Latest news with #investigativejournalism
Daily Mail
7 hours ago
- Business
- Daily Mail
Bloodbath at Channel Seven as three popular stars jump ship to Network 10 for new investigative show in the works
Three staff members at Channel Seven have jumped ship to rival Network 10. Seven's award-winning former foreign correspondent Amelia Brace, 7News Sydney reporter Bill Hogan and Spotlight producer-reporter Denham Hitchcock all resigned from the network last week, The Australian has reported. They are reportedly set to join a new investigative show set up by Channel 10's news boss Martin White. Brace and Hitchcock exited Seven's studio in Sydney within hours of quitting and are set to start their new jobs at Ten on Monday morning while Hogan will begin with the network in three weeks time. Ten has reportedly offered Brace a $50,000 increase on the $220,000 a year she had been getting paid. From A-list scandals and red carpet mishaps to exclusive pictures and viral moments, subscribe to the DailyMail's new showbiz newsletter to stay in the loop. In a message to colleagues on Friday, she said: 'It feels off to not have an official 'last day' to say goodbye, but it's best for me to just fade away for now.' 'Stand up for yourselves, and each other … and think of me every time you have to find a f**king case study.' Meanwhile, Hitchcock announced his return to work at Seven in an Instagram post back in February. He had been living on a catamaran since stepping away from 7News Spotlight in 2022 and recently resettled in Sydney with his young family. 'I'm back. It's time to wash some of the salt out - and get back to what I do best,' he began the post. 'Back in 2019 the network asked me to start what would eventually become the Spotlight program with one producer and one cameraman - and as the limited shows proved successful - the team quickly grew and it would turn into the network's flagship program. 'I stepped away for a few years to go sailing with the family - and have returned to find a new EP, a new team, new reporters, a fresh energy, an abundance of stories, and some genuine excitement about the year ahead.' He ended the message by asking followers and fans to send 'research ideas'. 'But please - researched ideas - not just wild theories,' he warned, before adding: 'Keep an eye on @7newsspotlight it's going to be quite the year.' Hitchcock short return to Seven came after he welcomed his second child in December with his wife Mari. He made headlines in January 2022 when he resigned from the Seven Network to embark on a sailing trip with his young family. He returned to screens in May 2023, in the true crime documentary 'Who Killed Marea?', which examines a 20-year-old cold case. Hitchcock led the Sky News investigation into the mysterious and brutal slaying of Marea Yann who was killed in her home in rural Victoria in 2003.
Associated Press
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Associated Press
Canadian Association of Journalists celebrates excellence in Canadian journalism from the past year at annual awards gala
CALGARY, AB, May 31, 2025 /CNW/ - The Canadian Association of Journalists (CAJ) capped off its 2025 national conference weekend by presenting this year's CAJ Awards, Canada's preeminent national investigative journalism awards program, run by and for journalists, at a gala dinner held earlier this evening at the Delta Hotel in downtown Calgary. Jeff Hamilton and Katrina Clarke, from the Winnipeg Free Press, were awarded this year's McGillivray Award, which recognizes the program's best investigative journalism published or broadcast in 2024. The McGillivray jury concluded that Hamilton