Investigations: Journalists can still be heroes

I've written an article for InPublishing about the best investigative journalism in the UK over the past year or so, partly inspired by being a judge in the British Journalism Awards.

What struck me was the way some investigations now cross borders and involve different media collaborating, thereby evading legal action in one country that could suppress reporting. There are also interesting alliances between traditional newspapers, broadcasters and digital media for investigating stories and analysing data.

Among the stories I looked at were the HSBC files leaked from Switzerland exposing the use of tax havens; mismanagement at the Kids Company charity; the use of hard sell phone tactics on behalf of leading charities;  corruption allegations at Tower Hamlets Council; doping in athletics; politicians for hire by lobbyists; mistreatment of young offenders; the FIFA scandal; the investigation into Asian grooming gangs; and tennis match fixing.

Among the newspapers featured are the Guardian, Le Monde, Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday, Daily Telegraph, The Times and Sunday Times; as well as Private Eye and the Spectator; programmes from the BBC and Channel Four and investigations by BuzzFeed News and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. Individual journalists mentioned include Andrew Norfolk, Andrew Jennings, Jonathan Calvert, Andrew Gilligan, Tim Minogue, Miles Goslett and Ted Jeory.

It shows that there's much more to journalism than clickbait and that journalists can still be heroes.

• The Guardian, the BBC,  Süddeutsche Zeitung and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and other media organisations in 78 countries have followed up the HSBC leaks investigation brilliantly with the Panama Papers, revealing how the rich and powerful hide their wealth via offshore financial deals, described as "the biggest ever leak of confidential documents."

Media Quotes of the Week: From this journalism business is easy - just find corrupt people - to are local papers no longer journals of record?

Andrew Jennings in the Washington Post: "This journalism business is easy, you know. You just find some disgraceful, disgustingly corrupt people and you work on it! You have to. That’s what we do. The rest of the media gets far too cozy with them. It’s wrong. Your mother told you what was wrong. You know what’s wrong. Our job is to investigate, acquire evidence.”

Jonathan Calvert‏@JCalvertST on Twitter: "Don't think they love us. This is how Fifa responds to this morning's latest sensational @thesundaytimes revelations."

Breaking News Feed on Twitter: "The writer of the world's most legendary headline has died, RIP Vinny Musetto."

David Yelland ‏@davidyelland on Twitter: " Ah, so long Vinnie, fabuloso headline writer at @nypost - a lovely warm man, poet, total New Yorker..."

Michael Deacon in the Telegraph: "Saying voters are brainwashed by the press is snobbery. Essentially, the argument translates as: 'I, a Left-winger, am much too intelligent to let my views be swayed by the media. Unfortunately, the proles are incapable of critical thought, and therefore lift their opinions whole from the pages of The Sun. It is inconceivable that they could have formed their opinions independently; after all, independent thinkers always vote Labour, like me. Oh, why must the people I claim to stand up for be so thick?' ”

John Cleese ‏@JohnCleese on Twitter: "Piers is now asking when I'll be funny again. 'It's been a long time' Answer: 'Piers,when are you going to be talented. It's been a lifetime'."

Piers Morgan ‏@piersmorgan on Twitter: "Memo to the world's media reporters: until @rupertmurdoch loses the word 'executive' from his title, I wouldn't get too excited..."

Roy Greenslade on his MediaGuardian blog: "The Mail on Sunday’s circulation triumph is (cliché alert) a landmark moment. A middle market title is now the best-selling Sunday newspaper title, outselling all four red-tops and its own market rival, the Sunday Express. Toppling the Sun on Sunday from its perch is some feat and surely heralds the day - possibly in 2016 - when the Daily Mail will also outsell the weekday Sun."

Rupert Murdoch ‏@rupertmurdoch on Twitter: "More nonsense in Mail on Sunday about my views on Europe. Very different in quality from Daily Mail."

Raymond Snoddy ‏@RaymondSnoddy on Twitter: "The Press Recognition Panel has announced consultations around the UK - the main issue should be the date for its winding up."

