The Centre for Investigative Journalism

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2005

OCTOBER 13 - LONDON
Frontline Club Public Forum
'DEATH ON THE ROCK' A screening of the controversial This Week programme, Followed by Q&A with reporter Rosie Waterhouse, whose Sunday Times Insight Team memo enabled a successful libel action by the victims of the Murdoch press and security service killings.

Originally broadcast as part of ITV's Thames Television current affairs series 'This Week' in April 1988, 'Death on the Rock' investigated the killing of three members of the IRA - sent to Gibraltar on an active service mission - by members of British special forces in March of 1988. It examined conflicting evidence about the manner in which the killing were carried out; the degree to which it was an "execution" was the subject of much debate.

Claiming that its transmission prior to the official inquest into the deaths was an impediment to justice, the then Foreign Secretary, Sir Geoffrey Howe, attempted, and failed, to stop 'Death on the Rock' from being broadcast.

Such was the debate which developed around the programme following its transmission that an independent inquiry was conducted at the behest of Thames Television. Set in the context of long-standing tension between the Conservative government and media - particularly investigative journalists - on the matter of "national interest" and on limits imposed on work which brought into question the activities of the state, the inquiry's findings largely cleared the programme of any impropriety.

Widely viewed as the Conservative government's revenge for 'Death on the Rock', Thames, one of the most innovative of the major companies, eventually lost its licence to broadcast under the new system of allocating ITV franchises instituted by Thatcher.

OCTOBER 25- LONDON
Frontline Club Public Forum
THE EU WHISTLEBLOWER with Hans-Martin Tillack of Stern and Stephen Grey of The Sunday Times discussing the arrest of a leading investigative journalist pursuing corruption in Belgium

"We have witnessed a gigantic fishing expedition in which Belgian police have been used by the European anti-corruption authority OLAF to try to intimidate a reporter. The campaign against [Tillack] has been unjust, the way it was carried out was cowardly and spiteful, and the threat it poses to every journalist is self-evident." - Aidan White, IFJ General Secretary

In March 2004, Hans-Martin Tillack, then the EU correspondent for Stern in Brussels, was arrested by Belgian police on charges of allegedly bribing an EU official. The arrest followed the publication of his reports on corruption and democratic deficits within the Union - reports for which Tillack was eventually awarded the 2005 Leipzig Media Prize - and the seizure of materials in a series of raids on his home and office.

One of Germany's foremost investigative journalists, Hans-Martin Tillack was the EU Correspondent for Stern from 1999 through 2004. He is currently based in the Stern Berlin office, covering national politics.

The EU Correspondent for The Sunday Times from 1998 through 2001, Stephen Grey currently works as a freelance investigative reporter, filing for the The Sunday Times, The Guardian, Atlantic Monthly, New York Times and New Statesman, amongst others. He was short listed for two 2005 Amnesty International Media Awards for his investigation into CIA renditions.

NOVEMBER 17, LONDON
Frontline Club Public Forum
USING THE FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT by the author of YOUR RIGHT TO KNOW. A talk on journalists' use of the new Act, its possibilities and exclusions including the use of the Act in the USA, and methods and approaches to effective use.

2006

JANUARY 12, LONDON
Frontline Club Public Forum
SOURCES REAL & UNREAL With Jeff Katz, Chief Executive of Bishop International, who has been responsible for hundreds of inquiries, ranging from due diligence investigations of controversial public figures to investigations involving homicide and political corruption. He speaks about the murky world of corporate investigation. And on plausible fraudsters who have hoodwinked journalists - What to be aware of, and how it happens.

FEBRUARY 28, LONDON
Frontline Club Public Forum
THE ZIRCON AND ESCHOLON SCANDALS Presented by Duncan Campbell on an extraordinary investigation into the vast government spying on ordinary citizens that resulted in Special Branch police raids on his offices.

APRIL 5, LONDON
Frontline Club Public Forum
WEB OF CORRUPTION: Inside the Poulson Affair Investigative journalist Ray Fitzwalter spoke about the scandal and the endless lessons - many already forgotten - that the story held for journalists. The Poulson affair was an underrated and underreported story of corruption that reached every level of government in Britain. Fitzwalter was for 15 years the Editor and Executive producer of Britain's best investigative television series, World In Action.

JULY-AUGUST, LONDON
UNIVERSITY OF WESTMINSTER
"Invisible University Project"

Provision of research for an architectural investigation into the differing uses and quantities of space in Universities, municipalities and social organizations. An international research project for architects Samantha Hardingham and David Green, founder of Archigram.

CIJ Intern: Cosme Julien Madoni

JULY 20, LONDON
Frontline Club Public Forum
CRISIS IN US INVESTIGATIVE REPORTING, Chuck Lewis, Founder and Chief Executive of the Washington, D.C. based Center for Public Integrity, speaking on the failure of the US mainstream media to confront the Iraq war. Lewis is one of the most awarded anti-corruption journalists in the US whose books exposed the detail of Congressional fraud and financial misrepresentation.

