How we made the news in 2020

22 December 2020

TNI’s work is in the news almost every working day of the year. Together with our partners, we enjoy wide coverage in national and international news outlets from around the world. Here are some of the highlights from 2020 of which we are particularly proud.

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Media Outlets - Highlights

The Economist drew on our work several times, including for their pieces Illegal drugs have become deeply rooted in Burmese society and Aung San Suu Kyi has brought Myanmar peace talks, but no peace.

VICE news referred to our work on cannabis in Indonesia in their article The Worst Places in the World to Get Busted with Weed and Euronews too quoted TNI researcher Tom Blickman when they wrote about Albania’s debate about legalizing cannabis for medical purposes.

In December, the UN finally gave the green light to medicinal cannabis. TNI’s researchers were quoted in Le Monde, Salon, Die Tageszeitung and Marijuana Business Daily.

TNI’s recent reports on the Belt and Road Initiative won regional and international coverage on Radio Free Asia, India’s Economic Times and the BBC.

TNI has gained a reputation for quality research on the subject of borders in recent years, a trend that continued in 2020 with coverage in the Financial Times (only print edition), the Guardian, and SBS (Australia), among others.

Not long after the pandemic broke, TNI and partners wrote research on the foreign investors poised to make billions from Covid-crisis measures and the lawyers preparing to help them do it. These pieces were covered in the Suddeutsche Zeitung, Der Spiegel, Politico, El Pais, The Guardian and de Volkskrant.

Our Public Alternatives work – a broad area of work that examines energy democracy, new and revived models of public ownership, and local initiatives towards a more just and sustainable world, among other issues – was picked up by The Guardian, El Diario, Open Democracy, UOL (Brazil), Le Monde Diplomatique and the Daily Maverick.

In late 2019, TNI co-organized a ‘toxitour’ in Mexico, a caravan of environmental, labor and scientific organizations from Mexico, America and Europe that toured the most polluted areas of the country to learn about and highlight corporate crimes and impunity. A segment on national channel Noticeros Televisa covered the tour in depth.

Recently we have given special focus to the West Asia (Middle East) and North Africa regions and our work in this area has been well received, with coverage by outlets such as Open Democracy and ROAR magazine.

Some of our older work popped up in the news too, for instance when National Geographic cited our 2013 work on fracking.

TNI researchers regularly contribute opinion pieces to outlets in Latin America, Africa, Europe, North America and Asia. Some highlights this year included our piece on the Hirak movement in Algeria for Africa is a Country, pieces for Publico on Spain’s trade and investment agreements and foreign lawsuits and Open Democracy on the law firms cashing in on the pandemic. In Euractiv, we wrote with partners about the dangers of the Energy Charter Treaty.

Finally, TNI’s State of Power Podcast made a Medium.com list of 15 Great Climate Podcasts and our popular webinars made the news in the New Internationalist, the Huffington Post and Red Pepper magazine.

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