and Clarke's exposé of the many cracks in Manitoba's childcare system bore all the hallmarks of excellent investigative work — it brought clarity to complex subjects and used vivid personal examples to convey systemic flaws. Hamilton and Clarke were also recognized as winners in the Written News category. The CAJ Awards were presented in a bilingual ceremony hosted by Joelle Tomlinson (Global News) and Tiphanie Roquette (Radio-Canada). Finalists who were unable to attend the in-person event were invited to participate remotely. The entire ceremony was live-streamed on the CAJ's YouTube channel. This year's program marked the first time the CAJ has celebrated excellent journalism from nominees with gold and silver awards. Here are the gold and silver winners, chosen from a record 540 entries across 18 categories. The recipients in the WRITTEN NEWS category are: GOLD Jeff Hamilton, Katrina Clarke Building blocks, crumbling foundation Winnipeg Free Press SILVER (tie) Grant Robertson, Kathryn Blaze Baum The algorithm The Globe and Mail Wendy Gillis, Jennifer Pagliaro The invisible girl Toronto Star The recipients in the HUGO RODRIGUES AWARD FOR COMMUNITY NEWS (formerly Community Written) category are: GOLD Heather Wright York 1 environmental The Independent of Petrolia and Central Lambton SILVER Jessica Lee Grizzly bears back in crosshairs Rocky Mountain Outlook The recipients in the BROADCAST OVER FIVE MINUTES category are: GOLD Brandi Morin, Geordie Day The Apache Stronghold standing in the way of a massive copper mine Ricochet Media SILVER Brittany Guyot, Tom Fennario Food for profit APTN Investigates The recipients in the BROADCAST UNDER FIVE MINUTES category are: GOLD Romain Schue, Thomas Bignon Dans les coulisses des traversées clandestines avec des passeurs indiens Radio-Canada Info SILVER Davide Gentile, Daniel Boily, Jacques Racine, Ivanoh Demers Une plaie de lit fatale pour un tétraplégique Radio-Canada Info The recipients in the COMMUNITY BROADCAST category are: GOLD Lela Savić, Emmanuelle Moussa Pas tout Montréal La Converse SILVER Taryn Grant On the doorstep CBC Atlantic Voice The recipients in the DATA JOURNALISM category are: GOLD Valérie Ouellet, Mike Crawley, Aloysius Wong, Andreas Wesley Canada's international student spike was blamed on private colleges. Here's what really happened CBC News - Investigative Unit SILVER Sylvie Fournier, Daniel Tremblay, Benoît Michaud, Jo-Ann Demers Eglise catholique inc. Radio-Canada Info The recipients in the ONLINE MEDIA category are: GOLD Chris Beaver, Katie O'Connor, Jasmine El Kurd, Pam Palmater NDN POV TVO Today SILVER Robert Cribb, Declan Keogh, Norma Hilton, Scott Martin, Rhythm Sachdeva Lead in drinking water Investigative Journalism Bureau The recipients in the FREEDOM OF INFORMATION JOURNALISM category are: GOLD Caroline Touzin, Ariane Lacoursière Centres jeunesse et foyers de groupe de la DPJ : De plus en plus de mesures de contention ou d'isolement La Presse SILVER Amanda Follett Hosgood BC illegally collected personal info tied to the Wet'suwet'en conflict The Tyee This award is kindly sponsored by the Ken and Debbie Rubin Public Interest Advocacy Fund. The recipients in the PHOTOJOURNALISM category are: GOLD Martin Tremblay New hope for Syria La Presse SILVER Carlos Osorio Portfolio Reuters, The Globe and Mail The recipients in the SCOOP category are: GOLD Anaïs Elboujdaïni Le Canada demande à des travailleurs de la santé de Gaza s'ils ont soigné des membres du Hamas La Converse SILVER Bethany Lindsay One third of B.C.'s 'publicly funded substance-use treatment beds' don't provide any treatment Investigative Journalism Foundation The recipients