JULY 21, LONDON
Frontline Club Public Forum
A QUESTION OF TORTURE, Prof. Alfred McCoy, speaking on the historical origins of the scientific study interrogation in the postwar US and Russian security services. McCoy, who first documented the controversial relationship between opium gum base production in the Golden Triangle and the US government, recently published a groundbreaking study on state terror and torture.

NOVEMBER 6, LONDON
Frontline Confidential
A report from Sonia Shah on unsupervised drug trials by big Pharmaceutical companies in the developing world that have caused death and serious illness.

NOVEMBER 8, LONDON
CIJ First Interns Meeting
City University

Expecting 6 or 7 graduate students, 23 international volunteers arrived from Brazil, Canada, India, Greece, France, Italy and the US to staff two specific investigative projects. The first on Deaths in Police Custody in Britain and the second report on the activities of a major multinational. These two projects are expected to take 9 or more months to complete before publication.

NOVEMBER 9, LONDON
CIJ and City University
A Memorial and Protest at the Murder of Anna Politkovskaya in which with five others, Alexander Litvinenko was a featured speaker and who sadly at that point had just been admitted to hospital, poisoned.

NOVEMBER 10, LONDON
Frontline Confidential
Screening and Discussion of "The Insider" with Richard Sambrook (BBC Global News head) and Gavin MacFadyen (CIJ) on the treatment of whistle-blowers by their companies and the Media, exemplified by CBS 60 Minutes

Producer Lowell Bergman

NOVEMBER 13, LONDON
CIJ
Preparation of research programme and some assistance for the Lithuanian film director, Audrius Juzenas, on the mysterious life of Sugihara, a Japanese Shindler, during World War II.

NOVEMBER 21 LONDON
Frontline Confidential
"Would Proposed Changes to the Freedom of Information Act Violate the Public's Right to Know"

An important meeting on current threats to the UK's only FOI law, with Heather Brooke, David Leigh, Maurice Frankel and Nick Fielding.

NOVEMBER 28 LONDON
Preparation of Handbooks
Three pamphlets commissioned by BIRN on Interviewing, Sources and Libel.

Writers include Melanie McFadyean (Guardian), Margaret Renn (BBC Radio 4).

DECEMBER 1 LONDON
Frontline Confidential
A Discussion with Stephen Grey on the history and methods of his landmark investigation into "Extraordinary Rendition" and the outsourcing of torture.

2007

JANUARY 24 LONDON
Frontline Confidential
Birmingham Six
With Chris Mullin MP, and Ray Fitzwalter One of Britain's foremost investigative journalists tells how six innocent men - the Birmingham Six - were released after spending 17 years in jail following an investigative series by World in Action.

This is part of a series by Frontline Confidential in which it examines landmark journalistic investigations led by some of the best British journalists.

This week Ray Fitzwalter will talk about the World in Action series, which led to the campaign to release the Birmingham Six, men who were wrongly convicted of bombing two Birmingham pubs in 1974 with the death of 21 people.

Ray Fitzwalter will explain how the investigation got underway, outline the setbacks they faced and tell how the programme was finally broadcast after six years. Five programmes were shown despite significant obstruction by the government.

He will also show 20 minutes from one of the programmes in the series Who Bombed Birmingham?

Ray Fitzwalter worked on the World in Action series at Granada Television for 23 years, including 11 years as an editor and 5 years as executive producer. He is the winner of two BAFTA awards and is a Fellow of the Royal Television Society.

He has also been the chairman of the Campaign for Quality Television for 10 years. Ray Fitzwalter currently works as a Professor of Broadcasting at the International Media School at Salford University.

JANUARY 25-26 OXFORD
Oxford University - Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism seminars on Investigation and Intrusion. in which CIJ's Director argued that as investigative reporting became increasingly marginalized and unfunded, wealthy tabloid proprietors' unscrupulous practices were being used to smear investigations of government corruption.

FEBRUARY 21- LONDON
Frontline Confidential
A discussion with John Willis and the landmark investigation Alice - "A Fight for Life" told the story of cover-ups and double standards in the asbestos industry set against one woman's fight with asbestos-related cancer.

Immediately following the programme shares in the asbestos industry fell by £60 million and the government reduced the levels of asbestos permissible in factories.

John Willis talks about the power of research, the unusual mix of emotion and investigation and his fight against the industry.

Willis started out at Yorkshire Television where he won countless awards for his investigative documentaries, including Alice - A Fight for Life.

In 1988 he joined Channel 4 as Controller of Factual Programmes and five years later moved up to be Director of Programmes.

Since then he has worked as chief executive at United Productions, sat on the Boards of both ITN and Channel 5 and worked as director of Factual and Learning Programmes at the BBC.

