BEHIND THE HEADLINES
The Ibiza affair made international headlines in 2019 and plunged the Austrian government into a crisis. The journalists involved in the exposure offer us an intimate insight into their highly sensitive work.
The part they played in exposing the Panama Papers brought the investigative editorial department at Süddeutsche Zeitung international fame and won its journalists the Pulitzer Prize. Two years later, they faced new challenges: the political murder of Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galicia and a mysterious arms dealer linked to Iran's nuclear missile programme. But when the secret "Ibiza video", heavily incriminating Austrian vice-chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache, was leaked to them in the spring of 2019, a truly dramatic story unfolds. For the first time ever, Germany's biggest daily newspaper offers us an insight into the otherwise top-secret methods of its world-famous investigative department. We find out first-hand about the serious practical, ethical and legal decisions the journalists have to make. Is the material authentic? Or are they being instrumentalised in a political power struggle? How can they protect their informants? The day the results of their investigations are due to be published approaches, and the tension rises. Each word comes under careful scrutiny because the story has the explosive power to destroy political careers or even bring down a government.