Why investigative journalists don’t always name the "bad guys" they uncover
Many investigations are mysteries. Of course, we want to uncover the wrongdoing, the evidence, the stories of the people paying the price. But most importantly, we want to know who’s responsible.
However, it’s not always the case that we name the culprits in our stories.
That might seem like a strange stance: if we’ve identified them, why not name and shame? The decision isn’t made lightly and often isn’t straightforward. It can involve many discussions among reporters, editors, and lawyers.
Legally, there are a couple of things we have to consider: defamation (libel) and privacy. People named in our stories can use one or both of these laws to challenge our reporting – sometimes even before we have published.
The truth offers an absolute – although often quite expensive – defense to defamation claims. Privacy is trickier. Something can be completely true yet still protected by a person’s right to privacy.
In those cases, we have to find a delicate balance between an individual’s privacy and the wider public’s right to know the truth.
In a story from last month, for example, we decided to name the people that we’d linked to the creation of the white-nationalist AI rapper Danny Bones: Den Bamber and Theo Blackledge.
There were several reasons we did this. First, we considered the public interest. That doesn’t refer to what the public would be interested in – it means matters that affect the wellbeing of the general public as a whole (rather than, say, an individual or a business).
The Danny Bones persona is a successful rapper and YouTuber. He’s got a Spotify account. Millions have watched his videos. As his following has grown, he has begun to act as a political influencer, spreading anti-Muslim and anti-migrant messages to a sizable audience.
He is also the face of an anonymous influencer collective called the Node Project. It sells merchandise and was paid £4,000 by the former British political party Advance UK to produce campaign material for the Gorton and Denton by-election.
In a proper democracy, we should know who is behind materials that political parties are paying for. And we need to investigate a group that turns racist, anti-migrant content into a money-making enterprise.
Our broader Hate Economy project is based on this premise: that we should be informed about who is spreading hate and profiting from it.
But we are cautious about who we name.
Earlier this year we investigated a person creating, spreading, and making his living from hateful AI content online. Much of it portrays Islam as an existential threat to the West. But the man behind this account, we discovered, is himself a devout Muslim. We chose to keep his name out of the story.
Why? Well, we considered his safety. Given the nature of the material he was distributing – and that it was contrary to his own beliefs – we felt there was a high enough risk of retaliation. Once we realized that, we took extra care in how we wrote the story to ensure he couldn’t be identified from the details we did include.
We published the story because we believe the facts are in the public interest – but when it came to revealing his identity, the risks outweighed the public interest.
In contrast, last year we named Geeth Sooriyapura as the man behind a vast network of Islamophobic and anti-immigrant pages on Facebook.
After thorough discussion, we decided that Sooriyapura didn’t face a significant risk of harm. He had already been very public about his activities, including running a training academy online and boasting about how much money he was making. He had put his name to his work.
Our newsroom is committed to transparency, and we’ll tell you everything we can about our investigations. But sometimes, responsible journalism means not sharing a crucial detail. The longer we stay on a story, however, the more we can uncover. And that, in turn, lets us build arguments for the public interest and hold the system – as much as individuals – accountable.
Technology & Business Editor
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