Trust in Journalism Conference 2020
Speakers
Alastair Campbell
Author, Strategist and Mental Health Campaigner
Alastair Campbell is a writer, communicator and strategist best known for his role as former British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s spokesman, press secretary and director of communications and strategy. Still active in politics and campaigns in Britain and overseas, he now splits his time between writing, speaking, charities and consultancy.
He has written fourteen books in the past ten years, including eight volumes of diaries, four novels, a personal memoir on depression and the pursuit of happiness, and Winners and How They Succeed, a Number 1 best-selling analysis of what it takes to win in politics, business and sport.
In recent years he has become increasingly involved with mental health charities and causes, speaking about his own experience of depression, psychosis and addiction, and of his brother Donald’s lifelong struggle with schizophrenia. A former ‘Mind Champion of the Year’, he is an ambassador for the Time to Change campaign to raise awareness about mental illness, ambassador for Alcohol Concern, patron of Maytree, the country’s only charity for the suicidal, and of Kidstime, which supports the children of mentally ill parents.
In November 2017 Campbell was awarded an honorary fellowship of the Royal College of Psychiatrists in recognition of his leadership role in breaking down the stigma surrounding mental illness, and in fighting for better services.
Paul Giannasi
National Police Hate Crime Advisor
Paul works for the National Police Chiefs’ Council in the United Kingdom, accruing 30 years experience as a police officer. He manages True Vision on behalf of the police and is the author of the national Police Hate Crime Manual which offers guidance to all UK police officers and partners.
From 2007, Paul has led the cross-government Hate Crime Programme which brings all sectors of government together with civil society, to coordinate efforts to improve the response to hate crime across the criminal justice system. Paul is the UK National Point of Contact to the Organization for Security and
Cooperation in Europe on hate crime and has worked to share good practice in many developing and post-conflict states.
Paul has a number of publications including as the co-editor of the 2014 ‘Routledge International Handbook on Hate Crime’ and ‘Tackling Disability Discrimination and Disability Hate Crime - A Multi-disciplinary Guide published by Jessica Kingsley in 2015.
Paul was awarded an OBE in the 2014 New Years Honours list for services to policing, equality and human rights.
Rizwana Hamid
Director, Centre for Media Monitoring
Rizwana is responsible for overseeing Centre for Media Monitoring’s work and engaging with key stakeholders.
She has over 30-years experience working as a producer/director for the BBC, C4 and other international broadcasters in News, Current Affairs, Religious, Documentary, World Service & Multicultural Programming.
Her films have won awards, been presented as evidence in inquiries and led to changes in policy.
Cierra Hinton
Executive Director-Publisher, Scalawag & Co-Director, Press On
Cierra Hinton has an undying love and passion for the complex South, which she brings to her work as the Executive Director-Publisher at Scalawag and a co-director at Press On, a Southern media collective. She has found community across the South, including in Tennessee and Mississippi, but calls North Carolina home.
In addition to her work at Scalawag and Press On, Cierra is also a coach with the UNC-Knight Table Stakes and Facebook Accelerator programs and a fellow at the Poynter Institute through the Media Transformation Challenge. Cierra also sits on the board of directors for LION Publishers.
Shelina Janmohamed
Author, Columnist & IMPRESS Board Member
Shelina Janmohamed is an author, public speaker and newspaper columnist. She has written for publications such as The Telegraph, The Guardian, the BBC and Campaign Magazine, and is a regular opinion columnist in The National UAE. She works in the advertising and branding industry and has worked with some of the world's biggest companies such as Coca-Cola, Unilever and Nestle.
She sits as an advisor on WPP's Inclusion Board as well as the Inclusion Board for Ogilvy. She is a globally recognised expert on Muslim consumer trends. She has been named one of the UK’s 100 most powerful Muslim women.
Anna Lekas Miller
Independent journalist & contributor, Media Diversity Institute
Anna Lekas Miller is an independent journalist and contributor to Media Diversity Institute.
She is focused on social justice issues, and her work has been published in Vanity Fair, The Intercept, CNN, Glamour, and several other publications. She is currently working on her first book, Love in Times of Borders.
Mark Lewis
Partner, Patron Law
Mark qualified as a solicitor 30 years ago. Living in Manchester he was soon advising people from Coronation Street and footballers. In 2000 he was the first to obtain what subsequently known as a “super-injunction”.
In 2006 he realised that his client’s phone had been hacked, in what later became known as the phone hacking scandal.
In 2011 he acted for the family of the murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler in an action which closed the News of the World. Since then Mark has pursued other groundbreaking legal firsts, such as Twibel (twitter libel) for Jack Monroe against Katie Hopkins. In his spare time, Mark has no spare time.
