 | |
| Founded | April 2010; 15 years ago (April 2010) |
|---|---|
| Type | Nonprofit |
| Focus | Investigative journalism |
| Location | |
Key people | Franz Wild, CEO/Editor in Chief; |
| Website | www |
TheBureau of Investigative Journalism, typically abbreviated toTBIJ or "the Bureau", is anonprofit news organisation based inLondon that was founded in 2010 to pursue "public interest" investigations.[1] The Bureau works with publishers and broadcasters to maximise the impact of its investigations.[2] Since its founding, it has collaborated withPanorama,Newsnight, andFile on 4 at theBBC,Channel 4News andDispatches, as well as theFinancial Times,The Daily Telegraph, andThe Sunday Times, among others.[3]
The Bureau has covered a wide range of stories and won many awards including for its coverage of the drone wars and investigation of "joint enterprise" murder convictions.[4] Rozina Breen was the chief executive officer and editor-in-chief from 2022 to 2025.[5] The current chief executive officer and editor-in-chief is Franz Wild.[6]
The Bureau was established in 2010 by formerSunday Times reporterElaine Potter, who worked on exposing theThalidomide scandal, and her husbandDavid Potter, who founded software companyPsion. Initial funding for the project came from the Potters' charitable foundation, which committed £2 million.[7] Elaine cites one of her inspirations being the creation two years previous ofProPublica, a nonprofit organisation based in New York with a similar remit, also funded philanthropically.[8]
In the run-up to launch,Stephen Grey was acting editor[9] until the appointment ofIain Overton as its first permanent managing editor.[10]
Ian Overton was succeeded by formerSunday Times Insight editorChristopher Hird in December 2012[11] andRachel Oldroyd became Managing Editor in 2014.[12] Rozina Breen became CEO/Editor in Chief from 2022 until 2025 when Franz Wild was promoted to lead the Bureau.
On 29 January 2017, aUnited States-led Special Operations Forces operation was carried out inYakla Village,Qifah District,[13] in theAl Bayda province in centralYemen. It was the first raid authorized by PresidentDonald Trump,[14] The US military initially denied there were any civilian casualties, but later declared it was investigating if they occurred.[15] An investigation by the Bureau on the ground found that nine children under the age of 13 were killed, with the youngest victim a three-month-old baby. Beside the nine children killed, one pregnant woman was also killed.[16] The Bureau's story was picked up byThe Guardian,[17]Newsweek[18] and many other media outlets.
The Bureau working with theSunday Times revealed on 2 October 2016 that thePentagon paid British PR firmBell Pottinger $540 million to create fake terrorist videos, fake news articles for Arab news channels and propaganda videos.[19][20]
An investigation by Abigail Fielding-Smith and Crofton Black revealed the details of the multimillion-pound operation. Bell Pottinger was paid by theUS Department of Defence (DoD) for five contracts from May 2007 to December 2011, according toThe Times and the Bureau.[21][22]Lord Bell confirmed that Bell Pottinger reported to the Pentagon, theCIA and theU.S. National Security Council on its work in Iraq.[23]
The Bureau is running a continuing investigation into the threat posed byantibiotic resistant bacteria. In December 2016, Madlen Davies working with theSunday Telegraph revealed that superbugs were killing at least twice as many people as the government estimated.[24] In October 2016, Andrew Wasley working withThe Guardian revealed that pork contaminated withMRSA was being sold atAsda andSainsbury's.[25]
The Bureau monitors drone strike casualties inPakistan,Yemen and Somalia. In Yemen and Somalia, these figures also include victims of drone strikes, airstrikes, missile attacks and ground operations. Unlike other organisations that track such deaths, the Bureau focuses on identifying non-militant deaths, including children.[26] The data from this research is published online.[27] Jack Serle was one of three Bureau reporters who won theMartha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism in 2013 for "their research into Barack Obama's drone wars and their consequences for civilians".[28]
A series of articles in 2016 written byMelanie Newman exposed the "real wolves of Wall Street" involved inbinary options fraud. According to the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau's head of crime, Detective Chief Inspector Andy Fyfe, this is the biggest fraud being perpetrated against British targets today with police receiving an average of two reports of binary trading fraud a day, with the average investor losing £16,000. Fyfe described this as "just the tip of the iceberg" because most of the frauds are not reported to the police because the fraudsters are usually located abroad.[29][30]
