Forbidden Stories

Paris, France · Freedom Voices Network · International network of 300 journalists and 120 media organizations

Overview

Forbidden Stories is an international nonprofit organization founded in Paris in 2017 by French investigative journalist Laurent Richard, with a mission unique in the world of journalism: to continue and publish the investigations of reporters who have been silenced. When a journalist is killed, imprisoned, or forced to abandon their work under threat, the investigation they were pursuing typically dies with them — the information that powerful people and governments did not want published remains buried, and the act of violence against the journalist achieves its purpose. Forbidden Stories was built to make that purpose impossible to achieve. Its operational premise — "killing the journalist won't kill the story" — is not rhetoric but a structural commitment: the organization has built a global network of investigative journalists and media partners who can receive, protect, and when the time is right, simultaneously publish the work that silenced reporters left behind.

The organization is incorporated in France as Freedom Voices Network and operates from a Paris office of 22 staff. It coordinates investigations through a network of approximately 300 investigative journalists and 120 media organizations across the world, including The Washington Post, The Guardian, Le Monde, Der Spiegel, and dozens of other national and regional partners. It operates the SafeBox Network — a secure, encrypted digital vault to which threatened journalists can upload their materials — and Forbidden Films, a documentary production subsidiary founded in 2019 to extend the reach of its investigations to television and streaming audiences. The organization has received more than a dozen major international journalism awards since its founding, including two George Polk Awards, the RSF Press Freedom Award, the European Press Prize, and the IJ4EU Impact Award. Its 2025 award from the International Journalism for Europe consortium was for the Gaza Project.

Founding: Charlie Hebdo, the Murdered Neighbors, and a Fellowship Year

Laurent Richard had spent more than twenty years conducting international investigations for French television — filming the Kashmir conflict at age 25, the second Palestinian intifada, GIs in Iraq, the lies of the tobacco industry, human rights abuses in Azerbaijan, threats against indigenous peoples in the Brazilian Amazon — when two things happened within the same period that changed the direction of his work. On January 7, 2015, two gunmen from Al-Qaeda's Yemeni branch entered the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris and killed twelve people. The Charlie Hebdo newsroom was located next door to Premières Lignes, the production company where Richard worked. He arrived at the scene a few minutes after the terrorists had left and, with his colleagues, entered the newsroom to help the survivors. Simultaneously, several foreign journalists he knew were being imprisoned under dictatorial regimes for their reporting. The convergence — colleagues murdered next door for publishing journalism, friends imprisoned abroad for the same — gave concrete personal urgency to what had been an abstract professional concern about the vulnerability of investigative reporters.

In 2016, Richard was awarded a Knight-Wallace Fellowship at the University of Michigan — a year-long fellowship for journalists — and used that year to develop what became Forbidden Stories. The concept was systematic rather than individual: rather than a single organization trying to do the investigations that silenced journalists could not, he would build a global network capable of absorbing, protecting, and ultimately publishing those investigations in coordinated simultaneous releases that would make suppression through legal or violent pressure more difficult. On November 2, 2017, Forbidden Stories was launched at a conference in Washington, DC, with Reporters Without Borders as a founding partner. The SafeBox Network was created alongside the organization to provide the secure technical infrastructure the concept required.

Major Investigations

2018 · First investigation

The Daphne Project

Continued the investigations of Daphne Caruana Galizia — the Maltese journalist assassinated by car bomb on October 16, 2017, while investigating government corruption in Malta, financial crime, and links to the Panama Papers. 45 journalists from 18 media organizations, including The New York Times and Le Monde. Named "European Journalist of the Year" at Prix Europa 2018 for Laurent Richard. Finalist, Online Journalism Awards.

2019–2020

Green Blood

Continued the work of journalists threatened or killed while investigating environmental crimes and the murderous persecution of environmental defenders — from illegal mining to deforestation. Forbidden Films documentary series won the Prix Europa for Best European TV Documentary Series of the Year in 2020.

2020

The Cartel Project

Continued the investigations of Regina Martinez — a Mexican journalist murdered in 2012 while investigating links between drug cartels and public officials. 60 journalists from 25 media organizations across 18 countries. Found synthetic drug trade spanning China, India, the US, Netherlands, and Belgium. Reached 32 million readers worldwide. Following publication, Mexican President López Obrador committed to reopening the case of Martinez's murder. Won the Prix Europa 2020 for best documentary series.

2021 · Defining investigation

The Pegasus Project

The biggest cyber-surveillance scandal since the Snowden revelations. Based on a leak of more than 50,000 phone numbers selected for surveillance by clients of Israeli company NSO Group. More than 80 reporters from 17 media organizations in 10 countries, coordinated by Forbidden Stories with technical support from Amnesty International's Security Lab. Revealed that at least 180 journalists, human rights defenders, lawyers, academics, and heads of state were targeted, contrary to NSO Group's claims. Two George Polk Awards (2021); RSF Press Freedom Award; Daphne Caruana Galizia Prize for Journalism; DIG Watchdog Award; Online Journalism Award for Al Neuharth Innovation in Investigative Journalism; IJ4EU Impact Award. News & Documentary Emmy Award for the Pegasus documentary series (2024).

