“Navigating Scary Waters”: Q&A with The Outlaw Ocean Project’s Ian Urbina

In March, The Outlaw Ocean Project published a bombshell investigation into India’s shrimp industry. “India Shrimp: A Growing Goliath” uncovered evidence of a flawed industry with pervasive labor and human rights violations and serious public health concerns, including shrimp contaminated with antibiotics marked for shipment to grocery stores—driven by an ever-increasing demand in Western consumer markets for all-you-can-eat shrimp.  

The investigation, the result of months of research, reporting, sifting through thousands of documents from a whistleblower, and more than a few late-night shifts by reporters and LFR lawyers alike—had an immediate impact. More than 140 outlets picked up the story, amplifying its reach in 21 languages across 45 countries. The FDA and U.S. congressional committees opened investigations into the company that was the subject of the reporting, and the broader Indian shrimping industry, and lawmakers proposed new policies and legislation to address food and labor safety concerns.

Read more about the impact of the Outlaw Ocean Project’s investigations.

The Outlaw Ocean Project, a nonprofit journalism organization based in Washington, DC, has been a client of the Vance Center’s Lawyers for Reporters program for more than three years. Over that time, we have supported their reporting on labor and human rights abuses in the Chinese seafood industry, including the industry’s use of Uyghur and North Korean forced labor, but this was by far our most complex work with them to date.  

LFR Staff Attorney Zach Press recently caught up with Outlaw Ocean Project founder and director Ian Urbina to talk more about the hidden work that goes into this kind of investigation and why having good lawyers helps investigative journalists minimize risks so they can stay focused on their reporting. 

The conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity. 

Vance Center: Ian, can you tell us more about the process of reporting this investigation?

Ian Urbina: After the whistleblower reached out, stage one was to figure out what the whistleblower could give us access to, and whether he was trustworthy. Once we felt confident with him and realized that he could open an unusual window into this industry and this plant, the next challenge was the logistics of trying to get to him in India.

We were on a ship in Antarctic waters at that point, so that was quite a process.

The next phase was getting all the documents, of which there were thousands upon thousands, and audio and video and paper and spreadsheets, and organize them all, figure out what they were saying and how we’re going to handle redactions to protect vulnerable folks within the documents, and then understand what the documents were revealing. That took about two months of very intense work.

A lot of the most difficult stuff was understanding the very technical language of antibiotics, how they were used, where documents seemed to indicate that they had been used for shipments that perhaps were not allowed to have shrimp with antibiotics. And understanding the process of shrimp coming from the farms to the processing plant, to exporters, then to importers, and ultimately to grocery stores in the U.S. and Canada.

And then the next phase was where Lawyers for Reporters came in: surviving the attempted intimidation by the company’s legal counsel, which took a very aggressive posture towards us and was essentially threatening to sue us if we published the story.

Navigating those scary waters was where LFR came in handy. They helped us understand how to be careful, not to overreach, but also not to be intimidated or bullied. And methods where we could “show, don’t tell” the story through juxtaposition. For example, positioning documents alongside claims rather than stating a contradiction, and finding ways to present materials that were powerful but safe and could be understood by average readers as well as law enforcement, federal agencies, industry folks, and so on.

The final phase was actually preparing for the release. This included ensuring that the whistleblower had good legal counsel and was safe and ready for what would likely be an onslaught of attention on him, on the plant, and ultimately on the industry across India.

VC: What was your team’s experience working with LFR on this story, especially during the final weeks leading up to publication?

IU: The experience was pretty amazing, frankly.

In multiple ways, the LFR team did their homework. They actually kept up with reading, both what we were writing and also the raw materials. That’s no small thing.

We have a staff of 10 and about six or seven of them were working full days to read the documents, translate them into plain speak and order them sequentially so they added up to an explanatory narrative.

Then here we have a small group of lawyers who had to keep up with us and figure out what the documents said and whether our rendering of them felt safe and accurate and fair. And LFR did that.

