Abstract
Michael Crick, political correspondent for Channel 4 News, has received the 10th British Journalism Review Charles Wheeler Award for outstanding contribution to broadcast journalism.
The anti-Brexit campaigner and businesswoman, Gina Miller, delivered the annual keynote speech, at the University of Westminster in London, discussing her legal challenge to the government on its authority to implement Brexit without parliament's approval.
Marina and Shirin Wheeler, daughters of Sir Charles and Lady Wheeler, presented the award honouring their late father, the distinguished BBC foreign correspondent. Shirin praised Crick's “incisive journalism, challenging authority and holding the powerful to account”.
Michael Crick was a trainee journalist at ITN in 1980 and a founding member of the Channel 4 News team in 1982. In 1990, he joined the BBC and spent 19 years at Newsnight, rising to become political editor in 2007 before returning to Channel 4 News in 2011.
Crick has established a reputation for investigative and campaigning journalism, combined with trademark mischief. He has won four RTS awards.
The BJR judges noted Crick's tenacity, range, rapport with the audience and tremendous experience.
Crick told the audience of academics, journalists and media students that we are experiencing a golden age of journalism and “are better as broadcasters at holding people to account than ever before”.
In her lecture, Gina Miller accused news media of “stiffing” free expression and putting proprietors’ interests above readers. She also lamented the false equivalence of news programmes that pit opposing viewpoints against each other without due attention to the facts.
The lecture was followed by a Q&A session chaired by Steve Barnett, professor of communications at the University of Westminster and a member of the BJR editorial board.
