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Jane Bradley

Jane Bradley
Jane Bradley is the New York Times' UK investigative correspondent. She's a Pulitzer Prize finalist and a two-time Orwell finalist.
‎Media Tribe: Jane Bradley | Russian assassinations, unmasking ISIS terrorists & walking across hot coal on Apple Podcasts
This episode features the New York Times’ UK investigative correspondent, Jane Bradley. Jane previously worked as a senior broadcast journalist at the BBC and a senior reporter on the Buzzfeed investigations team in the UK. She’s a Pulitzer Prize finalist for her investigation into mysterious Russia…
Listen to Jane Bradley on Apple Podcasts
Media Tribe - Jane Bradley | Russian assassinations, unmasking ISIS terrorists & walking across hot coal
This episode features the New York Times’ UK investigative correspondent, Jane Bradley. Jane previously worked as a senior broadcast journalist at the BBC and a senior reporter on the Buzzfeed investigations team in the UK. She’s a Pulitzer Prize finalist for her investigation into mysterious Russia…
Listen to Jane Bradley on Google Podcasts

Listen on Spotify here.

Shaunagh talks to Jane Bradley

This episode features the New York Times' UK investigative correspondent, Jane Bradley. Jane previously worked as a senior broadcast journalist at the BBC and a senior reporter on the Buzzfeed investigations team in the UK. She's a Pulitzer Prize finalist for her investigation into mysterious Russia-linked deaths in Britain and she's a two-time Orwell finalist for her expose of the trafficking gangs recruiting Britain's homeless into slave labour.

We chat about Jane's career trajectory, starting at a local Hull newspaper, her investigative journalism which has created so much impact and a crazy experience involving Jane walking across hot coal in her bare feet all in the name of good journalism.

Episode credits

Hosted and produced by Shaunagh Connaire and edited by Ryan Ferguson.

Episode transcript

Shaunagh Connaire

Welcome to Media Tribe. I'm Shaunagh Connaire and this is the podcast that tells the story behind the story. It's an opportunity for you and I to step into the shoes of the most extraordinary media folk who cover the issues that matter most.

Jane Bradley

Tony Robbins and all his kind of army of volunteers starts leading thousands and thousands of people out into the night and it's pitch black at this point. Walking down this concrete slope and at the end you just see these, I think it was five rows of hot coals on fire at the bottom. And someone at the end, one of the volunteers, pumps me up, gives me a high five says, "Are you ready?" In my head I'm thinking, I can't believe I'm walking across hot coals for my job.

Shaunagh Connaire

Today I'm speaking to The New York Times UK investigative correspondent, Jane Bradley. Jane joined The Times this year, having previously worked for the investigations team at Buzzfeed, where she was a Pulitzer prize finalist. Before that Jane worked for the BBC.

Shaunagh Connaire

Jane Bradley, how on earth are you?

Jane Bradley

I'm good. I'm so excited to be chatting with you.

Shaunagh Connaire

Likewise. It's so funny, we have this great friendship as we've both acknowledged, but it's always on social media. We've never actually met in person even though we've worked on a film together. But do you want to tell us all about you Jane and how you started in journalism?

Jane Bradley

Yeah. It's kind of a traditional journey to journalism, kind of untraditional. I was one of those really annoying kids who knew what they wanted to do very early on. I wanted to be a journalist since I was a kid. I kind of always loved reading and telling stories. And I was very nosy as a kid and had, I think, though my mom and my teachers might disagree, a kind of healthy disrespect for authority, which I think all journalists need to an extent. And we moved around a lot when I was growing up. So I spent my early childhood in Bahrain and the UAE, which is where my biological father is from. And when we came back to the UK we moved around all over Yorkshire. Sometimes moving every few months. So I think I was always interested in different cultures and I became quite good at talking to people from different walks of life and making friends very quickly.

Jane Bradley

But really, I think I decided I wanted to be a journalist for sure when I was about 11 or 12 and I attended the journalism summer school at my local paper, The Hull Daily Mail, which I'm sure your international listeners might not have heard of, but it was a big deal in Hull. And I basically after that, I just fell in love with journalism and newspapers was like, right, this is what I want to do. And it kind of changed my interest. Initially I wanted to be a sports journalist and a music journalist.

Jane Bradley

And really it was when I was in sixth form or college that I decided I wanted to get into investigative journalism. I was in my sociology A-level class and my teacher basically showed this amazing Panorama documentary by Mark Daly, presented by Mark Daly on institutional racism in the Met Police. I've just never really seen anything like it. And I was just kind of in awe at the journalism and shocked that that kind of racism goes on in England's biggest police force. And not only that, but just the impact it had. It led to these huge reforms across all of England's police forces and real change.

