Andrew John Fowler is an Australian TV reporter, author, and journalist. Born in the United Kingdom, he worked as a journalist in London before migrating to Australia. He specialises in human rights and national security issues. [1]
Andrew John Fowler is an Australian TV reporter, author, and journalist. Born in the United Kingdom, he worked as a journalist in London before migrating to Australia. He specialises in human rights and national security issues. [1]
Fowler has reported extensively on the rise of WikiLeaks on ABC programs Four Corners and Foreign Correspondent and published the book, The Most Dangerous Man in the World: the inside story of WikiLeaks. [2] [3] [4] [1]
In 2013 Fowler reported for ABC's Four Corners on foreign hackers who had penetrated several Australian Government departments and defence manufacturing companies. The program, Hacked, revealed that the blueprint for the then new headquarters of Australia's domestic spy agency ASIO, had been discovered on an internet server based in China, thus potentially compromising the agency's security. [5]
Fowler is critical of the rising power of executive government. He sees the prosecution of Julian Assange as a political attack on journalism and an attempt to intimidate all journalists from their central role of holding governments to account. [6]
In 1993 Fowler reported on South Africa's transition to democracy after the release of Nelson Mandela. [7]
For ABC's Foreign Correspondent he exposed details of the allegations that then South African President Jacob Zuma had been bribed by the French arms manufacturer, Thales. [8]
In Somalia he reported on the kidnapping by pirates of tourists on the French ship Le Ponant and their subsequent release. [9]
In 2001 he reported an expose of a Liberal Party dirty tricks attempt to discredit former Labor Prime Minister Paul Keating. [10]
It was widely reported that the broadcast of the program – Party Tricks - was delayed by the ABC's managing director Jonathan Shier, an ex-Liberal party staffer who was strongly critical of its contents. It was eventually broadcast unchanged. [11] [12]
Fowler covered the former Soviet Union’s move to a market economy under Mikhail Gorbachev’s Perestroika and Glasnost and the overthrow of Manuel Noriega in Panama. [13] In 1987 he covered the Iran-Iraq War and the Contra-Gate affair. [14]
In 2009 Fowler exposed the details of the unexplained death of a mining magnate and his shadowy relationship with a west Australian entrepreneur for the Four Corners report Dirty Business. [15]
Fowler started his career in journalism as a reporter on the Mid-Sussex Times and later moved to the London Evening News where he covered the IRA bombing campaign. In 1976 he moved to Australia where he worked as a reporter for News Limited newspaper, before becoming chief of staff of The Australian and later Acting Foreign Editor. [1]
Fowler went on to work as a reporter for Channel 7, SBS TV's Dateline, ABC’s Lateline program, and the ABC flagship investigative program Four Corners. [16] [17] [18]
In 2002 Fowler was appointed head of the ABC’s Investigative Unit, reporting stories for radio's AM and PM, programs, and ABC TV's 7.30 Report, Foreign Correspondent and Four Corners. [19]
Since leaving the ABC in 2013 Fowler has published two books, on journalism and national security. He has also published stories in The Guardian [20] and The Sydney Morning Herald, [21] The Monthly [22] and has been interviewed several times on the ABC, [23] the BBC [24] and France24 TV [18] discussing WikiLeaks, journalism and national security issues. Fowler is a critic of AUKUS. [25]
The Gold Walkley is the major award of the Walkley Awards for Australian journalism. It is chosen by the Walkley Advisory Board from the winners of all the other categories. It has been awarded annually since 1978.
Mary Kostakidis is an Australian journalist and political commentator. She is the former prime time weeknight SBS World News Australia presenter and was the face of SBS over two decades. Her journalism spans geopolitical issues, democracy and press freedom. Her commentary covers areas including the Middle East, national security, AUKUS, China and the failings of mainstream media. Her work is published by independent media including public policy journal Pearls and Irritations and has used Twitter/X extensively to contemporaneously report court proceedings in great detail, including the four week UK evidentiary Extradition hearing of Julian Assange and subsequent appeals.
Marian Wilkinson is an Australian journalist and author. She has won two Walkley Awards, and was the first female executive producer of Four Corners. She has been a deputy editor of the Sydney Morning Herald, a Washington correspondent for The National Times, The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald, as well as a senior reporter for The Australian.As of April 2017, she is a senior reporter at Four Corners.
Anthony William Jones is an Australian television news and political journalist, radio and television presenter and writer.
David Leigh is a British journalist and writer who was the investigations editor of The Guardian and is the author of Investigative Journalism: a survival guide. He officially retired in April 2013, although Leigh continued his association with the newspaper.
WikiLeaks is a non-profit media organisation and publisher of leaked documents. It is funded by donations and media partnerships. It has published classified documents and other media provided by anonymous sources. It was founded in 2006 by Julian Assange. Kristinn Hrafnsson is its editor-in-chief. Its website states that it has released more than ten million documents and associated analyses. WikiLeaks' most recent publication of original documents was in 2019 and its most recent publication was in 2021. From November 2022, numerous documents on the organisation's website became inaccessible. In 2023, Assange said that WikiLeaks is no longer able to publish due to his imprisonment and the effect that US government surveillance and WikiLeaks' funding restrictions were having on potential whistleblowers.
