Support Forbidden Stories Lab

Last week, we opened the Forbidden Stories Lab at UC Berkeley Journalism. It’s a big step for investigative journalism, and a milestone in our own history.

The Forbidden Stories Lab at UC Berkeley Journalism will coordinate large-scale collaborative investigations into high-stakes topics on which U.S. journalists and newsrooms have faced threats, surveillance, physical attacks, harassment, arrest, lawsuits or other forms of intimidation aimed at undermining, discrediting or putting a stop to their reporting. What some try to hide will instead be amplified.

The Lab is the first initiative with this mandate in the United States, operating at the intersection of investigative journalism and the defense of press freedom. It comes at a time when journalists across the country have faced multiple arrests, ICE detention, home searches and device seizures in recent months.

The investigations the Lab aims to pursue are often sensitive and complex, requiring significant time and resources. The newly established Lab is calling on everyone who believes in its mission to help make these investigations possible by donating today.