The Paul Foot Award 2024
The Longlist

PRIVATE EYE is pleased to announce the longlist for the 2024 Paul Foot Award for Campaigning and Investigative Journalism.

From a record number of entries, judges including last year's winner David Conn, Matt Foot, Janine Gibson, Sir Simon Jenkins, Julia Langdon, Helen Lewis, Padraig Reidy, Kim Sengupta and Francis Wheen picked 11 stories and campaigns that show the strength and range of journalism in 2024, from City scandals to the crisis in mental health care.

The overall winner will be announced at a ceremony on 11 June and presented with a cheque for £8,000.

The full longlist, in alphabetical order, is:

Richard Brooks
Private Eye
The regeneration game
Brooks exhaustively tracked the dubious dealings behind the government's flagship Teesside freeport project, with private investors passing risk on to taxpayers, and cosy side deals and confrontations.

Antonia Cundy, Madison Marriage, Paul Caruana Galizia
FT/Tortoise
Investigation into Crispin Odey
The FT team told the story of alleged sexual abuse and bullying by Crispin Odey, for decades a larger-than-life character in the finance world.

Shanti Das
The Observer
Scientology rehab investigation
Das investigated alleged abuse of vulnerable people at Narconon UK, a drug and alcohol rehab facility tied to the Church of Scientology, and how it has been able to operate unregulated in Britain for years.

Tristan Kirk
Evening Standard
Single justice procedure: conveyor belt justice
Kirk's dutiful court reporting explained how the "single justice procedure" was making justice impossible for people without the means or wherewithal to challenge the system. Ignored and overlooked pleas for mitigation for the most minor misdemeanours showed a conveyer-belt system that has removed humanity and fairness from the law.

Anthony Lane, Humberto J Rocha
OPIS
Stopping carbon windfalls for big polluters closing plants
The OPIS (Oil Price Information Service) team exposed how carbon windfall credits paid out by the British and EU governments were resulting in big polluters making millions by closing down plants, sacking workers, receiving the carbon credits for the plants and quietly selling the credits to other operators.

Rowena Mason, Henry Dyer and Matthew Weaver
The Guardian
Frank Hester
The revelation of racist remarks by Frank Hester, the Conservative party's biggest donor, about Diane Abbott MP created huge embarrassment for the government and triggered a police investigation.

Lewis McBlane
The Northern Scot
A96 dualling: a Moray cover-up
Dogged campaigning journalism by the Northern Scot's McBlane revealed how plans for the development of the A96 between Aberdeen and Inverness, dubbed the most unpopular road in Scotland due to hazardous single carriageway sections, were quietly dropped by the Scottish government. Amid political furore and calls for resignations, the tiny local paper even secured an interview with the first minister.

Maeve McClenaghan
The Guardian
Damien Hirst and the mis-dated shark
McClenaghan's investigation drew on insider testimony to reveal how one-time Brit Art enfant terrible Damien Hirst had been passing off new works as older classics.

Justine Smith
The House magazine
CAMHS in crisis
Smith's FoI-led investigation into child and adolescent mental health care was a compelling and important read, bringing the plight of vulnerable children to the magazine that is more usually associated with the day-to-day politics of Westminster. The findings were reported across national media.

Rebecca Thomas
The Independent
Failures in the UK mental health system
Thomas's dogged campaign exposed systemic patient safety scandals within the UK's ailing mental health system.

Rosamund Urwin, Charlotte Wace and Paul Morgan-Bentley
The Sunday Times and The Times
Russell Brand accused of rape, sexual assaults and abuse
Journalists from teams at the Times and Sunday Times spoke to more than 500 sources in four continents, and extensively corroborated the accounts of allegations of rape, sexual abuse and controlling behaviour between 2006 and 2013 by comedian, actor and activist Russell Brand, who denies all the allegations, which are subject to a criminal investigation.

Queries

Queries should be directed to:

Emily Laidlaw
Midas PR
Tel: 07384 268 734
Email: Emily.Laidlaw@midaspr.co.uk