A request that this article title be changed to The Bureau of Investigative Journalism is under discussion . Please do not move this article until the discussion is closed. |
Founded | April 2010 |
---|---|
Type | Nonprofit |
Focus | Investigative journalism |
Location | |
Key people | Rozina Breen, CEO/Editor in Chief; Meirion Jones, Editor; James Ball, Global Editor; Emily Wilson, Bureau Local Editor; Miriam Wells, Impact Editor; Frankie Goodway, Production Editor |
Website | thebureauinvestigates |
The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, typically abbreviated to TBIJ or "the Bureau", is a nonprofit news organisation based in London that was founded in 2010 to pursue "public interest" investigations. [1] The Bureau works with publishers and broadcasters to maximise the impact of its investigations. [2] Since its founding, it has collaborated with Panorama , Newsnight , and File on 4 at the BBC, Channel 4 News and Dispatches , as well as the Financial Times , The Daily Telegraph , and The Sunday Times , among others. [3]
The Bureau has covered a wide range of stories and won many awards including for its coverage of the drone wars and investigation of "joint enterprise" murder convictions. [4] Its CEO/Editor in Chief is Rozina Breen. [5]
The Bureau was established in 2010 by former Sunday Times reporter Elaine Potter, who worked on exposing the Thalidomide scandal, and her husband David Potter, who founded software company Psion. Initial funding for the project came from the Potters' charitable foundation, which committed £2 million. [6] Elaine cites one of her inspirations being the creation two years previous of ProPublica, a nonprofit organisation based in New York with a similar remit, also funded philanthropically. [7]
In the run-up to launch, Stephen Grey was acting editor [8] until the appointment of Iain Overton as its first permanent managing editor. [9]
Ian Overton was succeeded by former Sunday Times Insight editor Christopher Hird in December 2012 [10] and Rachel Oldroyd became Managing Editor in 2014. [11] Rozina Breen became CEO/Editor in Chief in 2022.
On 29 January 2017, a United States-led Special Operations Forces operation was carried out in Yakla Village, Qifah District, [12] in the Al Bayda province in central Yemen. It was the first raid authorized by President Donald Trump, [13] The US military initially denied there were any civilian casualties, but later declared it was investigating if they occurred. [14] An investigation by the Bureau on the ground found that nine children under the age of 13, with the youngest victim a three-month-old baby were killed. Beside the nine children killed, one pregnant woman was also killed. [15] The Bureau's story was picked up by The Guardian, [16] Newsweek [17] and many other media outlets.
The Bureau working with the Sunday Times revealed on 2 October 2016 that the Pentagon paid British PR firm Bell Pottinger $540 million to create fake terrorist videos, fake news articles for Arab news channels and propaganda videos. [18] [19]
An investigation by Abigail Fielding-Smith and Crofton Black revealed the details of the multimillion-pound operation. Bell Pottinger was paid by the US Department of Defence (DoD) for five contracts from May 2007 to December 2011, according to The Times and the Bureau. [20] [21] Lord Bell confirmed that Bell Pottinger reported to the Pentagon, the CIA and the U.S. National Security Council on its work in Iraq. [22]
The Bureau is running a continuing investigation into the threat posed by antibiotic resistant bacteria. In December 2016, Madlen Davies working with the Sunday Telegraph revealed that superbugs were killing at least twice as many people as the government estimated. [23] In October 2016, Andrew Wasley working with The Guardian revealed that pork contaminated with MRSA was being sold at Asda and Sainsbury's. [24]
The Bureau monitors drone strike casualties in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. In Yemen and Somalia, these figures also include victims of drone strikes, airstrikes, missile attacks and ground operations. Unlike other organisations that track such deaths, the Bureau focuses on identifying non-militant deaths, including children. [25] The data from this research is published online. [26] Jack Serle was one of three Bureau reporters who won the Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism in 2013 for "their research into Barack Obama's drone wars and their consequences for civilians". [27]
A series of articles in 2016 written by Melanie Newman exposed the "real wolves of Wall Street" involved in binary options fraud. According to the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau's head of crime, Detective Chief Inspector Andy Fyfe, this is the biggest fraud being perpetrated against British targets today with police receiving an average of two reports of binary trading fraud a day, with the average investor losing £16,000. Fyfe described this as "just the tip of the iceberg" because most of the frauds are not reported to the police because the fraudsters are usually located abroad. [28] [29]
In February 2016, the UK Supreme Court ruled that the law on "joint enterprise" in murder cases, which allows for several people to be charged with the same offence even though they may have played very different roles in the crime, had been wrongly interpreted. [30] This followed a long-running Bureau investigation into joint enterprise. [31] The Bureau found that black British men were more than three times as likely to be serving life sentences as a result of a joint enterprise conviction than those in the prison population overall. [32] Three Bureau reporters – Maeve McClenaghan, Melanie McFadyean and Rachel Stevenson – won the 2013–14 Bar Council Legal Reporting Award for the coverage. [33]
