war, displacement and rights violations. At the same time, the toll also comes from the way we’re required to do our work, things like legal threats, digital attacks, or even personal safety concerns. In practice, we’ve tried to build specific support structures within the team. We organise retreats every year, and we cover individual psychological support sessions for team members. As a woman in a position of responsibility, I believe strongly in a model of managing a journalistic team informed by feminist practices: the idea that the work isn’t done by disconnected people, but by people with boundaries, needs, responsibilities and emotional load. In recent years, Solomon has become a team with a majority of femininities, and that has inevitably shaped not just how we work journalistically, but how we understand the work itself. What keeps you motivated? The belief that independent investigative journalism is more necessary today than ever. To bring facts to light, to document events, to create public dialogue, and to help ensure that those who make decisions affecting our lives are called to account. 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