in the DAILY EXCELLENCE category are: GOLD Shannon Waters What on Earth just happened with B.C.'s carbon tax? The Narwhal SILVER Suzanne Rent Build Nova Scotia gives Atlantic Road Construction and Paving deadline after company puts barriers at trail in Dartmouth Cove Halifax Examiner The recipients in the WRITTEN FEATURE category are: GOLD Rachel Browne A killer among them Maclean's SILVER Fabrice de Pierrebourg Reconstruire une cité millénaire L'actualité The recipients in the COMMUNITY WRITTEN FEATURE category are: GOLD Tyler Harper In every Nelson he visits, Jeff Truesdell finds the man he loved Nelson Star SILVER Liny Lamberink Regrowth CBC North The recipients in the JHR / CAJ AWARD FOR HUMAN RIGHTS REPORTING are: GOLD Robert Cribb, Declan Keogh, Wendy-Ann Clarke, Owen Thompson Mind games Investigative Journalism Bureau, Toronto Star, TVO SILVER Gabrielle Duchaine La maison des horreurs La Presse The recipients in the CWA CANADA / CAJ AWARD FOR LABOUR REPORTING are: GOLD Natalia Rivero Gómez Reporting on working conditions in the Temporary Foreign Worker Program The Rover SILVER Emma Arkell Canadian teachers face harassment in wake of 'parental rights' policies Xtra Magazine The recipients of the JHR / CAJ EMERGING INDIGENOUS JOURNALIST AWARD are: GOLD Tchadas Leo Portfolio CHEK News SILVER Crystal Greene Portfolio Ricochet Media, IndigiNews Media, Pivot Media The recipients in the ENVIRONMENTAL AND CLIMATE CHANGE AWARD category are: GOLD Jenn Thornhill Verma, Johnny C.Y. Lam, Murat Yükselir, Melissa Tait, Clare Vander Meersch Labrador Inuit are taking the fight against climate change into their own hands The Globe and Mail SILVER Team Eyes of the beast: Climate disaster survivor stories Climate Disaster Project, Neworld Theatre The recipients in the NATIONAL NEWSMEDIA COUNCIL/CAJ STUDENT JOURNALISM AWARD OF EXCELLENCE are: GOLD Nalyn Tindall Getting by on gig work: The hidden costs of 'easy' money The Eyeopener, Toronto Metropolitan University SILVER Om Shanbhag The driving dilemma: How nursing students struggle to access placements The Western Gazette, Western University Funding for this award is generously provided by the Fraser MacDougall Journalism Prize Fund The CAJ would like to thank the awards judges — the experienced current and former journalists who willingly volunteered their time and efforts to review all the entries and name the finalists and winners in each category. This awards program doesn't function without journalists and their newsrooms stepping forward to submit their work for review and consideration, or the judges who take on the task of reviewing that work. The CAJ congratulates all the recipients and finalists and thanks all those who submitted entries for consideration. Many judges once again noted the excellent quality and breadth of work contained within the pieces submitted into the program. Journalists continue to produce striking, important, and meaningful work that educates, informs, exposes, uncovers, affects change, and makes our communities better places to live. The CAJ is proud to play a role in recognizing the best of this work on an annual basis. The CAJ is Canada's largest national professional organization for journalists from all media, representing members across the country. The CAJ's primary roles are to provide high-quality professional development for its members and public-interest advocacy. SOURCE Canadian Association of Journalists
CTV News
3 days ago
- General
- CTV News
Inside the predator network: Avery Haines exposes global crime ring
Winnipeg Watch W5's Avery Haines reveals a dark online world where men secretly drug and film their own partners.
