Maldito Dato (Maldita.es)

2022 Shortlist

Country/area: Spain

Organisation: Maldita.es

Organisation size: Small

Cover letter:

Maldito Dato is the section of Maldita.es specialized in data journalism and FOIA.

It is a benchmark in Spain in terms of the use of the right of access, transparency and open data.

During the pandemic, it has done a great job via FOIA to obtain a multitude of databases and information unknown to the public. Thanks to all this information and the subsequent work of data journalism, he has been able to tell a great multitude of relevant information.

Maldito Dato has already been recognized in Spain with the GO! Award of FOIA and Transparency in the media category (both in 2020 and 2021) and with the Open Data award from the Junta de Castilla y León in the data journalism category (2021), among other recognitions for his related work in this field. In fact, the fundamental basis of Maldito Dato is clear: data journalism and right of access. They are the two main tools that Maldito Dato tries to use to tell stories and do good journalism. And in 2021, obviously, we have tried to use it especially to focus on the pandemic.

Description of portfolio:

During 2021 Maldito Dato has published an investigation on Spanish hospitals in the pandemic and has revealed the capacity and daily occupation of all of them.

We has also revealed via FOIA who has attended the meetings between the regional governments and the Government of Spain during the pandemic. This information has been hidden throughout the pandemic despite the demands of civil society. Maldito Dato obtained it via FOIA and was able to create and analyze a dataset to see that governments such as Catalonia or Melilla were missing on many occasions.

Via requests we have also been able to reveal during this year that almost 400 workers from the Murcian health department jumped the vaccination line, how in February 2020, before measures were taken in Spain, emergency calls were already triggered due to the coronavirus or the data on infections and deaths among health workers that the Government did not publish.

We were also able to tell the story of retired doctors and health workers who had not finished their degree who were being hired or the vaccination of the regional Health Councillors.

They are just some examples. But Maldito Dato has been clear about the importance of fighting via FOIA for information of public interest that citizens had the right to know during a time as serious and relevant as the pandemic.