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Leveraging AI for IJ

OPENING PROGRAM AND PLENARY SESSION 1: Holding Power to Account Photos by Cindy Aquino for PCIJ

The party-list system was meant to challenge elite politics. But it has instead become a bastion of families and contractors. This report provides the numbers: half of the 64…

On February 7, Frenchie Mae Cumpio, a community journalist from Leyte, marks her sixth year in detention—an incarceration that rights and media groups strongly believe stems from…

Recto Bank, an underwater reef in the West Philippine Sea, remains an enigma. Little is publicly disclosed about it beyond its geology, oil and gas potential, and the decades-long…

In a low-income community in the Manila suburb of Fairview, a large rectangular structure is rising near a busy highway clogged with vehicles, commuters, and commerce. Few…

Ordinary Filipinos suffer the consequences of corrupt public works projects: months of displacement and a lifetime of trauma and grief. When the budget is deliberated behind closed…

There were nearly no slow news days in 2025. The year was a high-pressure firehose of events that left the public scavenging for information. High news demand provided the perfect…

In the last few months, an outraged public demanded reforms in the corruption-plagued budget process. A new leadership in both houses of Congress promised changes, but the current…

As the flood-control corruption scandal continues to unfold, a parallel story is taking shape along the country’s shorelines. A subsidiary of the state-owned China Communications…

In this report, we unlock the mystery of “allocable” funds, the secret formula no one understands, and the machinations behind the supposedly non-allocable items in the national…

Patuloy na hinihintay ng mga kaanak ni Sam Dela Cruz ang kanyang bangkay, pitong taon mula nang mamatay siya habang nangingisda sa banyagang karagatan

Unprogrammed appropriations were a magnet for corruption, a source of billions in kickbacks for legislators and other officials.

This is the story of “Jaclyn”, a former security guard enticed to work by a recruiter who promised her a job as an encoder in Thailand. Instead, Jaclyn was trafficked to a “scam…

Last March, several prominent pro-Duterte vloggers and influencers admitted in a congressional hearing that they had attended a China-funded training seminar in 2023. Former…

Thirteen Chinese nationals arrested on suspicion of espionage were charged under an 80-year-old World War II-era law. Philippine lawmakers are now scrambling to update national…

As the Philippines confronts the climate crisis, activists argue that the urgency that once fueled the construction of coal plants to solve the power crisis of the 1990s must now…

Tycoon-led conglomerates hold the power to accelerate—or obstruct—the Philippines’ shift to clean and affordable electricity. They are pouring money into renewables but continue…

The Aboitiz Group is the country’s biggest power producer, based on July 2025 data from the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC). It was followed by San Miguel Corporation. Together…

The 53rd anniversary of martial law’s declaration arrives with bitter irony—as another Marcos presidency grapples with a mega-corruption scandal that follows the playbook pioneered…

President Marcos and Vice President Sara Duterte received tens of millions of pesos in campaign contributions from public works contractors despite a provision in the Omnibus…