Dr Holly Powell-Jones
Former Broadcast Journalist & Founder of Online Media Law UK
Dr Holly Powell-Jones is the founder of Online Media Law UK, specialising in research, training, and consultancy on media law and ethics for the digital age.
She is a former broadcast journalist with a PhD in perceptions of online risk & responsibility from City, University of London.
Holly is the Online Law Leader for the Global Equality Collective and a Violent Crime Prevention Board 2020 award winner.
Ed Procter
CEO, IMPRESS
Ed Procter joined IMPRESS as Chief Operating Officer in 2016.
He is an established chief executive who over a nine-year period led the development of Sport Resolutions into the premier independent arbiter of sport disputes in the United Kingdom.
He previously held senior leadership positions at the Legal Services Commission and Sport England. Earlier in his career he worked in criminal justice and the newspaper and advertising industries.
Gavin Rees
Director, Dart Center Europe
Gavin Rees works for Dart Centre Europe, a project of the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University in New York which is dedicated to promoting ethical and innovative approaches to the coverage of trauma and violence. The organisation provides training and resources on: the compassionate, professional treatment of victims and survivors by journalists; narrative strategies for telling challenging stories; and how media organisations can safeguard the wellbeing of staff working on potentially traumatic assignments.
To further this aim, Gavin works as a trauma awareness consultant for news organisations, NGOs, journalism schools and documentary production houses across Europe.
Easier in his career, Gavin produced news for US, British and Japanese news channels, and documentary films for the BBC and Channel 4. He was a lead producer on Hiroshima, a BBC documentary drama, which won an International Emmy in 2006. Gavin is a board member of the European Society of Traumatic Stress and the UK Psychological Trauma Society.
Hannah Storm
Director and CEO, Ethical Journalism Network
Hannah Storm is the CEO of the Ethical Journalism Network, and the former director of the International News Safety Institute. She is also a consultant in gender, media safety, mental health and newsroom leadership, and has co-authored several publications on related issues. Hannah has recently shared her diagnosis of post traumatic stress disorder in an attempt to tackle some of the stigma around mental health in the media. She now convenes industry-wide conversations about collective solutions to better support journalists’ mental well-being.
Marc Wadsworth
Journalist and Chair, NUJ Black Members Council
Marc Wadsworth is an award-winning journalist, broadcaster and BBC filmmaker. He has written for national newspapers in the UK, Ireland, Jamaica, South Africa, Australia and the US.
In 2006, Wadsworth launched The-Latest.Com, Britain’s first dedicated citizen journalism website, which he edits, and pulled off a number of scoops. He is chair of the National Union of Journalists' Black Members Council.
The author of Comrade Sak, Shapurji Saklatvala MP, a political biography, he is keen on uncovering Black hidden histories and has made two films about African Caribbean Second World War veterans, one of them broadcast several times by BBC Television. Marc appears on television and radio as a political commentator. He has a King's College London masters degree in contemporary British history, passed with a distinction, is an associate fellow in the University of Warwick's Yesu Persaud Centre for Caribbean Studies and guest lectures in Britain and abroad.
Bernard Achampong
Founder, Unedited:
Bernard P Achampong is the founder of radio & podcast production company Unedited: He is also an Associate Lecturer in Entrepreneurship for Coventry University and Radio Production for the University of Derby.
Bernard has over 25 years of music & audio industry experience starting as a university and pirate radio presenter and club DJ. Bernard went to work at BBC 1Xtra for almost 12 years as their Station Sound Producer and also had stints working for BBC Radio 4's Today programme, Radio 2, BBC News channels and BBC World Service. He has six Sony radio awards and 27 other audio production nominations. Bernard produced the genre-defining podcast, 'Dark Web', which is still a top ten Audible title, three years after its release.
Unedited: has been awarded two audio commissions from the Audio Content Fund, a new scheme supported by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS). Some of their clients include ITN Productions, Channel 4, BBC, Red Bull & VP Records.
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Jo Adetunji
Managing Editor, The Conversation & PINF Trustee
Managing Editor of The Conversation UK, an independent source of news and views, sourced from the academic and research community and delivered direct to the public.
Before joining The Conversation UK, Jo Adetunji worked as a reporter and editor at the Guardian, covering stories from UK knife crime to the Arab Spring. She was also associate editor of the Guardian's Public network, focused on the civil service. She has also written for The Times, The Independent and Telegraph newspapers.
Clara Aguirre
Communications and Engagement Manager, IMPRESS
Clara Aguirre (Communications and Engagement Manager) comes from a background in Public Policy Comms. She is an LSE gradute, where she studied an MSc in media and Communications.