In February 2016, theUK Supreme Court ruled that the law on "joint enterprise" in murder cases, which allows for several people to be charged with the same offence even though they may have played very different roles in the crime, had been wrongly interpreted.[31] This followed a long-running Bureau investigation into joint enterprise.[32] The Bureau found that black British men were more than three times as likely to be serving life sentences as a result of a joint enterprise conviction than those in the prison population overall.[33] Three Bureau reporters – Maeve McClenaghan,Melanie McFadyean and Rachel Stevenson – won the 2013–14Bar Council Legal Reporting Award for the coverage.[34]
An investigation in collaboration with theFinancial Times into how theEuropean Unionstructural funds were used, and whether the policy was achieving what it set out to do.[35] It found that millions of euros were being siphoned off by organised crime syndicates, and that money was being used to support multinational corporations instead of small and medium-sized businesses, including help to finance aBritish American Tobacco cigarette factory.[35]The Bureau co-produced an episode ofFile on 4 with the BBC on the story[36] that received the UACES Reporting Europe Prize.[37]
Public relations firmBell Pottinger were the centre of a Bureau covert filming operation published inThe Independent. In the footage senior executives claim that they can getUK prime ministerDavid Cameron to speak to theChinese premier on behalf of one of their clients within 24 hours, and that they have a team which "sorts" negativeWikipedia coverage.[38]
Bell Pottinger subsequently filed a complaint with thePress Complaints Commission about the investigation, which was rejected.[39]
An investigation in collaboration withThe Independent found that the number of people who had died after being forcibly restrained whilst in police custody was higher than official figures showed. This was due to the exclusion of anyone who had died following restraint but had not at that point been formally arrested.[40] The Bureau also reported their findings with the BBC in an episode ofFile on 4.[41]
The story won anAmnesty International Media Award.[42]
TheIraq war logs were 391,832 classifiedUnited States Army field reports leaked toWikiLeaks,[43] which shared them with a number of news organisations, including the Bureau, before publishing them online in their entirety.[44] The Bureau worked withAl Jazeera[45] andChannel 4[46] to analyse the documents which detail torture,summary executions, and war crimes carried out by US forces.[47]
The Bureau's reporting received anAmnesty International Media Award.[48]
In 2019, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism started a crowdfunding exercise to raise funds for legal action to force the British government to release the "Russia Report" detailing theIntelligence and Security Committee's investigation intoRussian interference in the 2016 Brexit referendum.[49]
In November 2023, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism joined with theInternational Consortium of Investigative Journalists,Paper Trail Media [de] and 69 media partners includingDistributed Denial of Secrets and theOrganized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) and more than 270 journalists in 55 countries and territories[50][51] to produce the 'Cyprus Confidential' report on the financial network which supports the regime ofVladimir Putin, mostly with connections to Cyprus, and showed Cyprus to have strong links with high-up figures in the Kremlin, some of whom have been sanctioned.[52][53] Government officials including Cyprus presidentNikos Christodoulides[54] and European lawmakers[55] began responding to the investigation's findings in less than 24 hours,[54] calling for reforms and launching probes.[56][57]
The Bureau was seriously criticised after theNewsnight McAlpine affair in November 2012. BBCNewsnight broadcast an investigation of the North Wales child abuse scandal. The reporter wasAngus Stickler who had been seconded to the BBC by the Bureau. Stickler's broadcast report included claims that a prominent, but unnamed, former Conservative politician had sexually abused children during the 1970s.[58] Users ofTwitter and other social media immediately identified him asLord McAlpine. AfterThe Guardian reported that it was mistaken identity, Lord McAlpine issued a strong denial.[59] The accuser unreservedly apologised, admitting that, as soon as he saw a photograph of the individual, he realised he had been mistaken.[60]BBC director-generalGeorge Entwistle resigned later that day.[58] The Bureau's Managing Editor Ian Overton and Angus Stickler also resigned.