The Detail
Over the past year, we have highlighted issues which have largely been ignored by other media outlets. Major investigations have included into how the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) and other forces across the UK are reporting migrant victims of crime to the British Home Office and how loan sharks linked to paramilitaries are exploiting the cost of living crisis. Our investigations over the last year have led to demonstrable change. A series of articles about the strip-searching of under-18s pushed the PSNI to set up an accountability panel to investigate every time a child is subjected to a search. The articles also prompted the PSNI’s human rights adviser to launch a review of strip searching and make a series of recommendations. https://www.thedetail.tv/articles/psni-ignored-child-strip-search-rules In the last seven months alone, The Detail has won two awards and been shortlisted for three others, including the prestigious Paul Foot Award for investigative journalism for our stories on the police practice of sharing data on migrant victims of crime with the Home Office, and the Amnesty Media Awards for our stories highlighting the strip searching of children in police custody. We won both the Justice Media Award and the University College Dublin Smurfit School Business Journalist award for our investigation into falsified documents around the disposal of poultry farm waste. The Detail has continued to operate under very difficult conditions following the false arrests of Mr Birney and former colleague Barry McCaffrey in 2018 over their 2017 documentary No Stone Unturned into the sectarian murder of six men in a pub in Loughinisland, Co Down, during a 1994 World Cup football match. The High Court in Belfast later found that the warrant issued for searches of the documentary makers’ homes and The Detail offices and the seizing of journalistic material was unlawful. Our operating conditions have been complicated further by new revelations that the PSNI accessed Mr McCaffrey’s phone in 2013 while he was investigating potential corruption in the force. The revelations, which could only be reported on for the first time in July this year, prompted human rights bodies to raise serious concerns about press freedom and drew criticism from politicians across the political divide in Northern Ireland. The revelations also prompted Amnesty International to draw up a guide for journalists in Northern Ireland who have concerns that the PSNI spied on them. It is testament to The Detail’s commitment to investigative journalism that we are continuing to produce stories in such a hostile environment.