Timeline showing examples of investigative journalism in all media
Created by paulbradshaw on Nov 20, 2009
Last updated: 04/08/11 at 04:25 AM
Tags: investigative journalism
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Wikileaks work with a number of national news organisations to publish stories contained in 400,000 classified warlogs from the war in Afghanistan
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/the-war-logs
"The United Kingdom Parliamentary expenses scandal was, and continues to be, a major political scandal triggered by the publication of expense claims made by members of the United Kingdom Parliament over several years. Public outrage was caused by disclosure of widespread actual and alleged misuse of the permitted allowances and expenses claimed by Members of Parliament (MPs), following failed attempts by parliament to prevent disclosure under Freedom of Information legislation. The scandal aroused widespread anger among the UK public against MPs and a loss of confidence in politics. It resulted in a large number of resignations, sackings, de-selections and retirement announcements, together with public apologies and the repayment of expenses. It also created pressure for political reform extending well beyond the issue of expenses." - Wikipedia
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/mps-expenses/6499657/MPs-expenses-scandal-a-timeline.html
"Officials from the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) launched an investigation following [Guardian] Work's story. It led them to a shadowy group in c, Worcs, called The Consulting Association, run by 66-year-old Ian Kerr. There they found a database of some 3,200 names and invoices showing 44 construction firms, including some of the UK's biggest, had used its services." - Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2008/jun/28/workandcareers
"There are tales of the secret trials conducted on tens of thousands of BT customers without their consent, the time when Phorm branded El Reg unethical, and the story of how the Information Commissioner woke up... then went back to sleep."
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/02/29/phorm_roundup/
"In 2005 and 2007, Campbell investigated and wrote criticisms of the Operation Ore child pornography prosecutions in the U.K., which exposed police errors and "revealed how computer evidence used against 7,272 people in the UK accused of being paedophiles had been founded on falsehoods." These articles were "Operation Ore Exposed" and "Sex, Lies and the Missing Videotape," both published in PC Pro magazine." - Wikipedia
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/features/74690/operation-ore-exposed
"Extraordinary rendition and irregular rendition are terms used to describe the apprehension and illegal transfer of a person from one state to another.[1] "Torture by proxy" is used by some critics to describe situations in which the United States has purportedly transferred suspected terrorists to countries known to employ harsh interrogation techniques that may rise to the level of torture.[2][3][4]
It is alleged that the CIA runs a secret global abduction and internment operation of suspected terrorists, known as “extraordinary rendition”, which since 2001 has captured about 3,000 people and transported them around the world. It has been alleged that torture has been employed with the knowledge or acquiescence of the Governments of the United States and the United Kingdom. Condoleezza Rice, then United States Secretary of State, said in an April 2006 radio interview that the United States does not transfer people to places where it is known they will be tortured.[1][5][6]" - Wikipedia
http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/rendition701/book_excerpt/book_excerpt.html
"Mark Daly spent months working as a policeman in Manchester. His fellow officers were unaware that their colleague was, in fact, an undercover journalist who was trying to discover if racism lurked among their ranks." - BBC
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/3210614.stm
"Preemption, of course, is just part of the Plan, and the Plan is hardly new. It is a warmed-over version of the strategy Cheney and his coauthors rolled out in 1992 as the answer to the end of the Cold War. Then the goal was global dominance, and it met with bad reviews. Now it is the answer to terrorism. The emphasis is on preemption, and the reviews are generally enthusiastic. Through all of this, the dominance motif remains, though largely undetected.
"This country once rejected “unwarned” attacks such as Pearl Harbor as barbarous and unworthy of a civilized nation. Today many cheer the prospect of conducting sneak attacks—potentially with nuclear weapons—on piddling powers run by tin-pot despots.
"We also once denounced those who tried to rule the world. Our primary objection (at least officially) to the Soviet Union was its quest for global domination. Through the successful employment of the tools of containment, deterrence, collective security, and diplomacy—the very methods we now reject—we rid ourselves and the world of the Evil Empire. Having done so, we now pursue the very thing for which we opposed it. And now that the Soviet Union is gone, there appears to be no one left to stop us."