An investigation in collaboration with the Financial Times into how the European Union structural funds were used, and whether the policy was achieving what it set out to do. [34] It found that millions of euros were being siphoned off by organised crime syndicates, and that money was being used to support multinational corporations instead of small and medium-sized businesses, including help to finance a British American Tobacco cigarette factory. [34] The Bureau co-produced an episode of File on 4 with the BBC on the story [35] that received the UACES Reporting Europe Prize. [36]
Public relations firm Bell Pottinger were the centre of a Bureau covert filming operation published in The Independent. In the footage senior executives claim that they can get UK prime minister David Cameron to speak to the Chinese premier on behalf of one of their clients within 24 hours, and that they have a team which "sorts" negative Wikipedia coverage. [37]
Bell Pottinger subsequently filed a complaint with the Press Complaints Commission about the investigation, which was rejected. [38]
An investigation in collaboration with The Independent found that the number of people who had died after being forcibly restrained whilst in police custody was higher than official figures showed. This was due to the exclusion of anyone who had died following restraint but had not at that point been formally arrested. [39] The Bureau also reported their findings with the BBC in an episode of File on 4 . [40]
The story won an Amnesty International Media Award. [41]
The Iraq war logs were 391,832 classified United States Army field reports leaked to WikiLeaks, [42] which shared them with a number of news organisations, including the Bureau, before publishing them online in their entirety. [43] The Bureau worked with Al Jazeera [44] and Channel 4 [45] to analyse the documents which detail torture, summary executions, and war crimes carried out by US forces. [46]
The Bureau's reporting received an Amnesty International Media Award. [47]
In 2019, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism started a crowdfunding exercise to raise funds for legal action to force the British government to release the "Russia Report" detailing the Intelligence and Security Committee's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 Brexit referendum. [48]
In November 2023, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism joined with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, Paper Trail Media and 69 media partners including Distributed Denial of Secrets and the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) and more than 270 journalists in 55 countries and territories [49] [50] to produce the 'Cyprus Confidential' report on the financial network which supports the regime of Vladimir Putin, mostly with connections to Cyprus, and showed Cyprus to have strong links with high-up figures in the Kremlin, some of whom have been sanctioned. [51] [52] Government officials including Cyprus president Nikos Christodoulides [53] and European lawmakers [54] began responding to the investigation's findings in less than 24 hours, [53] calling for reforms and launching probes. [55] [56]
The Bureau was seriously criticised after the Newsnight McAlpine affair in November 2012. BBC Newsnight broadcast an investigation of the North Wales child abuse scandal. The reporter was Angus Stickler who had been seconded to the BBC by the Bureau. Stickler's broadcast report included claims that a prominent, but unnamed, former Conservative politician had sexually abused children during the 1970s. [57] Users of Twitter and other social media immediately identified him as Lord McAlpine. After The Guardian reported that it was mistaken identity, Lord McAlpine issued a strong denial. [58] The accuser unreservedly apologised, admitting that, as soon as he saw a photograph of the individual, he realised he had been mistaken. [59] BBC director-general George Entwistle resigned later that day. [57] The Bureau's Managing Editor Ian Overton and Angus Stickler also resigned.
Le Monde is a French daily afternoon newspaper. It is the main publication of Le Monde Group and reported an average circulation of 480,000 copies per issue in 2022, including 40,000 sold abroad. It has been available online since 1995, and it is often the only French newspaper easily obtainable in non-French-speaking countries. It should not be confused with the monthly publication Le Monde diplomatique, of which Le Monde has 51% ownership but which is editorially independent. Le Monde is considered one of the French newspapers of record, along with Libération and Le Figaro. A Reuters Institute poll in 2021 found that Le Monde is the most trusted French newspaper.
Der Spiegel is a German weekly news magazine published in Hamburg. With a weekly circulation of about 724,000 copies in 2022, it is one of the largest such publications in Europe. It was founded in 1947 by John Seymour Chaloner, a British army officer, and Rudolf Augstein, a former Wehrmacht radio operator who was recognized in 2000 by the International Press Institute as one of the fifty World Press Freedom Heroes.
Politiken is a leading Danish daily broadsheet newspaper, published by JP/Politikens Hus in Copenhagen, Denmark. It was founded in 1884 and played a role in the formation of the Danish Social Liberal Party. Since 1970 it has been independent of the party but maintains a liberal stance. It now runs an online newspaper, politiken.dk. The paper's design has won several international awards, and a number of its journalists have won the Cavling Prize.
