Summer Conference Events

A superb Panorama investigation broke its most recent revelations in May. Working with veterans as key sources, investigative journalists uncovered evidence of war crimes by British special forces over a whole decade.

It didn't start as an "investigation" but within months a story that began with a relatively straightforward report about tens of thousands of unpaid carers being unfairly forced to repay thousands of pounds in benefits and prosecuted for fraud had snowballed: the injustices exposed by the ongoing reports scandalised the public, led to a government-commissioned independent review, and won the journalists behind the story the prestigious Paul Foot Award for investigative journalism.

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.

How should truth-seeking investigative journalism operate amid the proliferation of conspiracy theories on one side and the rise of a cadre of sometimes censorious “disinformation” experts on the other?

In 2019, after a series of fatal crashes involving Boeing’s 737 MAX model, planes were grounded around the world. Accusations of mismanagement, of a terminal decline in standards at factories, and of cover-ups have come in the wake of lawsuits and government investigations which continue today.

In September 2022 a series of massive underwater explosions destroyed sections of the two Nord Stream pipelines built to transport natural gas from Russia to Europe via Germany. The investigation found itself in a highly politicised environment, with three schools of thought: The Russians did it. The CIA did it. The Ukrainians did it.

The New York Times's investigation into allegations of sexual harassment and assault by the Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein in October 2017 led to an avalanche of MeToo stories in the media. These are not easy stories to tell, especially in the UK where laws around both defamation and privacy are much tougher for journalists than in the US.

The Electoral Bonds scheme was introduced by the Indian government as a tool to make political donations through banking channels. It was subsequently used by individuals within that government, according to Poonam Agarwal's investigation, to take bribes in the form of donations.

Police corruption, unsolved murders, organised crime and miscarriages of justice are all the rage across media platforms. But it is a hostile environment full of thugs, liars, fantasists, hidden agendas and libel.

Over nearly two decades, the UK Post Office prosecuted hundreds of innocent subpostmasters for shortfalls in their accounts caused, in fact, by errors of an IT system called Horizon - one of the biggest and most egregious miscarriages of justice in recent British history.