Investigative journalists have much in common, not least an obsessive attention to detail and a compulsion to keep digging when most normal people would move on. But are these inherent character trait...
Heather Brooke
Professor Heather Brooke is an award-winning investigative journalist originally from the US now based in London. Her investigative journalism and legal action against the British Parliament for disclosure of MPs' expenses was the catalyst of the expenses scandal of 2009 that led to the biggest clear-out of politicians in decades and the first forced resignation of the Speaker of the House in 300 years. She went on to investigate hackers and Wikileaks, reporting for The Guardian. She is in two films resulting from her investigations: a BBC dramatisation about her MPs’ expenses investigation (On Expenses) and Alex Gibney’s documentary about Wikileaks entitled We Steal Secrets. She has published three non-fiction books based on her investigative work: The Revolution Will be Digitised (2011), The Silent State (2010) and Your Right to Know (2006). She runs the MA Investigative Journalism programme at City, University of London. In 2015-16 she also taught an investigative journalism course at Columbia University in New York City.
