Who’s behind this project – and who is supporting it.

WE ARE:

Martin Bright

Martin Bright has worked as political editor of the News Statesman,  as Home Affairs Editor of The Observer, and reported for the  BBC world service and Channel 4’s Dispatches. In 2006 he won the Magazine Journalism Award for exclusive of the year for his work on the rendition of terror suspects. He is noted for exposing government dialogues with radical Islamist groups including the Muslim Brotherhood, and for his investigations into an infamous Iraq billionaire. He currently writes a blog for the Spectator magazine, and has launched a project – New Deal of the Mind – aimed at supporting the creative industry during the economic downturn .

Heather Brooke

The key reporter behind the expose of British MPs’ expenses, Heather is a campaigning investigative journalist based in London. She was runner up in the first Paul Foot Award for Investigative Journalism and is the author of ‘Your Right to Know’, a citizens’ guide to using the Freedom of Information Act. A contributor to a range of national publications and television programmes, Heather’s project ‘Justice by postcode’, which exposed fluctuating conviction rates throughout UK, was one of the first successful uses of computer assisted reporting in the country.

Peter Barron

Peter Barron was editor of BBC2’s Newsnight from 2004-2008 and worked in TV News and Current Affairs for nearly twenty years. He was previously deputy editor at Channel 4 News and ITV’s Tonight with Trevor McDonald. He devised and edited the BBC Current Affairs drama-documentary series If… He now works as is Director of Communications and Public Affairs for Google in North and Central Europe & is involved here in a private capacity.

Nick Davies

Investigative reporter Nick Davies has a career spanning over three decades during which time he was named Journalist of the Year, Reporter of the Year and Feature Writer of the Year. A regular contributor to the Guardian, Nick has written four books, the most recent, ‘Flat Earth News’, received worldwide acclaim for its exposure of falsehood and distortion in the newspaper industry. The first winner of the Martha Gellhorn award for investigative reporting, he recently won the award for European Journalism: Journalism For a Changing World, for his work on drugs policy.

Nick Fielding

Nick Fielding is a former senior reporter on the Sunday Times and was chief investigative reporter on the Mail on Sunday. At the MoS he broke the story of the renegade MI5 officer David Shayler, leading to his book Defending the Realm: MI5 and the Shayler Affair (together with Mark Hollingsworth). Among other scoops, he exposed the use of child labour in Bangladesh by Levis and in India by C&A. Tory minister Michael Mates was forced to resign after Fielding revealed he had given fugitive financier Asil Nadir an inscribed watch. At the Sunday Times he played a significant role in the recovery of a stolen Enigma coding machine from Bletchley Park. Together with al-Jazeera journalist Yosri Fouda he reported the only interviews ever freely given by the main organisers of the 9/11 attacks on America – Ramzi Binalshibh and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. This collaboration later resulted in a second book, Masterminds of Terror. Now a freelance, he writes the Circling the Lions Den blog about Afghanistan (http://circlingthelionsden.blogspot.com).

Misha Glenny

Author and investigative journalist, Misha Glenny is a specialist on Eastern Europe and on organised crime. He has worked for the Guardian and BBC and in 1993 won the Sony Gold Award for ‘outstanding contribution to broadcasting’. Bestselling author of McMafia, an inquiry into international organised crime, Glenny has written three books on Eastern and South Eastern Europe and has been a policy adviser to the US and a number of European governments.

Stephen Grey (Editor)
A journalist & author, Stephen is a former editor of the Insight Team and foreign correspondent for the Sunday Times. In 2000, as the paper’s Europe Correspondent, he helped found a team of international journalists whose investigations into the European Commission led to the unprecedented resignation of all its members. He is best known for his world exclusive revelations about the CIA’s rendition program – in which Stephen tracked the CIA’s secret airline across the world. He is the author of two books: Ghost Plane (2006), about CIA  rendition, and the just-released Operation Snakebite (2009), an investigation into the war in Helmand, Afghanistan.  He continues to contribute to the Sunday Times, & has contributed to the New York Times, the Times, and the Guardian. He has reported for Channel 4’s Dispatches, BBC Newsnight and Radio 4 and the World Service.

Mark Hollingsworth

Mark Hollingsworth is best known for his investigations into Mark Thatcher and also MI5. He worked for Granada TV’s ‘World In Action’ programme for five years.  He is the author of nine books, notably ‘Thatcher’s Fortunes: The Life and Times of Mark Thatcher’, ‘Defending the Realm: MI5 and International Terrorism’ and ‘Saudi Babylon: Torture, Corruption and Cover-Up Inside the House of Saud’.  His new book, ‘Londongrad: From Russia with Cash, The Inside Story of the Oligarchs’, will be published in July 2009.  He also contributes regularly to the London Evening Standard and most national newspapers.

