Our Principles

In force since 12.16.2016

Direkt36’s mission is to expose abuse of power, corruption, negligence, and waste or misuse of other public goods by conducting investigative reporting. We believe that investigative journalism is one of the most effective tools to fight against wrongdoings as it raises the risk of such activities and increases the moral sensitivity of the society. We also believe that, even under external circumstances that make in-depth reporting more and more difficult, it is possible and necessary to stick to these values and to the highest professional standards that can be expected from investigative journalism.

ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE AND INDEPENDENCE

Direkt36 is independent. The guarantee of its independence is that it is not vulnerable to the interests of politicians, owners and advertisers. It is a non-r-profit company that does not operate based on profit expectations, but its business and professional goals are the same: it spends all of its revenue on its professional work. Thus it aims to receive its revenue from its readers and from organizations that share its objectives.

RULES OF RECEIVING AND USING DONATIONS

Direkt36 is financed by the donations of individuals and institutions. We only accept donations from individuals and institutions that do not violate our goals, integrity and will not set expectations that undermine our mission. To put it plainly: everything is fine as long as someone supports what we are doing, and does not expect us to do what they are supporting. Our goal is to receive the most of our income from the ones whom we are working for: our audience.

RULES OF TRANSPARENCY

One of the main driving forces of our organization is transparency. We publish how much donation we receive and, at the end of each year, we publish a report that details how we spent it. During our fundraising campaign we make it possible for our donors to remain anonymous, however, this is not possible in case of donations above the 5% of the total revenue of Direkt36 in the year prior to the donation.

PROFESSIONAL COOPERATION

Direkt36 works together with other editorial teams frequently, let them be Hungarian or international organizations. We are pleased to help our foreign colleagues to gather information on issues related to Hungary, just as we also rely on their assistance when we are conducting cross-border investigations.

PRINCIPLES OF JOURNALISM ETHICS

Direkt36 covers sensitive stories of great importance such as corruption, abuse of power and public money. Thus we operate even more prudently than it is required by the general professional and ethical rules of journalism.

Besides respecting the law, our journalists and editors follow these rules of conduct during their work:

We diligently check our information.
We approach our stories and their subjects without bias.
We use our information exclusively for making them public, as soon as they are verified.
We avoid and eliminate situations of potential conflicts of interest, both on organizational and on individual level.
We treat everyone in a fair manner, not only our sources. We respect the private life, human dignity and rights of the subjects of our stories.
We own up to our mistakes, we take responsibility for them, we correct them and clearly indicate it on our website.

At the same time, considering the sensitive nature of our stories, we do even more than this:

We question everything. We doubt the official truth, our sources, each other and ourselves until we have not checked every fact properly. This is why every article is checked by several editors and lawyers.
We protect our sources who take a risk by giving us information. We aim to have our sources clearly identified, but the more importance a story has, the more we might need sources who wish to remain anonymous. However, we only use unnamed sources if we do not see any other way to gather the information.
We are not in a hurry. Investigative reporting requires patience, both on the part of us and on the part of our readers.
We won’t be afraid. We won’t be afraid neither of thankless tasks, nor Sisyphean work, nor threats nor anything else.