Brewing Minds - Investigative Journalism Behind the Scenes

Investigative journalism sounds glamorous from the outside. In reality, it often means long months in front of a screen, reading PDFs, analysing spreadsheets, chasing documents, and trying to make sense of systems that are designed to stay opaque. But as politics, industry, and environmental crises increasingly cross borders, one kind of reporting has become more important than ever: cross-border collaborative investigations.

In this talk, investigative journalist Jose Miguel Calatayud takes us behind the scenes of that kind of work through the story of the Forever Lobbying Project — a major 2025 collaboration that brought together 46 journalists and 29 media outlets from 16 European countries to investigate the corporate campaign against a proposed EU restriction on PFAS, also known as “forever chemicals.”

PFAS are used in everything from cookware and food packaging to waterproof textiles, electronics, and industrial machinery. They are also almost indestructible, which means they build up in water, soil, animals, and our bodies — and have been linked to serious illnesses including cancer. While governments debated how to regulate them, the investigation followed two intertwined stories: the scale and cost of PFAS pollution in Europe, and the lobbying effort aimed at weakening or delaying restrictions.

Using this investigation as a case study, the session will explore how journalists across countries work together for months, collaborate with scientists, obtain and analyse data, coordinate publication across dozens of outlets, and turn something almost invisible — toxic chemicals and corporate influence — into a story the public can actually see and understand.

Together, we’ll explore:

• How cross-border investigative collaborations actually work in practice
• What PFAS are, why they are called “forever chemicals,” and why they matter in Europe
• How journalists and scientists worked together to investigate both pollution and lobbying
• What the Forever Lobbying Project uncovered about the corporate campaign around PFAS regulation
• Why this kind of journalism matters more and more in a world shaped by complex, transnational crises

Expect an evening that is both a behind-the-scenes look at investigative journalism and a practical case study in how power operates when its effects are hard to see. You’ll leave with a clearer understanding of how large public-interest investigations are built — and of the invisible systems shaping European policy, public health, and the environment.