Nick Davies

Investigative journalism is the meat and drink of the Guardian newspaper and Nick Davies is the exemplar of that tradition. His tenacious and morally courageous work on the British ‘phone hacking’ scandal from 2010 onwards could have ended his own career in ignominious fashion. Instead his dogged efforts brought the newspaper empire of Rupert Murdoch spectacularly to heel and led, indirectly, to the closure of one of the worst offenders, in the News of the World. In Hack Attack (2014) a work of non-fiction that often reads like a thriller, Davies gives his own first-hand account of the exposure of the scandal. In Flat Earth News (2008) he writes about the ‘corrupted profession’ of journalism, in which the press release has long since triumphed over original and essential reporting. He is in conversation with Myles Dungan.