2023

Story Killers

Investigation into the industrial-scale manipulation of public information — disinformation-for-hire companies that sell fabricated news, fake social media profiles, and coordinated influence campaigns to governments, political parties, and corporations worldwide. Continued the work of Indian journalist Gauri Lankesh, murdered in 2017 while exposing right-wing disinformation operations.

2024

The Gaza Project

Investigation into the killing of nearly 100 journalists in Gaza since the outbreak of Israel's war following Hamas's October 7, 2023 attack. Unprecedented investigation by Forbidden Stories and 50 journalists. Points to a chilling pattern and suggests some journalists may have been deliberately targeted despite being identifiable as press. Won the IJ4EU Impact Award 2025 from the European Centre for Press and Media Freedom.

2026

Eyes of Iran

Investigation published March 2026 into how the Iranian regime secretly monitors its citizens — including use of surveillance technology against dissidents, journalists, and members of the diaspora. Part of Forbidden Stories' continuing focus on state surveillance as an instrument of journalist suppression.

Founder: Laurent Richard

Laurent Richard — born in France, where he continues to live and work — has spent more than twenty years as an investigative journalist and documentary filmmaker, conducting major investigations for French public television including Cash Investigation, the award-winning investigative programme he co-founded in 2011 on France 2. He is executive director of Forbidden Stories, co-author (with Sandrine Rigaud) of the book Pegasus: How a Spy in Your Pocket Threatens the End of Privacy, Dignity, and Democracy (published in the United States by Holt Editions, January 2023), and executive producer of the Green Blood documentary series and the Pegasus documentary, which won a News and Documentary Emmy Award in 2024. He was elected Ashoka Fellow in 2022 — recognition from the world's largest community of social entrepreneurs. In January 2026, he received the Press Freedom Award at the El Mundo International Journalism Awards, presented by Queen Letizia of Spain. He has spoken at Harvard, Yale, and Michigan, and at journalism festivals internationally. His career began at 25 when he traveled to the Kashmir valley to film the India-Pakistan conflict; his first major television investigation, "GIs in Iraq: Forbidden Words," aired on French public television in 2004.

The Network and Collaborative Model

Forbidden Stories's operational model is what distinguishes it from other press freedom organizations. Rather than advocating for silenced journalists or documenting their persecution, it completes the journalistic act — it publishes the work that was suppressed. The mechanism requires sustained coordination: identifying which threatened journalists wish to entrust their materials to the network, securing those materials through the SafeBox Network, recruiting the right international journalist partners for each specific investigation, and orchestrating simultaneous global publication that makes legal suppression in any single jurisdiction futile against a story already released in dozens of countries at once.

The Pegasus Project demonstrated this model at its most powerful: a dataset of 50,000 phone numbers, analyzed by 80 reporters from 17 organizations in 10 countries, published simultaneously. No single government could suppress all of those simultaneous publications. No single legal threat could stop all of those simultaneous releases. The coordination required — maintaining security across more than 80 journalists working secretly for months — was itself a journalistic and operational achievement. Forbidden Stories has built the institutional knowledge to do this kind of work repeatedly, improving security protocols and coordination mechanisms with each successive investigation.

The network of 300 journalists and 120 media organizations gives Forbidden Stories reach into regional and national journalism ecosystems that global publications cannot match. When investigating the Cartel Project in Mexico, the domestic Mexican journalists who knew the specific landscape of cartel-government relationships were essential. When investigating Green Blood in Brazil, the journalists who knew the specific geography of land conflicts and the specific actors threatening environmental defenders were essential. The global-local combination is the model's greatest strength.

Awards

Two George Polk Awards

Including Technology Reporting (2021) · For the Pegasus Project

RSF Press Freedom Award — Impact Category

2021 · For the Pegasus Project

European Press Prize

For collaborative investigative journalism

IJ4EU Impact Award

2022 (Pegasus Project) · 2025 (Gaza Project)

News and Documentary Emmy Award

2024 · For the Pegasus documentary series

Prix Europa — Best European TV Documentary Series

2020 · For Green Blood

Daphne Caruana Galizia Prize for Journalism

European Parliament · 2021 · For the Pegasus Project

Online Journalism Award — Al Neuharth Innovation in Investigative Journalism

2022 · For the Pegasus Project

Access, Donations, and the SafeBox Network

Forbidden Stories publishes all investigations freely without paywall at forbiddenstories.org, organized by project and topic. The full archive of investigations — from the Daphne Project through Eyes of Iran — is accessible at forbiddenstories.org/investigations. Journalists facing threats who wish to entrust their materials to the SafeBox Network can find information and the SafeBox Charter at forbiddenstories.org/safebox. The organization accepts donations from individuals and institutions at forbiddenstories.org/donate. Media organizations interested in joining the network as partners can contact Forbidden Stories through the website. The Forbidden Films documentary subsidiary produces documentary content for broadcast distribution.