The Tip Off

A tragedy in the English Channel got Aaron Walawalkar thinking. How could it be that people were dying, their boats sinking in one of the busiest stretches of water in the world? This is how Liberty Investigates went to battle over FOI rejections, knocked on doors and analysed shipping data to reveal the shocking reality behind deaths at sea. Read all about it:  https://libertyinvestigates.or...

The horizon near Ali’s house is filled with flames. Owen Pinnell and Jess Kelly, from BBC Arabic, can't stop thinking of them. And back in the UK, Unearthed's Joe Sandler Clarke is digging into his own investigation. This is the story of how journalists worked with citizen journalists and scientists to delve into the impact of oil drilling around Basra, Iraq. Read all about it: https://www.bbc.co....

You will have heard about the BBC Newnight interview with Prince Andrew - it was a seismic scoop that reverberated around the world. But how did it happen? The answer is one woman: Sam McAlister. This is how she bagged the interview of the decade. Read all about it:  https://www.hive.co.uk/Product/Sam-McAlister/Scoops--The-BBCs-Most-Shocking-Interviews-from-Prince-And/27025330 https://www.you...

Hannah Al-Othman sits in her car in front of a stranger’s house. Inside is a man who might be responsible for a woman’s death. A man whose name is known to a lot of people, but who has not yet been brought to justice. In this episode we hear how Hannah and her colleague David Collins uncovered a shocking story of silence and inaction. Read all about it: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/i-believe...

We're between series of The Tip Off now - and planning lots more great episodes for you, but while we do, why not take a listen to Silenced. A new podcast from human rights organisation ARTICLE 19 Silenced tell the Stories of journalists and activists around the world, whose governments attempt to rein them in and cover up the truth.  Take a listen to this episode, in which Matthew Caruana Ga...

Rob Cribb had an idea for an investigation, an idea so big it was almost impossible to envisage how the work could be done. But then, it came to him.... This is the story of how more than 100 journalists across Canada banded together to reveal the shocking levels on lead in tap water across the country. Read all about it:  https://www.thestar.com/news/investigations/lead-in-water.html https:/...

Who gets to tell the stories we hear? On this episode we hear from citizen journalists - two women with lived experience of homelessness and surrounding issues, as they talk us through a ground-breaking project.   Warning: this episode contains some explicit language and mention of sexual violence. Read all about it: https://groundswell-listenup-hub.org/     Sign up to the Listen Up...

How do you investigate a group that is shrouded in secrecy by its very nature?  This is the story of how two journalists - Patrick Lohmann and Marnie Eisenstadt tracked down dozens of people, to reveal the concerning goings on in an AA-type support group. Read all about it: https://www.syracuse.com/butternutters/#:~:text=The%20organization%20called%20%22The%20Syracuse,Post%2DStandard%20invest...

Where do you start in unravelling one of the biggest miscarriages of justice in the UK system? For Nick Wallis it all began with a tweet. This is the story of how Nick’s tenacity, with over a decade of reporting, exposed a scandal of unimaginable proportions. Read all about it: https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-great-post-office-scandal/nick-wallis/9781916302389   This show is a co-product...

Hi Tip Off Listeners - We are working hard on new episodes for you, and have some more great stories coming up this series. But this week we are taking a dip into our archive. As the Russian regime is accused of breaking international law and committing untold atrocities in Ukraine, we're re-publishing the first of a two-parter, originally published in 2018. This is the story of how Heidi Blake an...

One December day, Samira Shackle found herself in the midst of an unfolding, global story. Drones had been spotted flying around Gatwick Airport. But weeks, then months passed, and no drone operators were ever found. Samira lays out how she dug into the mystery and revealed all was not as it first seemed.  Read all about it: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/dec/01/the-mystery-of-the-g...

Annabel Hennessy was reporting on another case when she heard a name that would change everything. A lawyer, expert in First Nations’ rights, told her about Jody Gore - a woman convicted of murder with little weight given to the years of domestic abuse she suffered. This story unravels how Annabel’s groundbreaking series of articles led to real change in Western Australia. WARNING: This episode co...

