A STELLAR line-up of global truth tellers tomorrow (Wednesday, May 10) discuss the future of journalism at a conference in London being held in the name of The Northern Echo’s legendary former editor, Sir Harold Evans.
Fifty of the most renowned investigators, starting with Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein who uncovered the Watergate scandal that brought down US President Richard Nixon in the early 1970s, will gather to discuss how journalism in the future might be funded and how it can overcome existential threats from social media, authoritarian regimes and Artificial Intelligence (AI).
“I would have thought it is the first time ever journalists of this calibre have been brought together in one room,” Tina Brown (above), Sir Harry’s widow, told The Northern Echo.
“It is an extremely challenging time for journalists.
“One of the major themes of this conference is truth costs money, and if you don’t tell the truth, the costs are so much higher than money. But who pays for it? Journalism outlets are collapsing all over the place and newsrooms are being shut down. The subscription model on works for the giant behemoths but not the small sites – it is not-for-profit models or philanthropic support?
“More authoritarian countries are ignoring the Geneva Convention by arresting journalists, and AI is another new threat coming.”
Many online “news” websites are now “aggregators”, scraping their stories from social media and other websites without checking any facts. The fear is that AI will be employed to create those stories and very soon the truth will be lost as one bot steals from the next so that the original source of a “fact” becomes undiscoverable.
Marianna Spring, the BBC’s first misinformation correspondent, will be one of the speakers today addressing these problems alongside investigators from around the world plus well-known British faces like Andrew Marr, Emily Maitlis, Katharine Viner and Amol Rajan.
But even if you can fund investigative journalism, how can you encourage people to take an interest in its outcomes when there are so many other headlines claiming people’s shrinking attention spans?
Tina Brown and Sir Harry Evans discuss the day's news
“One of the things Harry was so brilliant at was knowing that you can’t just dump an investigation into a site or onto a paper, editors have to be very resourceful and inventive to make people read this news,” said Lady Evans. She said she was looking forward to hearing from the Russian journalists whose investigation into Vladimir Putin and the jailing of his critic Alexei Navalny had gained millions of views when promoted through YouTube.
Harold Evans when editing The Northern Echo in the 1960s
Sir Harry was voted the Greatest British Newspaper Editor in 2002 particularly for his work in the 1970s and 1980s on the Sunday Times after he left the Echo, where he made national headlines by campaigning for a posthumous pardon for a man who had been wrongly hanged, by investigating the chemical industry’s pollution on Teesside and by forcing the NHS to adopt the cervical smear.
He died in 2020, aged 92, and it is his reputation that has brought so many great journalists together.
One of the speakers is Branko Brkic of South Africa’s Daily Maverick, whose investigation into the corruption around President Jacob Zuma brought the government down.
“When I contacted him he said ‘oh my gosh, I revered Harry Evans, I will drop everything to come’,” said Tina Brown.
The conference, called Truth Tellers, is being held in conjunction with “Harry’s beloved alumni”, Durham University, where the first Sir Harold Evans Fellowship student, Waylon Cunningham (above) from Texas, is already studying, with support from Reuters.
“He’s just had his first by-line on a Reuters piece about (electric car company) Tesla surveilling their customers without their knowledge,” said Tina. “He’s had a tremendous success.”
Karen O’Brien, the university’s Vice-Chancellor, who is hosting one of the conference sessions, said: “Durham University undertakes research to empower and inspire. The best journalism does the same. We are deeply proud to count Sir Harry Evans among our alumni and greatly looking forward to the first Truth Tellers summit.”
The conference is being livestreamed for free at sirharrysummit.org
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