Andrew Jennings

A journalist on the Sunday Times Insight team during the 1960s, Andrew Jennings has worked as an investigative reporter on a number of national newpapers, the BBC and World In Action. His investigation into British involvement in the Iran-Contra affair won the gold medal at the 1989 New York TV Festival. Best known in recent years as the leading international expert on the corruption inside the International Olympic Committee and inside FIFA, he is author of The Great Olympic Swindle and Foul! The Secret World of FIFA: Bribes, Vote-rigging and Ticket Scandals.

Phillip Knightley

A member of the Sunday Times Insight team for 20 years and possibly one of Britain’s most famed  investigative reporters, Phillip is one of only two reporters to be twice named as Journalist of the Year. He has lectured on journalism throughout the world and is a member of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.  Among his ten books are An Affair of State about the Profumo scandal in Britain, Suffer the Children an expose on the Thalidomide tragedy and Philby KGB Master Spy, a biography of Kim Philby, the KGB mole inside British intelligence.

Paul Lashmar

Paul Lashmar is an investigative journalist who has worked for a number of national newspapers and for World in Action. Mostly recently he has covered the ‘War on Terror’ for the Independent on Sunday. He has produced programmes for BBC’s Timewatch and C4’s Dispatches. He worked with David Leigh on The Observer in the 1980s and jointly they were awarded Reporter of the Year for investigations into MI5’s vetting of BBC staff and together covered Spycatcher, Stalker and many other stories. His current specialist interests include: terrorism, intelligence, organised crime, offshore crime, business fraud and the Cold War. He is also a lecturer at various universities including Solent, Falmouth and City. www.paullashmar.com

David Leigh

David Leigh, the investigations editor of the Guardian, is one of Britain’s best-known investigative journalists. In his career, he has revealed £1 billion paid to Saudi prince Bandar by arms company BAE, put government minister Jonathan Aitken in jail over arms sales, and exposed secret payments to prime minister’s son, Mark Thatcher. In 2007, along with Rob Evans, he won the Paul Foot Award for Investigative Journalism for their BAE revelations, the “What the Papers Say” Investigative journalist of the Year (for BAE)  the same year, and in the British Press Awards has been, among other things,  judged campaigning journalist of the year and investigative reporter of the year. A former producer/director for World in Action, he is the author or co-author of ten  books. David is the first Anthony Sampson professor of reporting at City University and teaches on the MA in Investigative Journalism. He is a member of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.

ADVISERS & SUPPORTERS:

Antony Barnett

Antony is currently a staff reporter for Channel 4’s Dispatches having spent several years as the Investigations Editor of The Observer. He won awards for breaking the Hinduja passport affair which led to Peter Mandelson’s second resignation and masterminding the paper’s lobbygate expose that first brought the activities of New Labour lobbyists like Derek Draper to public attention.  Among his many other scoops, Barnett was the first journalist to reveal Mark Thatcher’s role in the failed  plot to overthrow the Equatorial Guinea government and proved the Foreign Office had not told the truth about their knowledge of the coup. Since moving to television two years ago he has made seven Dispatches including Cameron’s Money Men which showed how the Conservative leader was controversially bankrolling his Party and Unholy War that revealed  the violence and intimidation facing Muslims who convert to Christianity in Britain.

Richard Brooks

Richard Brooks reports for Private Eye magazine on a range of financial and political stories. In 2007 he exposed how Britain’s public spending watchdog, the Auditor General, was himself wasting thousands on his own luxury perks and receiving lavish hospitality from officials and corporations subject to his audits. In 2008 Richard shared the Paul Foot award for investigative and campaigning journalism for revealing how part of the UK’s international development fund had been sold to its own bosses for a fraction of its value and how the executives went onto become millionaires, while transforming the fund into a profit-making machine that deserted areas of critical development importance.Until five years ago Richard was a tax inspector. He owes his big break into journalism to the Inland Revenue bosses who sold the country’s tax offices to a tax haven company!

Jeremy Dear is general secretary of the National Union of Journalists

Paul Evans has worked on new media and e-democracy projects for over a decade. Paul’s current projects include the Slugger O’Toole awards and the Political Innovation Camp which aims to explore the way that a changing media landscape will impact on democracy. Paul is helping the Investigations fund an business and communications issues.

John Kampfner is chief executive of Index on Censorship. He was previously editor of the New Statesman and is the author of Blair’s Wars.

Jason Lewis