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Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Walkley Awards finalists know their FOI

Journalists who know a thing or two about Freedom of Information (correction they all do these days) feature in the finalists for this year's Walkley awards.

Linton Besser of the Sydney Morning Herald is a finalist in two categories: Investigative Journalism for “The wrong stuff” about Defence contracting, and Print News Report, with Sean Nicholls and Nick O'Malley, for “Freebies for Labor minister” about then NSW cabinet minister Ian Macdonald's failure to declare $30000 in airline upgrades. Interestingly both reports had their genesis in information available on the public record, although there was plenty of digging thereafter.

While not mentioned in the citation, Paul Toohey and Janet Fife-Yeomans, also finalists in this category for The Azaria files, obtained jury notes, documents, photos and transcripts of conversations with police in the Chamberlain trial 30 years ago through a freedom of information application

Tim Lester, with Andrew Meares, is in the Broadcast and Online Interviewing category for online interviews on smh.com.au- “Bishop’s passports”, “Gillard Challenge” and “Hockey’s Costings.”

Update: And this from Anonymous:
Dont' forget Nick McKenzie and Richard Baker for 'Dirty Money' (Four Corners, ABC TV and The Age, about the Reserve Bank and international bribery, commended for Investgative Journalism) - while they had an insider, they followed up for documentary evidence using FOI on several of the Cth agencies involved. Has FOI become such a tool that journalists (or more pointedly sub-editors) don't feel they need to mention.. that FOI was the method used to obtain documents?


Congratulations to all.

1 comment:

  1. Anonymous10:13 am

    Dont' forget Nick McKenzie and Richard Baker for 'Dirty Money' - while they had an insider, they followed up for documentary evidence using FOI on several of the Cth agencies involved.
    Has FOI become such tool that journalists (or more pointedly sub-editors) don't feel they need to mentioned that FOI was the method used to obtain documents?

    ReplyDelete