She also studied Political Science at the University of Salamanca (Spain). She helped start and was Communications Coordinator for a Public Policy think tank in Argentina.
As a PR consultant, she worked with politically-sensitive entities. She was also a Representative at the UN Deparment of Public Information. Clara has also written for Latin American news publications like Infobae and Anfibia.
Alicia Bell
News Voices Organising Manager, Free Press
Alicia Bell (pronouns: they/she) was born and raised in Charlotte, North Carolina and still lives there today.
They work at the intersections of afro-futurist imagination, journalism, land, food, and all the spaces in between. At Free Press, they work to transform the future of journalism via News Voices, a project organizing communities around information equity and community centred journalism, and Media 2070, a project working towards making media reparations real.
Alicia is also a parent, member of a local gardening collective called Angelou House, and a lover of big bodies of nature.
Sarah Cheverton
Editor, Star & Crescent
Sarah Cheverton is the Editor in Chief of Star & Crescent, an independent, not for profit community media website serving the city of Portsmouth.
As well as writers and journalists, Star & Crescent works directly with local residents, activists, community groups and organisations to provide a platform for missing and alternative perspectives on local issues. In 2020, Star & Crescent was awarded funding from the European Journalism Centre and from the Public Interest News Foundation to employ four local residents to interview local residents and organisations about the impact of Covid-19, including on people with disabilities, refugees, migrants, POC communities, and female small business owners.
Sarah is also undertaking a PhD with the University of Portsmouth exploring the extent to which independent community media can address the broader crisis in mainstream local news.
Polly Curtis
Managing Director, PA Media
Polly Curtis is Managing Director of PA Media, the UK's news agency. She has a uniquely broad experience having worked as a reporter, news editor, and then digital editor at the Guardian before leading HuffPost UK as Editor-In-Chief and then helping devise new membership models with the slow news start-up Tortoise.
Polly served on the Cairncross Review for the future sustainability of high-quality news and is a member of the board of the Society of Editors.
Anna Draffin
CEO, Public Interest Journalism Initiative (PIJI)
Anna Draffin has led transformation in purpose-driven organisations for almost twenty years as a CEO, Chair and Senior Executive. She has extensive policy and governance experience across industries including philanthropy and financial services, infrastructure, federal, state and local government, cultural industries and media.
Anna is CEO of the Public Interest Journalism Initiative (PIJI), established in December 2018 as a non-partisan, research organisation to develop a sustainable ecosystem of independent journalism in Australia.
Anna is also Deputy Chair of a State Government initiative to connect communities and government, in order to inform policy and services, and a Non-Executive Director of ShareGift Australia, a philanthropic fund generated from stock exchange listed companies.
She is the former deputy of the peak body for philanthropy in Australia and has also held senior positions in government.
Jonathan Heawood
Executive Director, Public Interest News Foundation
Jonathan began his career as a journalist at the Observer and went on to spend seven years as Director of English PEN, where he campaigned successfully for free speech and media freedom.
He served as Director of Programmes at the Sigrid Rausing Trust, one of Europe’s largest human rights foundations, where he developed a new strategy to support investigative journalism. In 2015, Jonathan founded the independent press regulator IMPRESS (The Independent Monitor for the Press). He led IMPRESS as CEO until March 2020.
He is a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Stirling, a Leadership Fellow at St George’s House, Windsor, a Committee Member at the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust, and Chair of the Stephen Spender Trust. His book, The Press Freedom Myth, was published by Biteback in 2019.
Shirish Kulkarni
Community Organiser, Bureau of Investigative Journalism
Shirish is an award-winning journalist and researcher with 25 years’ experience working in all the UK’s major broadcast newsrooms.
More recently he’s worked as a freelance investigative journalist and as a Community Organiser at the Bureau of Investigative Journalism. In that role, he has led on the Bureau’s “Decolonise the News” programme of conversations and actions around racism.
Emma Meese
Director, Independent Community News Network
Emma Meese is the Director of Community Journalism at Cardiff University.
She set up and manages the Centre for Community Journalism and the Independent Community News Network. Emma is passionate about giving community journalists access to the highest standard of training in digital and social media.
She works with news publishers, academics, governments, charities and businesses worldwide with the aim of strengthening and sustaining the community news sector.
Marcus Ryder MBE
Executive Producer, Caixin Media
Marcus Ryder is a leading figure in the efforts to increase diversity and representation in the UK media industry. In March 2020 he launched the Sir Lenny Henry Centre for Media Diversity, an independent body bringing academics and media professionals together to bring academic rigour to the practical implementation of diversity policies in the media industry.