What do you do if the data you need doesn’t exist?  When the pandemic hit I couldn’t stop wondering about how the impact of lockdown, sickness or bereavement on people’s ability to pay their rent or mortgage. I wanted to know more, but I couldn’t do it alone. This is the story of how a group of more than 20 journalists, all across England and Wales, came together in one of the largest court-r...

Liz MacKean and Meirion Jones think they have everything they need to finally expose Jimmy Savile’s abhorrent crimes. But as their transmission date gets nearer, their BBC bosses start to pull back. This is the story of how the BBC came to drop the Newsnight investigation into Savile and the seismic consequences of that decision. This is the second part of a two-episode story . Read all about it:...

Meirion Jones has had a strange feeling about Jimmy Savile for some time and he thinks he may have a way to probe further. When Savile dies, Meirion teams up with Liz MacKean to try and get to the truth. This is how Liz and Meirion pulled together the pieces - in an attempt to finally bring Savile’s crimes to light. Many thanks to Liz MacKean's family for allowing me to use audio from an un-aired...

Zak Garner-Purkis is sat in a fastfood restaurant - his attention laser-focused on the men gathering across the road. He is trying to work out who these man are, how they have come to be there, and whether this is what modern day slavery looks like in 21st century London? This is the story of how Zak went undercover to expose a shocking system of exploitation in the construction industry. Read all...

Stay tuned - we will be back very soon with more stories behind the headlines. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Creator and host of The Tip Off, Maeve McClenaghan has written a book, and it is now out in paperback. No Fixed Abode: Life and Death Among the UK’s Forgotten Homeless tells highly personal, human and sometimes surprisingly uplifting stories of real people struggling in a crumbling system. The book goes behind the scenes of the dramatic, winding investigation that revealed - for the first time - h...

Cheats: we love to hate them. But in this climate of fast news, short attention spans, 280 characters, do we ever get the full picture? Cheat!, a new podcast from Somethin’ Else, digs underneath the surface to tell the inside stories behind some of the biggest scandals in contemporary history and introduces you to the flawed protagonists at their heart: controversial and contentious figures from t...

Sarah Turnnidge started her journalism career at local papers so it was there she first encountered press releases from police forces. But over time Sarah started to wonder - did they tell the whole story. In this episode Sarah talks through her meticulous data project which revealed a worrying disproportionality when it came to information put out about black criminals. Read all about it: https:/...

Andrew Gold, a freelance journalist, is feeling out of his depth. He is in a church hall on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, and the priest he is there to see is not happy. This is the story of how Andrew tracked down a man who claimed to be exorcising demons.  WARNING: contains descriptions/audio of supposed exorcisms, which some might find upsetting. Read all about it: BBC Three Exorcism The...

Pete Murimi has stumbled upon a horrifying hypothesis - that people are snatching children from the streets of Nairobi, Kenya. Now he is working for BBC Africa Eye and is on the trail. Working with Njeri Mwangi Marc Perkins (Editor) and Tom Watson (Exec), this is how the BBC investigations team exposed a shocking tale. Read all about it:  BBC The Baby Stealers https://www....

To commemorate getting to our 50th episode we look back at what happened next after some big stories went out.  Jane Bradley, Samir Jeraj, Natalie Bloomer and Aliaume Leroy broke some great investigative scoops, but the story didn’t end there. The impact of their work continues to reverberate and impact change - here’s what happened next. Hosted and produced: Maeve McClenaghan Theme music: Di...

In late winter 2017 I was struck with what I thought was a simple question… how many people were dying while homeless? It turned out nobody knew the answer - so I set out, with colleagues around the country, to find out.  In this episode I dissect one of my own investigations, focusing on the reporting process around one man’s death.  I go deeper and tell more of these stories in my new...

Samir Jeraj and Natalie Bloomer have decided to team on to take on an investigation… they want to know if and how police forces are sharing information with immigration officials, and they are about to uncover some shocking findings.  Read all about it: https://www.politics.co.uk/news/2017/04/05/met-police-hands-victims-of-crime-over-to-the-home-office   https://www.politics.co.uk/news/2...