Carlos Dada, El Salvador, is the founder and director of the news website El Faro, which has become a reference for independent and high-quality journalism in Central America since 1998 and is known for its investigations of corruption and violence.

Dada is a Stanford Knight Fellow and was also a Fellow at the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library. In 2011, he won the Maria Moors Cabot Prize for Latin American Reporting. He is also the recipient of the ICFJ Trailblazer award.

He was part of the team that won the García Márquez Award for coverage in 2021, with a series on the southern Mexican border. He was also a finalist for the IPYS Latin America investigative journalism award for his investigation on the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero.

Dada is a founding member of the Central American Journalists Network. In 2022, he was named World Press Freedom Hero by the International Press Institute.

An Investigative Reporting Manifesto

Carlos Dada investigates corruption in one of the deadliest regions of the world for independent journalists: Central America. In his Anna Politkovskaya Award acceptance speech he questions the role of the journalist and why we practice in such risky environments.

Carlos Dada (right) receives the 2012 Anna Politkovskaya Award