Reuters reporter Schectman departs

Joel Schectman, an investigative reporter at Reuters, has left the news organization after nearly 10 years.

He wrote investigative stories on national security, intelligence issues, corruption and cybersecurity.

Schectman previously was on the the pharma/health team in Washington driving ambitious coverage of the Food and Drug Administration, pharmaceutical industry and other aspects of the health care economy.

He partnered with others to produce an award-winning series on the 2016 U.S. prisoner trade with Iran, scooping the competition on a key foreign policy milestone of the Obama administration. In 2017, Schectman led a team of reporters that discovered American tech giants had allowed the Russian government to hunt for vulnerabilities in security systems sold to the Pentagon. The series won the Reuters 2017 Scoop of the Year and the revelations resulted in a new federal law to curb the practice.

Before joining Reuters in 2015, Joel worked for The Wall Street Journal covering corporate bribery, money laundering and sanctions issues.

Schectman holds a master’s degree in journalism from the City University of New York and a bachelor’s degree in film production from Emerson College in Boston.