Truth Tellers

Algorithmic dominance. Fake news. Attention famine. Corporate timidity. Authoritarian suppression. Faced with this onslaught, trust in journalism is low worldwide. The erosion and debasement of fact-based journalism has become an overriding threat to functioning society.

Crusading British newspaperman, Sir Harry Evans (1928-2020) was one of the giants of post-war journalism. The award-winning work he spearheaded as editor of The Northern Echo, The Sunday Times and The Times - from his fight to overturn a young Welshman’s  wrongful murder conviction that spurred the end of the death penalty in the UK, to his celebrated ten-year campaign to win compensation for Thalidomide children, and his exposure of the cover-up of Soviet spy Kim Philby – set the gold standard for courageous investigative journalism. In 2002, he was voted by his media peers as the Greatest British Newspaper Editor of all time. 

In honor of Sir Harry’s remarkable legacy, Thomson Reuters, for whom he served as editor-at-large at Reuters News in the last decade of his life; Durham University, his alma mater; and his wife, Tina Brown CBE, former editor of Tatler, Vanity Fair, New Yorker and founder of The Daily Beast, have joined forces to host an essential new convening, Truth Tellers, the Sir Harry Evans Global Summit in Investigative Journalism. 

The  annual summit takes place in London at the prestigious Art Deco forum of the Royal Institute of British Architects. The summit brings together the world’s most dogged and diverse truth-seekers, both seasoned and innovative: unsung reporters who risk their lives and reputations, intrepid war photographers, digital data sleuths, relentless documentarians, and enterprising, apolitical investigators in podcasting, publishing, TV, and streaming media. What they have in common is a moral commitment to the immutable truth – not the official story, the acceptable version or the cosmetic spin– but the unvarnished account of what really happened. As Sir Harry told former Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger, “Things are not what they seem on the surface. Dig deeper, dig deeper, dig deeper.”

The agenda of the Sir Harry Evans summit is a full day of programming followed by a closing dinner. The invitation-only audience is made up of 400 editors, reporters, broadcasters, and media leaders.

The summit’s purpose is to deepen the global networks that support fearless inquiry, celebrate the industry’s great practitioners and  next-generation trailblazers, and, above all, remind the world why serious journalism is indispensable.

The 2025 summit will take place in London on 7 May from 9.30am-6.30pm. The event will be livestreamed at sirharrysummit.org.