- Reading time: 4 min.
Forbidden Stories inspires educational game for thousands of students
By William Clark
October 3rd, 2025
Exploring an open database, analysing confidential documents sent by a whistleblower, and talking to sources to trace the beef supply chain: tens of thousands of students will soon step into the shoes of a consortium of journalists continuing the work of a murdered colleague, just like Forbidden Stories.
On Wednesday, October 1, the Centre for Media and Information Literacy (CLEMI), linked to the French Ministry of Education, presented ‘Trafficking in the Amazon,’ the new edition of the educational role-playing game ‘Classe investigation’, aimed at high school students. The goal: to raise awareness about environmental crimes and the importance of journalism in investigating these crucial issues.
The game is inspired by the Bruno and Dom Project, published in 2023 and coordinated by Forbidden Stories with more than 50 journalists from 16 media outlets. Continuing the work of Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira, who were murdered in the Amazon, this investigation revealed how multinationals continue to export meat linked to deforestation in Brazil.
Credit: Forbidden Stories.
‘It is a tremendous honour to see that our work can inspire generations of students,’ said Laurent Richard, founder and director of Forbidden Stories. ‘All over the world, journalists are imprisoned or killed simply for doing their job. Raising awareness among young people about press freedom and collaborative journalism, as CLEMI does, is essential: it is a vital condition for our democracies.’
10,000 educators have adopted ‘Classe Investigation’ in France
This new fun and collaborative tool is the fourth developed by CLEMI, an organisation that organises the ‘Press Week’ and trains educators in media education. The ‘Classe investigation’ responds to a request from educators to address new topics related to environmental issues.
Credit: Forbidden Stories.
More than a hundred of them attended the game’s launch conference – along with a delegation from Cameroon – alongside Laurent Richard and Youssr Youssef, the journalist who led the investigation on which ‘Trafficking in the Amazon’ is based. They discovered the new scenario of the game on cattle ‘laundering’ in the Amazon, a practice whereby illegal farmers – who engage in deforestation and the destruction of indigenous lands – transfer their cattle to legal farms to conceal their origin before selling them to multinationals.
Throughout the game, students learn about concepts such as collaborative journalism, fact-checking, source protection, and open source intelligence (OSINT) by collecting satellite photos, videos, and social media posts.
‘The proliferation of images and videos circulating on social media has made information very unclear for students,’ said Sabine, a history and geography teacher at a vocational high school who attended the conference. Youssr Youssef, who investigated deforestation in the Amazon for Forbidden Stories, believes that this game can help rebuild trust in the media ‘because you are providing real evidence, an investigation with proof.’
In total, more than 10,000 educators in France will have access to this game over several years. And tens of thousands of students will play at being Forbidden Stories journalists.
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