Olympics next target for Union FOI campaigner

The London Olympics are the next target for NUJ freedom of information campaigner Heather Brooke. “I’m going to be poking around there and probably taking a case against the Olympic Delivery Authority,” she said.

The details of MPs’ expenses that she spent years pursuing were finally made available in May. But not to her alone. After an outcry from some media outlets they were released to all press and broadcasters.

Heather Brooke said she was disturbed by the move that was not standard procedure and was politically motivated. “I didn’t do it for the exclusive,” she said. “But when it was offered to me it compensated me for my time.”

While she was primarily a campaigner, where was the motivation for papers like the Sunday Times that had pursued the case if everybody got the story?

“What happens is that people who put all that effort in are no longer willing to do so and public life is the poorer for that.”

The Journalist is published by the National Union of Journalists