Paul Foot Award
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The Paul Foot Award is an award given for investigative or campaigning journalism, set up by The Guardian and Private Eye in memory of the journalist Paul Foot, who died in 2004.[1]
The award, from 2005 to 2014, was for material published in print or online during the previous year. The prize fund totalled £10,000, with £5,000 given to the winner and £1,000 to each of five runners-up. The award was discontinued in 2015,[2] but revived by Private Eye in 2017. [3]
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Paul Foot Award 2021
The closing date for entries was 1st April 2021 at 1:00pm. Entries were not accepted by post but had to be submitted as PDFs by email only to awards@private-eye.co.uk.
Wikispooks entries
On 30 March 2021, Patrick Haseldine entered the "Laurie Flynn Biography" with the following brief details:
Nobody was more surprised than me to learn on Friday 26th March 2021 that Laurie Flynn had founded the new Alba Party in Scotland. I started writing Laurie's biography eight years ago, and am pleased to say it's now complete (see URL: https://wikispooks.com/wiki/Laurie_Flynn).
On 1 April 2021, Patrick Haseldine entered the "Save Thor and Odin" article with the following brief details:
It took two years to persuade Southwark Council not to chop down the two healthy old oaks Thor and Odin. Thanks to campaigner Pennie Hedge, to activists Eliane Haseldine, Susan Donaldson and Colette Haseldine, and to barrister Paul Powlesland for defeating the High Court injunction brought by the Council (see URL: https://wikispooks.com/wiki/Save_Cox%27s_Walk_Footbridge_Oaks).
Shortlisted entries
On 9 June 2021, seven entries were shortlisted and the overall winner of the £5,000 prize is to be announced in a live online ceremony on Tuesday 15 June.
Joining Padraig Reidy and Sir Simon Jenkins on the judging panel were Matt Foot, Janine Gibson, last year's winner Alexandra Heal, Julia Langdon, Helen Lewis, Amol Rajan, Kim Sengupta and Francis Wheen. They selected the following shortlist:
Robert Smith and team, Financial Times "The unravelling of Lex Greensill" (The Financial Times's compelling reporting brought the revolving doors of politics and finance to life and documented former prime minister David Cameron's dubious role lobbying for financier Lex Greensill to have access to Treasury Covid relief schemes.)
Matthew Weaver, Pippa Crerar & Jeremy Armstrong, Mirror/Guardian "Dominic Cummings/Barnard Castle" (A joint entry by the Mirror and the Guardian, the discovery that Dominic Cummings had travelled the length of England in contravention of lockdown rules dominated the news agenda for days and exposed a double standard at the heart of government.)
Guardian Investigations Team, with lead reporters Felicity Lawrence and David Conn, "Covid and the Conservative chumocracy" (The Guardian team's detailed investigation into the Covid-19 procurement practices exposed a chaotic system where cronyism appeared to trump experience in the awarding of millions of pounds of government money.)
Harriet Clugston and team, JPIMedia "Modern slavery in the UK" (Johnston Press's investigations team created a series of stories for local media highlighting the disturbing shortfalls in application of modern slavery legislation, bringing the story home to local newspaper readers across the UK.)
Jack Shenker, Tortoise "Death at the Ministry" (Focusing on the death due to Covid-19 of Ministry of Justice cleaner Emanuel Gomes, Jack Shenker crafted a compelling story of how government outsourcing and the gig economy combined to condemn migrant workers to suffer some of the worst effects of the pandemic.)
Peter Geoghegan, Jenna Corderoy & Lucas Amin, openDemocracy "How the UK government is undermining FoI" (OpenDemocracy discovered the government's secret Freedom of Information request "clearing house", which singled out unwanted requests from "nuisance" reporters, undermining the free press, government accountability and the entire FoI system.)
Jonathan Calvert & George Arbuthnott, Sunday Times "Failures of State: Britain's coronavirus scandal" (The Sunday Times's Insight team pulled together a devastating account of how the government overlooked warnings and ignored advice in the first weeks of the pandemic, with catastrophic consequences.)[4]
The Longlist
Among this year's record number of entries, the following successfully made it on to the judges' longlist for the Private Eye Paul Foot Award 2021:
Mirren Gidda, Liberty Investigates, "BAME people disproportionately targeted by coronavirus fines": Liberty Investigates dived into the data to reveal how enforcement of lockdown laws disproportionately affected members of ethnic minority groups.
Louise Tickle, Tortoise, "Young lives in lockdown": Louise Tickle spoke to social workers, teachers and carers to uncover the terrible toll lockdown has taken on the UK's most vulnerable children.
Cahal Milmo & Chris Green, i news, "Pontins' travellers blacklist": After a tip from a call centre whistleblower, i news revealed that holiday camp company Pontins kept a secret blacklist of "traveller names" to be discouraged or prevented from making reservations. The Equality and Human Rights Commission ruled that Pontins had broken the law.
Emma Howard, Unearthed, "The oil lobby's plan to push plastics across Africa", As revenues from fuel oil look set to decrease, Unearthed told the story of how the global oil industry has identified plastics as the next great battleground, with a global lobbying effort to prevent any restrictions on plastic production.
And the winner is...
| Ian Hislop announces the winner of the 2021 Paul Foot Award |
On 15 June 2021, the Private Eye Paul Foot Award for Investigative and Campaigning Journalism was awarded to Robert Smith and team, Financial Times for their entry "The unravelling of Lex Greensill". The competition was so close this year that Jack Shenker, Tortoise, was also Highly Commended by the judges for his report "Death at the Ministry". The Financial Times’s compelling reporting brought the revolving doors of politics and finance to life and documented former prime minister David Cameron’s dubious role lobbying for financier Lex Greensill to have access to Treasury Covid relief schemes.
Ian Hislop, the Editor of Private Eye, said:
- “Great winner. I certainly didn’t lobby for it, and I never rang any of the judges at home or on their mobiles, and if I did it certainly wasn’t more than ten times a day.”
Padraig Reidy, Chair of Judges, the Private Eye Paul Foot Award, said:
- “This year's judging meeting was perhaps more keenly argued than ever, with close-run votes and even demands for recounts. The judges in the end decided that Robert Smith and his colleagues at the Financial Times had uncovered an undeniable scoop that says so much about politics and finance in modern Britain - making them worthy winners. But we felt it was also imperative to acknowledge Jack Shenker's meticulous and compassionate reporting on the plight of migrant workers during the pandemic. The stories reflected, in different ways, Paul Foot's beliefs about the methods and purpose of journalism.”[5]
References
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