Coventry North West MP Geoffrey Robinson, in a letter to the editor of the Coventry Telegraph, as reported by Press Gazette: “Redundancies are always a sad business and very sadly they seem to come in a never ending stream at the Coventry Telegraph.Your newspaper is a mere shadow of itself. After the present redundancies, your paper could be left with just four reporters and as few as 20 editorial staff in total. You will have hollowed out your capacity to play the important role of a free press in a modern democracy. Coventry is fast becoming a vibrant dynamic city again. What a pity that our newspaper has abandoned its responsibility to scrutinise and hold to account those of us in positions of responsibility.”

Trinity Mirror memo about staff cuts at the Birmingham Mail and Coventry Telegraph, as reported by HoldtheFrontPage: “The days are long gone when we could afford to be a paper of record and dutifully report everything that happened on our patch."

Media Quotes of the Week: From Blatter out to Alan Rusbridger bids goodbye to the Guardian

The Times in a leader [£] : "As the extraordinary dimensions of the Fifa scandal came into focus on Wednesday one of the American reporters who broke the story tweeted: 'Dear World, We don’t even like soccer and we’re going to clear up Fifa for you.' The footballing world owes the FBI a debt of gratitude but it should also hang its head in shame. Cleaning up football is everyone’s business."

The Daily Mail in a leader: "As the Fifa corruption scandal threatens finally to engulf Sepp Blatter, it’s a timely reminder of the value of a free Press – in this case the Sunday Times – which has done so much to expose how rotten football’s governing body truly is."

Culture secretary John Whittingdale in the Sunday Times [£] : "If real change really does come to Fifa, football fans the world over will long be grateful to the tenacious British journalists who helped to make it happen."

The Sunday Times in a leader [£] : "The Fifa arrests and charges are a reminder that an “Anglo-Saxon” free press, prepared to spend money on high quality investigative journalism working in alliance with American power, is still often the only way to tackle corruption in high places."

Lionel Barber ‏@lionelbarber on Twitter: "If they think it's all over, it is now #BlatterOut"

Nick Cohen in Standpoint: "For all the sectarian fervour he has aroused, John Whittingdale is not saying he will end the licence fee. For all its attempts to intimidate journalists, the SNP does not want to close the BBC but seize control of it. Scrupulous politicians know they must show restraint if free societies are to remain free. In London and Edinburgh unscrupulous politicians know that an 'independent' broadcaster that can be threatened with cuts to its grants and bullied in a way no truly independent journalist would ever accept, is much too useful an institution to destroy."

BBC director of news James Harding, quoted by the Guardian, on political parties' complaints about the Corporation's General Election coverage: “Labour was angry about the focus on the SNP, the Tories regularly questioned our running orders and editorial decisions, the Lib Dems felt they weren’t getting sufficient airtime, the Greens complained about being treated like a protest movement not a party. Ukip railed against what they saw as an establishment shut-out, the DUP felt Northern Ireland parties were being treated as second-class citizens, the SNP questioned what they saw as metropolitan London bias at the BBC.”

Nick Robinson in the Mail on Sunday:  "On a rather bad mobile line I was sure, at first, that I was being asked if I could recommend anyone to take charge of Ed Miliband’s presentational difficulties. I began to rack my brains until it began to dawn on me that I had misheard. I was being asked whether I would consider taking on the job of spin doctor, with a role at No 10 to follow, naturally. That’s right – me. For the rest of the conversation I had to resist the urge to roar with laughter and inquire whether the caller had got the wrong number. Instead, I politely expressed my thanks for being considered and explained I remained committed to journalism (just as I did when the papers reported a long time ago that I’d been approached to work for ‘the other side’.)"

Robert Peston in the Radio Times on complaints about his presentation style when he joined the BBC: "They hired various presentation specialists, all of whom have gone on to seek other careers, I'm sure, because it was a total failure. And then, I had been moaning away about how the economic world as we knew it was about to come to an end because of all these banks taking these stupid risks - and lo and behold it happened.  I got one or two decent stories, and suddenly people stopped obsessing about the way I said things and started to take an interest in what I was saying."

Alan Rusbridger in his farewell to readers of the  Guardian: "From the day I arrived, the Guardian felt like a warm bath – a place of sanctuary for free thought and writing."