He was instrumental in diversity being written into the BBC Charter for the first time and changing the public funding model of how the BBC funds UK “ethnic” press. Marcus is also a Visiting Professor of Media Diversity at Birmingham City University.
Marcus Ryder is currently based in Beijing as the executive producer of online media at Caixin Global, China's leading financial publication. Prior to that he was head of BBC Scotland Current Affairs Programmes for eight years.
Adam Thomas
Director, European Journalism Centre
Adam Thomas is Director at the European Journalism Centre, a Dutch non-profit that connects journalists with new ideas, skills, funding and people. The EJC team is behind some of Europe’s leading journalism support programmes. In the past five years the EJC has issued over €5m worth of grants and trained over 100,000 journalists.
In his previous role as Chief Product Officer at Storyful, he was responsible for the vision and delivery of over 20 journalism products to 150 media organisations. Adam joined Storyful in July 2013 as director of Business Development. The company was acquired by News Corp in December 2013, and grew from 27 people to over 120 in New York, Hong Kong, London, Sydney and Dublin during his time there.
Previously, he was Head of Communications at the international nonprofit Sourcefabric. Adam has worked on over 20 international digital culture and media festivals, including roles as Assistant Guest Curator for Transmediale (Berlin) and Program Manager for AV Festival (Newcastle-Upon-Tyne).
Robyn Vinter
Founder & Editor-in-Chief, The Overtake
Robyn Vinter is an award-winning investigative journalist who founded The Overtake, a news website for young people, launched in 2017.
She regularly writes for national and regional publications like The Observer, The Guardian, The Telegraph and the Yorkshire Post.
Sam Walby
Editor-in-Chief, Now Then Magazine
Sam Walby is Editor-in-Chief at Now Then Magazine in Sheffield, a position he has held since 2009.
Now Then amplifies unheard and marginalised voices, while encouraging ‘active citizenship’, community participation and a do-it-yourself approach to making things better. Articles, reviews and interviews are written by local people and the direction of Now Then is shaped by them.
At the heart of Now Then's approach to publishing is a belief that systemic change is needed to address the pressing social, economic and political challenges we face, as a city and as a society.
Kassy Cho
Journalist, Audience Strategist & Founder and Editor, Almost
Kassy Cho is an award-winning journalist and audience strategist, as well as the founder and editor-in-chief of Almost, an Instagram-first media outlet that tells world news stories for young people.
Previously, she was an Audience Development Editor at QuickTake by Bloomberg and BuzzFeed News, where she single-handedly transformed the BuzzFeed @world Instagram into the fastest growing news account on the platform in 2018.
Kassy works with companies such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Channel 4 News and Coconuts on content strategy, production and social media for audience development.
Areeq Chowdhury
Founder and Director, WebRoots Democracy
Areeq Chowdhury is the founder and director of the think tank, WebRoots Democracy, which is focused on progressive and inclusive technology policy. He founded the organisation in 2014, at the age of 21, and it has since become an influential policy voice in the UK, known for its research, advocacy, and events.
In his career, Areeq has also worked at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office; the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport; London City Hall; the UK Parliament; KPMG; and Future Advocacy.
Areeq has authored reports on electronic voting, social media regulation, and digital health, as well as op-eds for the New Statesman; the Telegraph; Media Diversified; the Fabian Review; and Chatham House. He regularly contributes to discussions in print and broadcast media on topics related to democracy, technology, and artificial intelligence.
Amelia Gentleman
Author and Reporter, The Guardian
Amelia Gentleman, is a reporter for the Guardian. She was named journalist of the year in 2018 for her investigations into the Windrush scandal, and also won the Paul Foot award, the Cudlipp award and an Amnesty prize for the reporting.
Previously she won the Orwell prize for political journalism, and feature and specialist writer of the year at the British press awards. Her book The Windrush Betrayal, Exposing the Hostile Environment was shortlisted for the 2020 Orwell book prize.
Amelia previously reported from Paris and Moscow for the Guardian and from Delhi for the New York Times.
Liam Gilliver
Deputy Editor, Plant Based News
Liam is the Deputy Editor of Plant Based News and author of We're Worried About Him.
He has written for publications including The Independent, Huffington Post and Attitude Magazine.
Amy Hall
Co-Editor, New Internationalist
Amy Hall is a co-editor at New Internationalist magazine, a multi-stakeholder co-operative co-owned by its workers and over 3,600 investors around the world.
The bi-monthly magazine covers a range of issues, including climate change, health, inequality, human rights and social movements, with a focus on the Global South.