Mail & Guardian
3 days ago
- General
- Mail & Guardian
The Launch of ‘The Diplomat'
The team: The M&G's Luke Feltham, Wendy Mosetlhi, Hoosain Karjieker and Marion Smith flank the ambassador of Azerbaijan Dr Huseyn Rahmili (centre). The launch of The Diplomat, which took place on 16 May at the University of Pretoria's Javett Art Centre, was attended by the ambassadors and embassy staff of more than 45 embassies. Hoosain Karjieker, chief executive of the Mail & Guardian, opened the event by reaffirming the publication's values. 'For nearly four decades, the Mail & Guardian has maintained an unwavering commitment to investigative journalism, thoughtful analysis and coverage that matters,' he said. The keynote address was delivered by the mayor of the City of Tshwane, Nasiphi Moya, who welcomed the diplomatic community and acknowledged their contribution to international relations. 'The City of Tshwane values the presence of these diverse diplomatic missions. The role played by embassies in building relations between countries does not go unnoticed,' she said. Editor-in-chief of the M&G Luke Feltham explained the vision behind the platform. 'This is an attempt to be part of the solution instead of the noise. By working with you — diplomats — by opening our pages and our platform, we want to bring those dinner-table conversations to a wider audience. We want this to be a space for honest, nuanced and respectful dialogue.' The goal of The Diplomat is to spotlight projects and initiatives that reshape public perception and highlight the work of embassies in South Africa. In his closing remarks, M&G chairperson Roger Latchman reminded guests of the broader responsibility that media and diplomacy share. 'We must resist sensationalism, restore public confidence and recommit ourselves to accuracy, fairness, and informed discourse.' Other guest speakers included Elelwani Pandelani, the head of Nedbank diplomatic and non-resident banking, who spoke about the importance of building strong, lasting relationships beyond financial transactions. Keynote speaker: Tshwane mayor Nasiphi Moya. Laurie James, a forensic profiler at Cybareti, addressed the rapidly evolving cyber landscape, noting that no corner of the world is untouched by digital threats. Karjieker noted that The Diplomat aligns with the core mission of diplomatic work and thanked Wendy Mosetlhi and Marion Smith for bringing the event to life. 'Their efforts and insight have been instrumental in shaping this initiative,' he said. Smith, who leads The Diplomat section and brings years of experience in diplomatic engagement, spoke about her motivation for taking on this work. 'I have a love for learning and diplomacy. I'd like to use some of my global experience and expertise to contribute meaningfully in this space,' she said. 'I also look forward to using The Diplomat to raise awareness of the importance of identifying and countering disinformation.' Smith said a diplomat's first responsibility is to understand, then to share that understanding — 'and that's what The Diplomat aims to do'. View: The ambassadors and other staff of 45 embassies attend the launch of The Diplomat. Lebanon Golf Championship Expressing gratitude: Ambassador Kabalan Frangieh of Lebanon The Fifth Annual South African Lebanese Golf Championship, hosted by the Embassy of Lebanon, took place on Sunday, 25 May 2025, at the Wanderers Golf Club in Johannesburg. The tournament welcomed a distinguished group of participants, including the ambassadors of Austria and India, the chargé d'affaires of Thailand, the military attaché of Argentina, and the representative of the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation. Professional South African Lebanese golfer Lora Assad competed, alongside members of the Cedars and Phoenicians golf clubs. Ambassador Kabalan Frangieh of Lebanon expressed his gratitude to all participants. As his tour of duty in South Africa comes to an end, he spoke of his hope that this annual event remains a fixture on the embassy's calendar. Tournament Results A Division winner: Damon Zoghby – 2025 Champion B Division winner: Vincent Shahim C Division winner: Terence Joseph Best guest: Lora Assad – with an outstanding 67 shots. Yemen marks 35th National Day anniversary in South Africa On 22 May, the Embassy of the Republic of Yemen marked the 35th anniversary of Yemen's National Day — commemorating the unification of the country's northern and southern regions. To honour the occasion, the embassy, its staff and the broader Yemeni community in South Africa extended congratulations to His Excellency President Rashad Mohammed Al-Alimi, chairperson of the Presidential Leadership Council, its members, the Yemeni people and the country's armed forces. A small gathering was held at the ambassador's residence in Pretoria, where members of the local Yemeni community and students studying in South Africa came together. The event reflected on the significance of the unification and Yemen's continued path toward peace and stability. The embassy reaffirmed its commitment to supporting Yemeni citizens in South Africa and strengthening ties between the two nations. Celebration: The Yemeni community in South Africa came together to commemorate the 35th anniversary of Yemen's National Day.