Mark Davis is an Australian investigative journalist and lawyer, best known for his work on Dateline for SBS TV, where he is currently a co-presenter and video journalist.
Julian Paul Assange is an Australian editor, publisher, and activist who founded WikiLeaks in 2006. He came to international attention in 2010 after WikiLeaks published a series of leaks from Chelsea Manning, a United States Army intelligence analyst: footage of a U.S. airstrike in Baghdad, U.S. military logs from the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, and U.S. diplomatic cables. Assange has won multiple awards for publishing and journalism.
Rebecca Louise Wilson was an Australian sports journalist, radio and television broadcaster and personality, known for the comic television talk sports show The Fat, in which she appeared regularly with host Tony Squires. She was a panellist on numerous television programs including Beauty and the Beast, Sunrise and The Footy Show. She worked in both the newspaper and television industries for over 20 years and won a Kennedy Award in 2013.
WikiLeaks, a whistleblowing website founded by Julian Assange, has received praise as well as criticism from the public, hacktivists, journalist organisations and government officials. The organisation has revealed human rights abuses and was the target of an alleged "cyber war". Allegations have been made that Wikileaks worked with or was exploited by the Russian government and acted in a partisan manner during the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
Peter Greste is a dual citizen Latvian Australian academic, memoirist and writer. Formerly a journalist and foreign correspondent, he worked for Reuters, CNN, the BBC and Al Jazeera English; predominantly in the Middle East, Latin America and Africa.
The WikiLeaks Party was a minor libertarian political party in Australia between 2013 and 2015. The party was created in part to support Julian Assange's failed bid for a Senate seat in Australia in the 2013 election. The party won 0.62% of the national vote. At the time Assange was seeking refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in London. The WikiLeaks Party national council included Assange, Matt Watt, Gail Malone, Assange's biological father John Shipton, Omar Todd and Gerry Georgatos.
Mark Willacy is an Australian investigative journalist for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). He, along with ABC Investigations-Four Corners team, won the 2020 Gold Walkley for their special report Killing Field, which covered alleged Australian war crimes. He has been awarded six other Walkley awards and two Queensland Clarion Awards for Queensland Journalist of the Year. Willacy is currently based in Brisbane, and was previously a correspondent in the Middle East and North Asia. He is the author of three books. In 2023, Willacy was found to have defamed Heston Russell, a former special forces commander, after making unproven allegations of war crimes.
Nick McKenzie is an Australian investigative journalist. He has won 14 Walkley Awards, been twice named the Graham Perkin Australian Journalist of the Year and also received the Kennedy Award for Journalist of the Year in 2020 and 2022. He is the president of the Melbourne Press Club.
Sarah Ferguson is an Australian journalist, reporter and television presenter. She is the host of ABC TV's flagship news and current affairs program 7.30. She was previously a journalist for Dateline, Insight, Sunday and Four Corners.
James Ball is a British journalist and author. He has worked for The Grocer, The Guardian, WikiLeaks, BuzzFeed, The New European and The Washington Post and is the author of several books. He is the recipient of several awards for journalism and was a member of The Guardian team that won the Pulitzer Prize for investigative journalism.
In 2012, while on bail, Julian Assange was granted political asylum in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where he sought to avoid extradition to Sweden, and what his supporters said was the possibility of subsequent extradition to the US. On 11 April 2019, Ecuador revoked his asylum, he was arrested for failing to appear in court, and carried out of the embassy by members of the London Metropolitan Police. Following his arrest, he was charged and convicted, on 1 May 2019, of violating the Bail Act, and sentenced to fifty weeks in prison. While in prison the US revealed a previously sealed 2018 US indictment in which Assange was charged with conspiracy to commit computer intrusion related to his involvement with Chelsea Manning and WikiLeaks.
The Walkley Book Award is an Australian award presented annually by the Walkley Foundation for excellence in long-form journalism and nonfiction, with subjects ranging from biography to true crime to investigative journalism and reporting.
Louise Milligan is an Australian author and investigative reporter for the ABC TV Four Corners program. As of March 2021, she is the author of two award-winning non-fiction books. Her first novel, Pheasants Nest, was published in 2024.
Views on Julian Assange have been given by a number of public figures, including journalists, well-known whistleblowers, activists and world leaders. They range from laudatory statements to calls for his execution. Various journalists and free speech advocates have praised Assange for his work and dedication to free speech. Some former colleagues have criticised his work habits, editorial decisions and personality. After the 2016 US Presidential election, there was debate about his motives and his ties to Russia. After Assange's arrest in 2019, journalists and commenters debated whether Assange was a journalist. Assange has won multiple awards for journalism and publishing.
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