“To put it simply, it’s hard to publish misinformation on Wikipedia”
Claire Wilmot

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This week, Elon Musk tried to manipulate one of our investigations for his own purposes.

In January, we revealed how the elite London PR firm Portland Communications was helping powerful clients to doctor their Wikipedia pages. It hired middlemen to do the job without disclosing it – a violation of the website’s terms and the PR professionals’ code of conduct – and had tampered with the pages on behalf of the state of Qatar, the factional Libyan government and a failing billion-dollar philanthropy project. 

This week, an account on Musk’s X platform posted a screenshot of our investigation alongside a tirade against Wikipedia, claiming that we had exposed the site as being “corrupt to its core”. The account went on to say that Musk was “hell-bent” on creating Wikipedia rival Grokipedia because it “can’t be corrupted”. Musk reposted this to his 236 million followers with a simple endorsement: “Yeah.”

To be clear, this is a complete distortion of what our investigation showed. 

What we actually reported was how difficult it is to make paid edits on Wikipedia, for those trying to break the rules to do so. As our reporter Claire Wilmot wrote in the piece: “To put it simply: it is hard to publish misinformation on Wikipedia.”

The truth matters, and all of our investigations are meticulously reviewed by our in-house fact-checker. It’s time-consuming work, too, so we are very happy to set the record straight. If you want to read our original investigation – which does raise some important questions about the information on Wikipedia – you can do so here.

I referenced this most recent Musk incident during a presentation at the UK Media Freedom Forum yesterday, to illustrate how small media organisations like the Bureau play a vital role in fighting disinformation. There’s a particular David-and-Goliath vibe in this instance, but more and more reliable individuals and outlets are making it their mission to stand for the truth.

I’m not going to say it’s easy, but we’re sure as hell giving it our best shot.

Trust in the media is about 15 percent lower than it was a decade ago. At the same time, AI has poured fuel on an already raging fire of online disinformation and misinformation. It’s often hard to know what’s actually true. A simple Google search now turns up more websites you’ve never heard of and probably can’t trust.

That’s why it matters more than ever to find journalists and outlets you can rely on. Our aim is to build a community of readers who not only support our work but shape it – sharing tips, ideas and scrutiny – and who know that when we publish something, it’s been carefully and rigorously reported. If you’d like to be part of that community – helping us to keep doing our best journalism and getting the facts out there – consider pledging your support today:

It means a lot to us when our work connects with readers, too.

This week Ashley emailed to thank us for our investigation into how mothers are separated from their children in the family courts. “Your article is really insightful,” Ashley wrote. “Kudos to TBIJ for pursuing it to its end.”

Messages like that remind us why the effort matters.

Later this month, we’ll be hosting the latest edition of TBIJ Live, this time to break down our blockbuster investigation into illegal children’s homes.

An increasing number of vulnerable young people across the country are being placed in children’s homes that are not registered with Ofsted. It means they are not subject to routine inspections, so there are no guarantees of quality or safety. Unsurprisingly, it’s also against the law. And yet in 2024 alone, nearly 800 children were placed in this type of illegal accommodation. They stayed there for an average of six months each.

Councils say unregistered homes are only ever used as a last resort, when no lawful accommodation is available. But evidence from the children’s commissioner for England shows that these placements are not always an emergency short-term stopgap.

Join us on Wednesday 25 March on Zoom to hear from Bureau Local editor Gareth Davies and reporter Tom Wall and find out more about how we unearthed this story. Tickets are free, so don’t miss out:

Each week we reveal a fascinating fact from our reporting…

Last year, a Facebook page falsely claimed that London Mayor Sadiq Khan would make 40,000 new London council homes only available to Muslims, so they could be “near Mosques and Halal food shops” – prompting some commenters to raise the possibility of ‘civil war’.

Commenters on the post also called for Khan to be deported or hanged. What these users likely don't know is that the page was originally set up to blog about food in Sri Lanka, and is still being run from the country with the aim to profit from their outrage.

It is one of the 128 pages we've linked to a Sri Lankan influencer and his students – who use AI-generated content to profit from engagement online.

Read more here. 

In the UK, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) is in charge of enforcing money laundering rules with banks. Over recent years, its mandate has grown in order to keep the floods of dirty money out of the country. 

So, riddle me this: why has it got weaker in issuing fines to banks?

The UK is awash with the proceeds of corruption, drug-smuggling, human trafficking and the like. Just browse our Enablers team’s back catalogue for a taste. In total, the National Crime Agency estimates that £100bn is laundered through the UK every year.

But when we obtained the FCA’s recent records under freedom of information laws, we found that it only issued £124m in fines last year – a staggering 78% drop from five years ago. 

Lord Prem Sikka, a Labour peer, said fines had reached “pitiful” lows and that the numbers showed the FCA was “not fit for purpose”.

As a reporter I covered numerous FCA cases, and my overwhelming memory is how rarely it actually held banks to account. According to the government itself, financial crime is a national security risk – so the country’s apparent inability to do anything about it is really quite worrying.

And despite its soft-touch approach to penalising financial crime, the FCA has just been given new powers as a “super-regulator”, overseeing not only banks but also lawyers and accountants. 

Curious, given its track record.

We’re holding agencies like the FCA to account. You can, too, by supporting journalists that make it their business to be a complete pain in the backside.

Following Bureau reporting on how land rights are violated as tropical forests are destroyed, the United Nations special representative for Indigenous peoples has taken interest in the work.

Our report last year shared the voices of 100 Indigenous people from the world’s tropical forest regions. Grace Murray led a cross-border team of reporters in interviewing 100 people, and published their experiences of how the climate catastrophe is affecting them ahead of the Cop30 event in Brazil.

Land rights were a key issue that came up repeatedly, reflecting on how extractive industries often invade Indigenous lands. We couldn’t publish everything from our interviews, but we have shared the interviews with the special representative, who will be presenting his findings to the General Assembly in September.