One of the most common questions investigative journalists get asked is how they choose what to investigate. Revelations that expose simmering scandals or bring down governments can often seem like pu...
James Oliver
James Oliver is an award-winning investigative journalist, director and television producer for BBC Panorama who specialises in complex investigations. He has produced documentaries for the BBC’s flagship current affairs series exposing wrongdoing involving international organisations, governments and high-profile individuals, and revealing corporate corruption, tax dodging and the exploitation of offshore secrecy.
Over the last decade he led the BBC’s participation in a series of groundbreaking international collaborative investigations, including the Panama Papers (named investigation of the decade by the British Journalism Awards), the Paradise Papers and Luanda Leaks, for which his programme for PBS Frontline won an Emmy. Other notable investigations for Panorama include a series of five programmes exposing corruption at FIFA, undercover investigations into tax dodging, and a film about the murder of ‘Baby P’ and the failures that led to his death in 2008 that won the Royal Television Society award for Home Current Affairs.
As an assistant producer he worked on some of Panorama’s most challenging investigations including a film revealing corruption at British Aerospace and the Anglo Saudi Al Yamamah arms deal, reports on organised crime, and corruption at Britain’s oldest law enforcement organisation, Customs & Excise.
Prior to joining the BBC he worked as a freelance journalist and assistant producer for the BBC and Channel 4 including two years on Channel 4 Dispatches’ investigations unit. He is author of Britain’s Secret Propaganda War, 1948-77 (with Paul Lashmar) and has written for the British press, including The Guardian, The Independent, The Sunday Mirror, The Daily Telegraph, The Mail on Sunday and Private Eye.
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