Andras Petho

Andras Petho, Hungary, is co-founder and editor of Direkt36, an investigative reporting center in Hungary.

Petho spent several years at Origo, one of the largest newsportals in Hungary, which he left in 2014 after coming under pressure for pursuing a politically sensitive story. He also worked for the BBC World Service’s Hungarian section in 2004 and 2005 as a producer. In 2012 and 2013 he was a Hubert H. Humphrey fellow at the University of Maryland where he studied computer-assisted reporting, among other subjects. As part of his fellowship, he spent eight months with the Washington Post’s investigative unit. He was involved in two data-driven projects on gun violence (Sea of Steel, about weapons recovered by the police, and an analysis of the ShotSpotter system in DC) as a reporter and in an investigation into federal contracts as a researcher.

In Hungary, he has been reporting on corruption and the dealings of businessmen with close ties to political parties. He has received several awards for his work. He is the only journalist to be given the Soma Award two times, the only award dedicated to investigative reporting in Hungary.