29.09.09
Mark Watts, the co-ordinator of the FOIA Centre, is
the former chief investigative reporter on Sunday Business, where
he led a three-strong unit, regularly commissioning freelances.
While at the newspaper from 1997 to 2001, he was one of only two journalists
in Britain specialising in using the freedom of information act (FOIA) in
the US and the “code of access to government information” that
preceded FOIA in the UK.
He was co-father-of-chapel at Sunday Business, and successfully
fought an employment tribunal – with NUJ backing – for unfair
dismissal after being fired for sending two internal e-mails to managers protesting
about job cuts.
Watts has worked on several other national newspapers (The Sunday
Times, The Sunday Telegraph, The Independent on Sunday,
Sunday Express), an evening newspaper (Hull Daily Mail),
and television current-affairs programmes (including World in Action,
The Big Story, 3-D).
As a freelance, he has written for nearly every national newspaper
(red-top to broadsheet, daily and Sunday, Scottish and London-based) and many
magazines (Journalist, Press Gazette, Broadcast,
Private Eye, New Statesman, VNU’s Business Age,
The Engineer, Computer Weekly).
And he is the author of a book
about some of the newspaper industry’s “dark arts”, The
Fleet Street Sewer Rat.
Watts was named today
as a candidate in the election to be editor of the Journalist, the
magazine published by the national union of journalists (NUJ) for its members.
He has an impressive track-record in breaking investigative stories.
He helped make the second of two editions of World in Action on Jonathan
Aitken, the former cabinet minister. Watts obtained documents for the programme
showing that Aitken, while a backbench MP, had offered to sell defence equipment
to Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war, contrary to official government policy.
Watts has also broken several stories about the media industry. His
investigations unit at Sunday Business made most of the revelations
in the Mirror share-dealing scandal; revealed that Richard Desmond,
the pornographer, mortgaged his entire business empire to raise a loan to
buy Express Newspapers despite claims that he paid cash; and exposed how Britain’s
spooks manipulate the media industry, leading to one national newspaper editor
being identified as an MI6 asset.
Besides his role at the FOIA Centre, Watts is a freelance journalist
and broadcaster. He is regularly seen on British and international television
channels, including BBC News and Sky News. He is a member of the NUJ’s
London freelance branch and the society of authors, and a fellow of the RSA.
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