Late last year he became chief executive of Mentorn Productions who make Question Time for the BBC, editions of Dispatches for Channel 4 and high impact factual drama like The Government Inspector and The Trial of Tony Blair.

29 June - LONDON
FRONTLINE CONFIDENTIAL
White Slavery
Don Jordan and Mike Walsh talk about investigating the forgotten story of thousands of white Britons who lived and died in bondage in Britain's American Colonies

11 July, 2007
FRONTLINE CONFIDENTIAL
Thalidomide, the landmark Sunday Times Insight Team investigation of the Distillers' wonder drug which caused severely deformed babies. The manufacturer who bragged that their wonder drug, Thalidomide, was completely safe , sold it in 46 countries under at least 37 names. Some patients began reporting unusual side effects, and Pregnant women started giving birth to severely deformed babies. But the manufacturer continued to dispute the claims.

But a crusading editorial policy and the Insight Team of the Sunday Times under Editor Harold Evans, took on the drug companies to win compensation for the victims. The Insight Team eventually gained victory in the European Court of Human rights. It was one of the most important victories of investigative reporting in British journalism

One Special correspondent of this landmark investigation was Philip Knightley and another was Elaine Potter, who co-authored the history of the investigation, Suffer the Children with Marjorie Wallace and Harold Evans.

Wed 19th September
Frontline Confidential
Beslan: Has the truth been told?
With Timothy Phillips. Moderated by David Hearst (the Guardian).

Writer Timothy Phillips talks about Beslan three years after the terrible tragedy there. He looks at whether the small tight-knit community been able to overcome the shock of what happened and questions whether we will ever find out the truth about the events of September 2004.

25 September 2007
FRONTLINE CONFIDENTIAL
Deception: The sale of Nuclear Weapons Technology
Investigative journalists Adrian Levy and Catherine Scott-Clark reveal a vast nuclear black market sanctioned by Pakistan's military elite, financed by aid money from the US, Saudi Arabia and Libya and receiving assistance from China.

31 October 2007
FRONTLINE CONFIDENTIAL
Whistleblowing
With David Leigh (The Guardian), Martin Bright (the New Statesman), Guy Dehn (Public Concern at Work) and the Mystery Contributor.

FRONTLINE CONFIDENIAL
29 June 2007
White Slavery
Don Jordan and Mike Walsh talk about investigating the forgotten story of thousands of white Britons who lived and died in bondage in Britain's American Colonies.

Nov 6, 2007
FROINTLINE CONFIDENTIAL
Sonia Shaw

2008

Wed 27th February
FRONTLINE CONFIDENTIAL
Falsehood, Distortion and Propaganda in the Global Media
Nick Davies With David Leigh (The Guardian). Moderated by Gavin MacFadyen (Centre for Investigative Journalism).

Award-winning investigative journalist Nick Davies breaks Fleet Street's unwritten rule and investigates his own colleagues, discovering that he works in "a corrupt profession".

Wed 12th March
FRONTLINE CONFIDENTIAL
Organized Crime from Eastern Europe Moves West
Paul Radu of the Romanian Centre of Investigative Journalists talks about human trafficking from the Balkans and Russian organised crime infiltrating the football business in Eastern Europe.

Thu 17th April
FRONTLINE CONFIDENTIAL with Andrew Gilligan
Moderated by Gavin MacFadyen (CIJ).

Andrew Gilligan, former BBC Radio 4 Defence and Diplomatic Correspondent and the man in the centre of the Hutton Inquiry and the 'sexying up of the dossier' scandal, tells his side of the story.

Gilligan is best known for his report about the government's dossier about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction which was published ahead of the invasion of Iraq and contained the infamous '45-minutes claim'.

He resigned from the BBC following the publication of the Hutton Inquiry report, which among other things criticised Gilligan's journalistic standards. He now writes for The Evening Standard about defence and diplomatic affair

Tue 13th May
FRONTLINE CONFIDENTIAL
The Rise and Fall OF ITV
Ray Fitzwalter, former Executive Producer of World in Action, moderated by Gavin MacFadyen (CIJ)

Ray Fitzwalter, talks about his just published book, The Dream that Died - The rise and fall of ITV and the unpleasant story of how ITV and Granada Television abandoned their popular social promise and became what many would describe as a wasteland.

Tue 1st July
FRONTLINE CONFIDENTIAL
Adam Hochschild on King Leopold's Ghost – In Conversation with Gavin MacFadyen (CIJ)

A conversation about the secret Holocaust in King Leopold’s Belgian Congo and the forced labour system that killed ten million people, How the story was uncovered and how the evidence was secured. An extraordinary investigation that unearthed heroic and compassionate British investigators who formed one of the world's first human rights organizations. And why it isn’t taught in most Belgian (and British) schools.