New York Times
6 days ago
- General
- New York Times
Ronnie Dugger, Crusading Texas Journalist, Dies at 95
Ronnie Dugger, the crusading editor of a small but influential Texas journal who challenged presidents, corporations and America's privileged classes to face their responsibility for racism, poverty and the perils of nuclear war, died on Tuesday at an assisted living facility in Austin, Texas. He was 95. His daughter, Celia Dugger, the health and science editor of The New York Times, said the cause was complications of Alzheimer's disease. Inspired by Thomas Paine's treatises on independence and human rights, Mr. Dugger was the founding editor, the publisher and an owner of The Texas Observer, a widely respected publication, based in Austin, that with few resources and a tiny staff took on powerful interests, exposed injustices with investigative reports and offered an urbane mix of political dissent, narrative storytelling and cultural criticism. In an anthology, 'Fifty Years of The Texas Observer' (2004), Mr. Dugger recalled that in 1954, when his weekly began, a gentlemen's agreement of silence on sensitive matters pervaded public discourse in the deeply conservative Lone Star State. 'We were as racist, segregated and anti-union as the Deep South from which most of our Anglo pioneers had emerged,' Mr. Dugger wrote, adding: 'Mexican Americans were a hopeless underclass concentrated in South Texas. Women could vote and did the dog work in the political campaigns, but they were also ladies to be protected, above all from power. Gays and lesbians were as objectionable as Communists. And the daily newspapers were as reactionary and dishonest a cynical gang as the First Amendment ever took the rap for.' In Mr. Dugger's 40-year tenure, The Observer set its sights not on objectivity but on accuracy, 'fairness' and 'moral seriousness.' It laced commentary into its reportage and addressed issues ignored by state newspapers, like the lynching and shooting of Black people in East Texas. It denounced anti-Communist witch hunts, opposed the Vietnam War and championed labor, civil rights and the environment. Investigative articles exposed corporate greed, political chicanery and government corruption. Many were picked up and expanded upon by The New York Times, The Washington Post and other mainstream publications. Some Observer disclosures led to government hearings, judicial reviews and legislative reforms, and won awards from press and legal groups. In 1955, Mr. Dugger wrote of two nightriders who stormed through a Black town in East Texas, spraying bullets into a school bus, houses and a cafe, where John Reese, a Black 16-year-old, was killed. Two white youths were arrested, but only one, who signed a confession, was tried, in 1957. Mr. Dugger covered the trial, which lasted one day. At the end, he reported, a defense lawyer told the jury, which was all white, 'This boy wanted to scare somebody and keep the niggers and the whites from going to school together — now that's the truth about it.' The jury ruled that the defendant had fired the fatal shot 'without malice' and recommended a suspended sentence. The judge agreed. With anemic circulation and advertising revenues, The Observer relied on donations and barely survived from year to year. But it became a home for outstanding writers like Molly Ivins, Willie Morris, Jim Hightower, Billy Lee Brammer and Kaye Northcott. Mr. Dugger covered many of the big stories, including the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963. He rode in a press bus in the presidential motorcade and wrote an impressionist 7,000-word piece. 'Come now on the last voyage of Mr. Kennedy,' the article began. Then, in meticulous detail, Mr. Dugger told of the president's final day and his last moments as gunshots cracked across Dealey Plaza, Secret Service men scrambled and the president's car sped away to Parkland Memorial Hospital. 'Inside the hospital all was in chaos,' he related. Rumors flew. 'I first believed and comprehended that he was dead when I heard Doug Kiker of The New York Herald Tribune swearing bitterly and passionately, 'Goddamn the sonsabitches!'' Later, after doctors gave way to a priest for the last rites, a White House press secretary confirmed that the president was dead. Forrest Wilder, a former editor of The Observer and now a senior writer at Texas Monthly, said in an interview for this obituary in 2018 that Mr. Dugger was 'a man ahead of his time by 50 years, a Southerner who spoke up for gay rights and addressed nuclear annihilation long before those ideas were commonly discussed in Texas.' Mr. Dugger also wrote biographies of Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and Ronald Reagan and a book on the pilot of a weather reconnaissance plane who gave the all-clear