CEN Email On Paul Foot Award Story Shows Unpaid Agency Work Behind Major Investigative Journalism

This CEN case document preserves a 2006 email from Michael Leidig to Hazel Gilbertson asking about a £1,000 fee for work connected to David Harrison’s Sunday Telegraph investigation into sex trafficking from Eastern Europe to London. The attached text records that Harrison’s series won the £5,000 Paul Foot Award and was praised as “real, raw, frontline stuff” that helped trigger Home Office and police action. The item is significant because it shows the hidden agency and freelance labour behind major national investigative journalism: CEN’s work contributed to an award-winning series, yet Leidig still had to chase payment after the public recognition had gone to the newspaper journalist. It matters in the wider evidence chain because it supports the Proof of Work argument that journalism is often built on reporting, contacts, risk, fieldwork and support that may disappear from the public byline or prize record, even though without that work the published investigation would not exist in the same form.

Source

Part of Central European News & Mike Leidig v BuzzFeed (US Second Circuit Libel Case) – CEN Case Documents

europe Media newsX Community Interest Company Published 3 May 2026 at 13:43 Source: 16 July 2016