"Being open can bring you great scoops, too. My favourite example of this was during the 2009 London protests against the G20 meeting, when our reporter, Paul Lewis, was investigating what happened to a newspaper seller, Ian Tomlinson, who had collapsed and died while walking through the protests. The pathologist reported that Tomlinson had died of a heart attack. We were searching for eyewitnesses. We put callouts on Twitter and on the Guardian site, and within hours Paul was contacted by a Guardian reader in the US. This man was an investment fund manager who had been in London on business; he'd slipped out of his meetings to have a look at the protests, and film them on his smartphone. On reading our callout at his home in New York, he looked back at his footage, and discovered very clear images showing Ian Tomlinson being shoved to the ground by a policeman. As you can imagine, it was a big scoop. Although the police officer was acquitted of manslaughter in 2012, he was later dismissed for gross misconduct. The pathologist has been struck off. In August the police settled a civil action by the Tomlinson family by issuing a formal apology and agreeing to pay compensation. None of this would have happened if the Guardian hadn't been open to the web, with international reach."
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Playwrights from EnglandWomen authors from EnglandFeminists from EnglandWomen born in the 1970sWomen journalists from England
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Extract from Viner's A.N. Smith lecture delivered in Melbourne, Australia on the day of the transcript's publication.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Katharine_Viner
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Katharine Viner
Katharine Sophie Viner (born January 1971) is a British journalist and playwright. She was the first woman appointed as editor-in-chief at The Guardian on 1 June 2015 succeeding Alan Rusbridger. Viner previously headed The Guardians web operations in Australia and the United States, before being selected for the editor-in-chief's position.
14 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Katharine Viner →
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