We were also running against a timetable, because we had an immovable deadline for publishing the investigation. We had to get the story out on a certain date lest we fall behind another venue that was publishing a related story on that date. We had struck a deal that neither of us would go first, but also wouldn’t delay, so we had to get the story ready by that date. That meant we had to get through all the material. And that meant the lawyers had to keep up.

My staff was working around the clock. I was working every day from 7:00 a.m. till 10 at night. And we were constantly shipping new drafts of the story, new batches of documents for review, to the lawyers. And they were keeping pace incredibly.

The other unusual thing was that [the lawyers] understood the importance of journalism. Rather than leaning toward saying “no” and having to be convinced of a “yes,” they leaned towards “yes,” but always thinking about the protective version of “yes.”

By that I mean they wanted to let us publish and write in a way that we thought was best. They were often eager to help with additional phrasing that could add layers of protection, so we wouldn’t get in trouble for what we said. They helped us by keeping pace, becoming subject matter experts, and leaning towards facilitating our journalism as opposed to obstructing it.

VC: At what point in an investigation should journalists consider bringing in external legal support or advice?

IU: As early as possible. To me, these things really work if you have a long-running relationship with the lawyers and it’s not a story-by-story relationship.

Part of what I think makes our experience with LFR especially good is that they know us. They know the kinds of stories and topics we produce, how we present them, our time arc, personalities, our voice, our rigor, etc. They’ve worked with us for several years and that allows us to be so much more efficient and bilaterally trusting. That’s the ideal scenario.

If an organization doesn’t have that luxury and has to bring in legal counsel on a particular investigation, then obviously the earlier the better. We began showing the lawyers very early drafts of this story, reminding them that this is not what the final version is going to look like, but this will help get them warmed up to the issues. We started that several weeks before publication.

VC: How is pre publication review different from an editorial review process? Are there different considerations, tensions or language for a story going through legal review versus with an editor?

IU: Sometimes there’s a gray area, but generally they’re pretty distinct.

There are different types of editors. There’s the fact check desk, editors who are checking factuality and sourcing, the back level of information behind the numbers, and years and name spellings and framing of sentences and all that sequencing, making sure it’s accurate.

Then there are “back field” editors, as they’re often called. They’re looking at meta structure and infrastructure: “Are the pieces of this story in the right order? Is there a more interesting way to do this? Is the pacing right? Are there sections where things get bogged down that need to be broken up to help keep the reader’s attention?”

The legal review is really different. From my experience, that has more to do with, “Are there things in this reporting that will be risky from a libel perspective?”

The lawyers can also shift from purely legal matters to ethics. In some ways, the lawyers also serve as a bit of a methodological conscience. For example, asking “Is the disclosure of this information going to make someone unsafe?” and “Is there any way around that?”

Those sorts of questions are often about the safety of sources and often handled by editors, but sometimes the lawyers have fresh eyes and perspective, and ask good questions.

For me, the most important questions or requests are the ones that protect the journalists and their parent organization from any litigation that could come their way as a result of what they produce.

VC: Last, why is it important for independent investigative outlets to have access to this kind of legal advice and support?

IU: We live in an extremely litigious world — not just in the U.S. — for journalists, especially for investigative journalists, who necessarily should be writing stories that are not purely, “he said, she said,” but carry a bit more force than stenography. That means risk, for the publication and the journalist, of getting sued or attacked for having produced that journalism. Or pressure campaigns aimed at [an outlet’s] funders, or at the publications where freelancers may run a story, that are not actually intended to sue but instead to sow doubt and fear.

These are real risks that undermine the ability of journalists to do good journalism and get in the way of important reporting being made public. These days, they’re very sophisticated and refined [tactics], used by the very targets of investigative journalism. The same industries and players who are most deserving of a harsh critical focus are often the ones who are most savvy at intimidating anyone who might want to shine those lights on them. That’s why really good lawyers, affordable or free pro bono lawyers, are existentially important for investigative reporting.