http://www.harpers.org/archive/2002/10/0079354
"We want to know whether George W Bush won the election or did brother Jeb steal it for him? Our investigation suggest the answer lies in this shuttered building and in a very expensive contract between Governor Jeb's division of elections and a private company named DBT, which accidentally wiped off the voter rolls thousands of Democratic voters."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/events/newsnight/1174115.stm
"Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal (2001) is a book by investigative journalist Eric Schlosser that examines the local and global influence of the United States fast food industry. First serialized by Rolling Stone in 1999" - Wikipedia
http://www.mcspotlight.org/media/press/rollingstone1.html
"A computer magazine is disputing the finding that two pilots whose Chinook helicopter crashed on the Mull of Kintyre in 1994 were "grossly negligent" ... Computer Weekly reports that the helicopter's engine control software may have been the cause of the crash." - BBC
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/353063.stm
"Thames TV lost the London ITV franchise after this film was broadcast. Death on the Rock was the title of a documentary in the current affairs series This Week, made by Thames Television and broadcast on the ITV network on 28 April 1988. The programme investigated the incident, on Sunday 6 March 1988, when three members of the IRA, sent to Gibraltar on an active service mission, were shot and killed by members of British special forces. The incident, and subsequently the programme about it, became controversial as a result of uncertainty and conflicting evidence about the manner in which the killing was carried out and the degree to which it was an "execution" with no attempted arrest. The programme interviewed witnesses who claimed to have heard no prior warning given by the SAS troops and to have seen the shooting as one carried out "in cold blood." Furthermore, the defence that the IRA team might, if allowed time, have had the capacity to trigger by remote control a car bomb in the main street, was also subject to criticism, including that from an Army bomb disposal expert. Claiming that its transmission prior to the official inquest was an impediment to justice, the then foreign secretary, Sir Geoffrey Howe, attempted to stop the programme being broadcast by writing to the chairman of the Independent Broadcasting Authority, Lord Thomson of Monifieth. Lord Thomson refused to prevent transmission noting that "the issues as we see them relate to free speech and free inquiry which underpin individual liberty in a democracy." Following transmission, there was some criticism of the programme's investigative stance in the press (e.g. "Storm at SAS Telly Trial" The Sun; "Fury over SAS 'Trial by TV'," Daily Mail; "TV Slur on the SAS," Daily Star). Subsequently, a number of papers, notably The Sunday Times and The Sun, attempted to show not only that the programme's procedures of inquiry were faulty but that the character of some of its witnesses was dubious (in one case, this latter charge resulted in a successful libel action being brought). Such was the debate which developed around the programme, intensified by one of its witnesses subsequently repudiating his testimony in it, that an independent inquiry was conducted at the behest of Thames Television." - Google Video entry
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_on_the_Rock
"Margaret Thatcher branded Arthur Scargill and the other leaders of the 1984-5 miners' strike ;'the enemy within'. With the publication of this bestselling book a decade later, the full irony of that accusation became clear. There was an enemy within. But it was not the National Union of Mineworkers that was out to subvert liberty. It was the secret services of the British state - operating inside the NUM itself. Seumas Milne revealed for the first time the astonishing lengths to which the government and its intelligence machine were prepared to go to destry the power of Britain's miners' union. Using phoney bank deposits, staged cash drops, forged documents, agents provocateurs and unrelenting surveillance, MI5 and police Special Branch set out to discredit Scargill and other miners' leaders. Planted tales of corruption were seized on by the media and both Tory and Labour politicians in what became an unprecedentedly savage smear campaign. In this new edition, published for the twentieth anniversary of Britain's most important postwar social confrontation, new material brings the story up to date - and, in the wake of the Iraq war intelligence scandals, highlights the continuing threat posed by the security services to democracy today."
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Enemy-within-Thatchers-Secret-Against/dp/1844675084
"Colin Wallace claims he was discharged from the British army for his refusal to take part in a dirty tricks campaign orchestrated by MI5 in Northern Ireland. He was later jailed for the murder of a friend, but has maintained his innocence. The question is how far was MI5 involved?" - Amazon entry
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colin_Wallace#Bibliography
"Ganz Unten ("Lowest of the Low") (1985) documented Wallraff's posing as a Turkish guest worker, and the mistreatment he received in that role at the hands of employers, landlords and the German government."
http://writing.learnhub.com/lesson/5849-guenter-wallraff-undercover-journalist
"In 1976, [Duncan Campbell] was the first journalist to reveal the existence of the global British electronic intelligence agency GCHQ (Government Communications Headquarters). This led to the failed "ABC" trial in 1978, when the government attempted to jail him for up to 30 years for breaking Official Secrecy laws." - http://www.open-plan.org/index.php?bios2
http://web.archive.org/web/20070607034318/http://ukcoldwar.simplenet.com/nuclear/civildefence/abctrial/
"— In September 1972, The Sunday Times published the first in a series of articles under the headline “Our Thalidomide Children: a Cause for National Shame”. Cheques and offers of help flooded in from readers. Jack Ashley, the Labour MP, took up the issue in the Commons and shareholders in Distillers revolted. Within months, the firm had reconsidered its offer and a deal worth £32.5m was finalised."
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/article3602694.ece
"The My Lai Massacre was the mass murder conducted by a unit of the U.S. Army on March 16, 1968 of 347 to 504 unarmed citizens in South Vietnam, all of whom were civilians and a majority of whom were women, children, and elderly people." - Wikipedia
http://www.pierretristam.com/Bobst/library/wf-200.htm
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