Summer Conference Events

Veteran TV investigative journalist Dónal MacIntyre joins Summer Conference to discuss a career of undercover work, protecting the identities of sources and his recent request to the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) to confirm that the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) placed him under direct surveillance.

It was on the third day of the trip into the jungles of northern Cambodia when three Mongabay journalists found themselves surrounded by government rangers pointing rifles at them. Narrowly avoiding arrest, Mongabay combined satellite imagery, geospatial data, paper trails and a lot of hours in the jungle to expose how a network of politically connected timber traffickers are plundering Cambodia’s protected forests.

In this session, we will look at the UK law on “contempt by publication” as set out in the 1981 Contempt of Court Act and discuss whether that law - post the Lucy Letby trial (where an article in The New Yorker was geo-blocked) - and the Southport killings (where the police appeared to believe the law restricted what they could say about the perpetrator of the stabbings, so allowing misinformation to spread), is no longer fit for purpose in the digital age.

Since being founded in 2020, Mill Media has built a reputation for publishing hard-hitting investigative journalism that truly connects with readers. Its stories are known for their immersive feel and narrative structure, engaging audiences in a way that traditional investigations sometimes struggle to.

In an explosive investigation published in March, journalists from BBC News used open source investigative research as well as their sources to track down and name two Bulgarian women who spied for Russia.

Tech companies are harvesting a terrifying amount of personal data from users all the time – and the practice is opaque by design. This talk will look at routes to discovering what data they hold. In particular, we’ll explore how to use subject access requests (SARs) combined with data analysis and other journalistic techniques to paint a picture of how tech and social media companies see and categorise us all.