Dataharvest 2026 - the European Investigative Journalism Conference

Court decisions are treasure troves of verified facts—but they're often locked in dense legal documents that the public never sees. This session will present a specific methodology for extracting, contextualizing, and translating judicial findings into compelling multimedia narratives that serve human rights advocacy, accountability, and education.

We want to present the methodology we developed in the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network in Bosnia and Herzegovina - BIRN BiH - on how to connect court findings into coherent narratives, translating court-verified facts into accessible, informative, and educational content.

We will use three BIRN BiH developed databases to demonstrate our methodology. Additionally, we want to present how we used court facts to develop educational tools. Many journalists and human rights documentalists treat court records as supporting evidence for stories. This session will show how court decisions themselves can be the primary story—and how systematic extraction creates accountability infrastructure that outlasts individual articles or projects.