Amy has previously written for The Guardian, Red Pepper, The Ecologist and others. She has a keen interest in environmental issues and previously wrote a regular column for openDemocracy looking at the intersection of the environment, corporate power, Brexit and the British state. She edited the May/June 2020 edition of New Internationalist which focused on the global health crisis of air pollution.
Sasha Havlicek
Founding CEO, Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD)
Sasha Havlicek, Founding CEO, Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) Sasha Havlicek is the Founding CEO of the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), an independent ‘think and do tank’ dedicated to safeguarding human rights and reversing the rising global tide of hate, extremism and polarisation.
Sasha has spearheaded ISD’s pioneering research and data analysis of disinformation, hate and extremism, as well as ISD’s policy advisory, frontline training, digital education, tech and communications programmes to operatively push back on the forces threatening democracy and the cohesion of society at large.
With a background in conflict resolution and an expertise in global extremist movements, digital information operations and electoral interference, she has advised a range of governments at the highest levels and spearheaded partnerships with the UN, EU Commission and Global Counter-Terrorism Forum. She has also worked with the private and civil society sectors to innovate real-world solutions to the rising challenges of polarisation, extremism and hate, including major programmes run in partnership with Google, FB and Microsoft.
Sasha serves as an expert advisor to the UK Counter-Extremism Commission and the Mayor of London’s counter-extremism programme, and is a member of the European Council on Foreign Relations. Sasha previously served as Senior Director at the EastWest Institute where she led conflict resolution programming. Sasha has testified before US Congress, the UK Parliament and is a regular commentator in the media (CNN, BBC, Channel 4 News and other networks).
Eliot Higgins
Founder and Chief Executive of Bellingcat
Eliot Higgins is the founder and chief executive of Bellingcat, the investigative journalism collective responsible for uncovering wrongdoing all around the world. Founded in 2014 with HQ in the Netherlands, they have 18 employees and more than 30 contributors around the world.
Pioneers of open-source journalism, their forensic research of publicly available data and ‘citizen-journalist analysis’ uses techniques such as ‘geo-location’ to pinpoint exact locations through satellite imagery to corroborate or disprove claims.
Thomas Hughes
Director, Oversight Board Administration
Thomas Hughes was previously the Executive Director of ARTICLE 19, an international human rights organisation that defends and promotes freedom of expression and information worldwide.
Before that, Hughes was the Executive Director and founder of Diversity, an international advertising network for online news media in human rights-restricted countries and a co-founder of VirtualRoad.org, a secure hosting service that protects the websites of news media and civil society organisations. Prior to this, he worked for International Media Support (IMS), the European Commission, United Nations and Organization for Security Co-operation in Europe (OSCE).
Hughes has been an advisor on human rights to previous UK Foreign Secretaries and is a governor at the Westminster Foundation for Democracy (WFD).
Banseka Kayembe
Founder & Director, Naked Politics
Banseka is a freelance writer, having written for The Independent, the iNewspaper, The Huffington Post as well as other publications. She specialises in issues around race, feminism, youth and pop culture.
She is the founder and Director of Naked Politics, a platform that amplifies young people's voices and engages them in political issues. She is also a national and local broadcast radio contributor having appeared on BBC Radio and youth station Rinse FM.
Lexie Kirkconnell-Kawana
Head of Regulation, IMPRESS
Lexie Kirkconnell-Kawana is a New Zealand qualified barrister and solicitor who has worked in all forms of media regulation.
She has previously worked at the Advertising Standards Authority in the investigations team and at the New Zealand Office of Film and Literature Classification, an independent state media regulator, in a research and semi-judicial capacity.
Jack Lahart
Head of Social Media, The Economist
Jack leads a global team of editors that works to distribute The Economist's journalism across its social media and digital platforms.
Before joining The Economist he worked in political communications.
Sérgio Spagnuolo
ICFJ Knight Fellow and Founder of Volt Data Lab
As an ICFJ Knight Fellow, Sérgio Spagnuolo has created a digital tool called Science Pulse to give journalists better access to scientists and medical professionals who are thought leaders in their fields. In its initial phase, he is using the tool to track scientific research and commentary related, initially, to Covid-19 on social media.
Spagnuolo is also the founder and managing-editor of the data-driven news agency Volt Data Lab and editor of Aos Fatos, the Brazilian fact-checking website.
With more than 14 years of experience in newsrooms, he has worked for several media companies, including Reuters, Yahoo News and Mergermarket (previously owned by the Pearson/Financial Times Group). Spagnuolo also serves as a board member of the Brazilian Association of Investigative Journalism (Abraji).