for the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. He contributed articles to The Times, The New Yorker, Harper's, The Nation, The Atlantic, The Washington Post and other publications. Mr. Dugger taught at the Universities of Illinois and Virginia and at Hampshire College in Massachusetts. He lectured widely, advocating national health insurance, public funding of election campaigns, curbs on corporate power and stronger civil rights protections for racial and ethnic minorities, immigrants and the L.G.B.T.Q. community. But his most passionate theme was nuclear perils. Bill Moyers, in a blog post marking The Observer's 50th anniversary, suggested that Mr. Dugger's stewardship — as editor from 1954 to 1965, then as publisher until 1994, when he turned ownership over to the nonprofit Texas Democracy Foundation — would be his most lasting legacy. 'Not a day passes that I don't wish we could clone The Texas Observer, plant it smack dab in the center of the nation's capital and loose the spirit of Thomas Paine,' Mr. Moyers wrote. 'Paine was the journalist of the American Revolution whose pen shook the powerful and propertied, challenged the pretensions of the pious and privileged and exposed the sunshine patriots who turned against the revolutionary ideals of freedom, equality and justice. That spirit permeates The Texas Observer.' Ronald Edward Dugger was born in Chicago on April 16, 1930, to William and Mary (King) Dugger. His father was a bookkeeper. The family moved to San Antonio, where Ronnie and his brother, Roy, attended public schools. Fascinated with journalism, Ronnie began working at 13 as a sportswriter for The San Antonio Express-News. After graduating from Brackenridge High School in San Antonio in 1946, he attended the University of Texas at Austin, where he majored in government and economics, edited the student newspaper and earned a bachelor's degree with high honors in 1950. He then studied politics and economics at the University of Oxford in England for a year. His marriage in 1951 to Jean Williams, a teacher, ended in divorce. In 1982, he married Patricia Blake, a Time magazine editor. She died in 2010. In addition to his daughter, Celia, from his first marriage, Mr. Dugger is survived by a son, Gary, also from his first marriage, and six grandchildren. On Mr. Dugger's watch, The Observer's circulation remained small, between 6,000 and 12,000, but its readers included congressmen, legislators, and community and business leaders. It morphed from a tabloid weekly into a biweekly in 1962, and later into a bimonthly magazine, but it kept its crusading character. Mr. Dugger ran for the United States Senate twice — in 1966 in Texas as an independent (he dropped out before the balloting) and in 2000 in New York, where he narrowly lost a race for the Green Party nomination. His book 'Dark Star: Hiroshima Reconsidered in the Life of Claude Eatherly' (1967) profiled the B-29 reconnaissance plane pilot who reported clear skies over Hiroshima before the Enola Gay dropped the bomb that destroyed the city in 1945. Mr. Eatherly's avowed feelings of guilt after the war were disputed by many who supported use of the bomb to end the conflict, but they were accepted by antinuclear groups and by Mr. Dugger. The New York Times Book Review called 'Dark Star' a carefully reported 'moral and personal statement.' In 'The Politician: The Life and Times of Lyndon Johnson' (1982), Mr. Dugger folded essays about Texas, Vietnam and nuclear weapons into a biography that ended with Johnson's years as the Senate majority leader. Mr. Dugger's 'On Reagan: The Man and His Presidency' (1983) used excerpts from 500 Reagan radio commentaries in the late 1970s to bolster his argument that his subject was a 'dogged right-wing ideologue.' Writing in The Times Book Review, David E. Rosenbaum said, 'Researchers may want to concentrate on particular chapters, for nowhere else is so much documented derogatory information about the 40th president of the United States presented in such well-organized fashion.' In 1996, Mr. Dugger was a founder of the Alliance for Democracy, a grass-roots organization that aimed to 'end corporate domination of politics, economics and the media' and 'create a true democracy.' Mr. Dugger, who lived in Austin, was inducted into the Daily Texan Hall of Fame in 2015. In 2012, when he received Long Island University's George Polk Award for lifetime achievement in journalism, he used his acceptance speech to ask a few questions: 'Why are nuclear weapons called 'weapons of mass destruction' when morally they are weapons of mass murder? President Obama calls for a nuclear-free world, but says it's not likely in our lifetimes. Why not? And what is the political and ethical responsibility of the American citizen for our H-bombs?'