Sir Harold Evans on Rusbridger on Press Gazette: "Alan Rusbridger by great daring, flair, fine judgment and consistent courage has over 20 innovative years of editorship done a remarkable thing: he has enhanced the worldwide reputation of a great newspaper without apparently breaking a sweat. What's he taking? It has been very good for journalism and all of us."

Media Quotes of the Week: Why local papers can't fight to what Labour had in store for the media

Alan Rusbridger, speaking at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama in London, as reported by the Guardian: “Local newspapers, they basically can’t fight. They basically can’t afford the cost of even a couple of solicitors’ letters.”

lisa o'carroll ‏@lisaocarroll on Twitter: "Fifa says it's a good day for Fifa. Nope. It's a good day for the Sunday Times and investigative journalism."

Fergal Keane ‏@fergalkeane47 on Twitter: "#FIFA Lasting respect for @AAndrewJennings and @BBCPanorama who had the guts to go after FIFA when so many failed to do so."

Michael Crick ‏@MichaelLCrick on Twitter: "FIFA arrests also an indictment of all sports journalists who turned blind eye, or accused Panorama & Sun Times of endangering World Cup bid."

Laura Davison, NUJ organiser, in a statement:  “The NUJ will be writing to the new Culture Secretary and others to highlight what is happening in Newsquest London and across the company. This programme of devastating cuts will make it much more difficult to hold people in power to account and to produce the high quality content readers and advertisers want. Our members are putting forward absolutely legitimate concerns about increased workloads, the impact on quality and the need for investment in editorial and these must be addressed.”

Peter Preston in the Observer: "What the Mirror did a decade or more ago needs a good kicking and maybe a good sacking. Uphold the law. But the law can be self-serving ass if it lets its awards lurch out of kilter. The editor of the Guardian rightly laments the chilling effect of legal costs on probing reporting. Local Trinity Mirror newsrooms may come to lament the impact of this episode on a company that doesn’t have Murdoch’s resources. There’s necessary pain in all this to be sure; but be careful to look for the gain."

Martin Evans in the Telegraph: "The Metropolitan Police is continuing to spend  half a million pounds a month investigating allegations against journalists... figures released under the Freedom of Information Act reveal that the spending is continuing apace with the bill reaching almost £4 million for the last eight months."

Camilla Cavendish in her last column for the Sunday Times [£]: "I feel I leave the industry in better shape than many predicted. And as I disappear to be a small cog in the vast machine of government I hope that journalists — and readers — will continue to hold the powerful to account. Including governments."

Hugo Rifkind in The Times [£] on his days as a celebrity gossip columnist: "After a while, and not even a very long while, it began to wear me down. So much shame, so much hassling of your idols, and for what? You’d get home at 2am, drunkenly chuffed that you’d managed to discover why Richard E Grant wore two watches (one was his dad’s) or which language Jude Law’s kid was learning at school (Chinese), yet still with a niggling, bleak sense that maybe there wasn’t a Pulitzer in this. Then you’d stagger into the office, and tell people, and find out that the bastards had said the same thing to the guy from the Indy two months ago."

Jeremy Clarkson in the Sunday Times  [£] : "Which brings me on to the newspapers, which are full of writers who want to be seen as serious and wise. They seem to think that being funny is a sign of weakness. Happily, this one has AA Gill, who can spend two whole columns ricocheting around Pseuds Corner but then right in the middle of a discourse on pre-Byzantine architecture make a laugh-out-loud joke about turds.  He’s rare, though. Because think about it: when was the last time you read anything in the Daily Mail that was funny? Or, apart from Matt, in the Telegraph? Yes, The Grauniad is funny, but usually not on purpose."