CBC News is a division of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation responsible for the news gathering and production of news programs on the corporation's English-language operations, namely CBC Television, CBC Radio, CBC News Network, and CBC.ca. Founded in 1941, CBC News is the largest news broadcaster in Canada and has local, regional, and national broadcasts and stations. It frequently collaborates with its organizationally separate French-language counterpart, Radio-Canada Info.
BBC News is an operational business division of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) responsible for the gathering and broadcasting of news and current affairs in the UK and around the world. The department is the world's largest broadcast news organisation and generates about 120 hours of radio and television output each day, as well as online news coverage. The service has over 5,500 journalists working across its output including in 50 foreign news bureaus where more than 250 foreign correspondents are stationed.
The Australian Financial Review (AFR) is an Australian business-focused, compact daily newspaper covering the current business and economic affairs of Australia and the world. The newspaper is based in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia; owned by Nine Entertainment and has been published continuously since its founding in 1951. The AFR is published in tabloid format six times a week, whilst providing 24/7 online coverage through its website. In November 2019, the AFR reached 2.647 million Australians through both print and digital mediums (Mumbrella).
Iain Overton is a British investigative journalist and the author of The Price of Paradise: How the Suicide Bomber Shaped the Modern World and Gun Baby Gun: A Bloody Journey into the World of the Gun.
L'Espresso is an Italian progressive weekly news magazine. It is one of the two most prominent Italian weeklies; the other is the conservative magazine Panorama. Since 2022, it has been published by BFC Media.
Bell Pottinger Private was a British multinational public relations, reputation management and marketing company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. On 12 September 2017 it went into administration (bankruptcy) as a consequence of a scandal caused by its activities in South Africa.
The Guardian is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as The Manchester Guardian, and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister papers, The Observer and The Guardian Weekly, The Guardian is part of the Guardian Media Group, owned by the Scott Trust Limited. The trust was created in 1936 to "secure the financial and editorial independence of The Guardian in perpetuity and to safeguard the journalistic freedom and liberal values of The Guardian free from commercial or political interference". The trust was converted into a limited company in 2008, with a constitution written so as to maintain for The Guardian the same protections as were built into the structure of the Scott Trust by its creators. Profits are reinvested in its journalism rather than distributed to owners or shareholders. It is considered a newspaper of record in the UK.
The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) is a global network of investigative journalists with staff on six continents. It was founded in 2006 and specializes in organized crime and corruption.
The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, Inc. (ICIJ), is an independent global network of 280 investigative journalists and over 140 media organizations spanning more than 100 countries. It is based in Washington, D.C., with personnel in Australia, France, Spain, Hungary, Serbia, Belgium and Ireland.
Angus Stickler was the lead reporter for the Bureau of Investigative Journalism until his resignation in December 2012. In 2006 he was named News Journalist of the Year at the 24th Sony Radio Academy Awards. In 2011 he won the UACES/Thomson Reuters Reporting Europe prize for the Bureau's investigation into EU structural funds. In 2011 he won an Amnesty International Media Award for his work on the Bureau's website.
Corruption in Cyprus is a salient concern for people in Cyprus: As of 2022, 94% considered that corruption was widespread in the country.
Since the September 11 attacks, the United States has carried out drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya.
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.
Distributed Denial of Secrets, abbreviated DDoSecrets, is a nonprofit whistleblower site founded in 2018 for news leaks. The site is a frequent source for other news outlets and has worked on investigations including Cyprus Confidential with other media organizations. In December 2023, the organization said it had published over 100 million files from 59 countries.
The Pandora Papers are 11.9 million leaked documents with 2.9 terabytes of data that the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) published beginning on 3 October 2021. The leak exposed the secret offshore accounts of 35 world leaders, including current and former presidents, prime ministers, and heads of state as well as more than 100 business leaders, billionaires, and celebrities. The news organizations of the ICIJ described the document leak as their most expansive exposé of financial secrecy yet, containing documents, images, emails and spreadsheets from 14 financial service companies, in nations including Panama, Switzerland and the United Arab Emirates. The size of the leak surpassed their previous release of the Panama Papers in 2016, which had 11.5 million confidential documents and 2.6 terabytes of data. The ICIJ said it is not identifying its source for the documents.
iStories or Important Stories is an independent Russian website specialising in investigative journalism. The website was founded in 2020 by Russian journalists Roman Anin and Olesya Shmagun. IStories published a number of high-profile investigations. The office of the website is located in Latvia.
Cyprus Confidential is a journalism project investigating financial services in Cyprus and their role in allowing avoidance of international sanctions, and implementation of Russian state goals. It is conducted by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, Paper Trail Media and 69 media partners including Distributed Denial of Secrets and the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) and more than 270 journalists in 55 countries and territories. Other media partners included Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism, the Belarusian Investigative Center, The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, CBC, Der Spiegel, the Guardian, Le Monde, Politiken, Syrian Investigative Reporting for Accountability Journalism, Ukraine's Slidstvo and The Washington Post.