Polly Toynbee on what Labour would have done if elected, in the Guardian: "One bill [Lord] Falconer drew up with particular relish: over-mighty media ownership would be curtailed. A bill would have restored something like the rules before Margaret Thatcher abolished limits on the press and broadcasting one owner could control, when she granted Rupert Murdoch unprecedented market dominance. Newspapers would have been pushed to fall in with Leveson. Since all titles but the Guardian and Mirror backed David Cameron, Labour had little to lose by restoring more media plurality. Yet it fired new levels of ferocity. Will anyone dare again?"
[£]=paywall

Media Quotes of the Week: From what they won't be reading in Reading any more to what's on the menu for readers of different national newspapers

Simon Edgley, managing director of Trinity Mirror Southern, on the move to close seven local papers in Berkshire, including the Reading Post, and focus on digital publishing around the getreading website: “This is a bold digital-only publishing transformation that will re-establish us as a growing media business that delivers the best quality journalism to our digital-savvy audience. We wholeheartedly believe that the future of our business here in Berkshire is online and this is an important and pioneering step that might, in time, be applicable to other existing markets or indeed new ones.”

The Grey Cardigan on The Spin Alley:"I think we all know what’s going to happen here. The 'best quality journalism' will turn out to be a roomful of kids with no journalism qualifications, cutting and pasting complete bollocks while uploading submitted content and mobile phone pictures with nary a glance at its relevance or even legality. 'Go out of the building and research and write a proper story? Sorry, don’t know how to do that.' It’s a sad day for the regional newspaper industry and especially for the journalists involved. It’s an even sadder day for the population of Reading."

Martin Shipton, chair of the Trinity Mirror NUJ group chapel, on the newspaper closures in Berkshire: "This is a watershed moment for the regional newspaper industry. Trinity Mirror is shutting down well-established titles and replacing them with an online news presence unattached to newspapers. So far there is little evidence that an operation of this kind can generate the revenues needed to sustain a workforce of sufficient size to provide a decent news service. The speed at which this transition is taking place is very worrying. It seems the remaining journalists will be used as guinea pigs for an as yet unproven business model. There are good grounds to fear for the future of the sector."

Steve Dyson on the Guardian's Media Blog: "Trinity Mirror, of course, is a plc and so is perfectly entitled – some would say legally bound – to employ strategies it thinks will best make the most profits for its shareholders. But if its ‘digital-only’ gamble is played out across the company’s regional portfolio, with fewer fixed costs, and fewer reporters, and if this is then looked at and emulated by other publishers, it could spell catastrophe for the local newspaper industry."

NUJ general secretary Michelle Stanistreet on the legal challenge by six NUJ members who say they are being monitored by the Met Police: "It is outrageous that the police are using their resources and wide-ranging powers to put journalists under surveillance and to compile information about their movements and work on secret databases. There is no justification for treating journalists as criminals or enemies of the state, and it raises serious questions for our democracy when the NUJ is forced to launch a legal challenge to compel the police to reveal the secret evidence they have collected about media workers."

Guardian readers' editor Chris Elliott on the paper's decision to lead the successful legal fight to name 16-year-old murderer Will Cornick: "Whatever the legal arguments, the Guardian has to be sure that its decision to go to court to have the boy named is consistent with the values it espouses and for which it is often criticised, not least when it puts its faith in the capacity for rehabilitation. The next time we are faced with a choice, I hope we take a longer, harder look at the options."

Tatler editor Kate Reardon in the Observer: "When people are being cruel about Tatler, they say it’s the only magazine that tries to photograph every single one of its readers. Hell, yes! My God, if I could, I would!"

David Conn ‏@david_connon Twitter: "When Panorama exposed Fifa corruption in 2010, FA wanted World Cup & denounced BBC. Now Bernstein is on BBC saying FA should boycott Fifa..."

Rory Cellan-Jones @ruskin147 on Twitter: "PR email this morning starts 'Hi Rory, I hope you're both well..' I'm in two minds about this..."

YouGov profiles of newspaper readers, as published on the Guardian's Media Blog:

• The top three favourite dishes of Guardian readers are likely to be antipasti, aubergine parmigiana and braised endive, they are into hiking and shop at Waitrose.

• Chips, curry sauce, ham and eggs are a Daily Mirror customer’s dishes of choice. The favourite sport of this reader is football and they describe themselves as bighearted.

• The Telegraph reader enjoys eating Vichyssoise soup, stinking bishop cheese and Tournedos rossini, is most likely to own a cat as a pet and describe themselves as analytical but arrogant on occasion.

• A Sun customer enjoys eating pork chops and chips, watches 36-40 hours of TV per week and describes themselves as big-hearted but headstrong on occasion.