Shaunagh Connaire

What age were you at that point Jane?

Jane Bradley

I was 17 then.

Shaunagh Connaire

17. Still very, very young.

Jane Bradley

Still very young and annoyingly precocious who wants to be an investigative journalist. And that was basically what got me kind of into it. And I decided to go to university, Goldsmith's in London, but I was kind of in two minds about going, I kind of was like, I just want to get started. I've always been very impatient and I knew what I wanted to do. I'd been doing a lot of freelance writing for free and lots of internships. And I just thought, you know what, I'll go to London, I'll be able to do all these internships and work experience with a student loan covering my accommodation, otherwise I wouldn't have been able to afford to do it, and see what happens.

Jane Bradley

So just as I'm about to finish my second year at university, I decided to apply for the BBC journalism trainee scheme. I didn't think there was a chance in hell that I'd get it, but I thought it'd be good experience when I'm applying for jobs the year after, but I ended up getting a place. They picked about 15 of us out of around 2,500 people. So I was just like, can't believe I've got on this scheme. I thought it was all posh Oxbridge people who'd get on it. I can't go back to uni, this is too good an opportunity. So I dropped out of uni and accepted the place when I was 20 on the BBC's trainee scheme. And I thought, if it doesn't work out, it was a year's contract, I'll always go back to uni and finish off my degree then. But somehow I managed to stay employed afterwards. So yeah, I started off in local news, Look North and BBC radio Newcastle and kind of worked my way up from there.

Shaunagh Connaire

That's amazing. I actually never knew that story Jane. I also studied at Goldsmiths, just for a year. I did a journalism master's. I didn't realize you were there too. And that is why, I guess, you became one of the BBC's youngest senior producers in there or broadcast journalists. Isn't that right? I think that's an incredible journey. And also I'm really heartened to learn back then that the BBC were taking people who didn't come from Oxford and Cambridge and who had beautiful Northern accent. So that's very, very heartening [inaudible 00:00:06:09].

Jane Bradley

Beautiful is very kind of you.

Shaunagh Connaire

Well I'm telling you this as a midlander in Ireland so it's self serving. So Jane, you spent years at the BBC, BBC News, and you went on to make many Panoramas, which is of course the BBC's flagship investigative documentary series, for our non British audience. From BBC you went to Buzzfeed, the Buzzfeed investigations team. Do you want to tell our audience a bit more about that transition?

Jane Bradley

Yeah. So I'd basically just decided to leave Panorama, this is about 2014 and I'd just gone freelance. I'd been freelancing for a few months and I saw this Buzzfeed advert looking for basically a brand new team of investigative journalists in London, in the UK, to set up this new team. I have to admit, I was probably a bit skeptical at the start and maybe even a little bit arrogant being like, Buzzfeed, they don't really do investigations. But you know what, they've hired Heidi Blake, who was my editor at the time. And she's obviously a very well known British investigative journalist from The Sunday Times. So I was like, all right, you know what, maybe they are serious about doing investigations. They are going to invest in it.

Jane Bradley

So I went for my first interview with Heidi and she basically sold me on the Buzzfeed mission. She was just like, "Look, we're going to set up a brand new investigations team. You're going to have unlimited time and resources to work on really big, important stories. You're not going to be dragged into daily new stuff." And anyone who's worked in journalism knows that kind of resources and time is so rare and valuable that I was just like, there's nowhere else I know that's doing that. So I left that meeting having gone in a bit blasé and not sure if I wanted the job being like, I have to get that job.

Shaunagh Connaire

Wow. And I guess, because you're right Jane, that was kind of at the time that Buzzfeed was known more so for its listicles and a bit of clickbait. Isn't that right? So that was quite a big jump from somewhere that's I guess, prestigious as BBC Panorama. So fair play to you.

Jane Bradley

Yeah. A lot of people were kind of like, "Why are you leaving Panorama for Buzzfeed?" There's so many people just didn't understand why I was kind of making that jump. But I think within a year or two of the team being up and running, they saw that, okay, you are bringing in some really big stories and Buzzfeed does seem to be doing some good stuff here. And for me, when I went to the BBC, I ended up mostly working in TV. I never wanted to be on camera. Not with my vowels. And I hate being in front of a camera anyway. So I ended up in TV just because that was where the money was for doing investigations. Most people know investigations are really expensive, they're really risky. So for me, throughout my whole career, I haven't been bothered whether it's been TV, radio, digital newspaper, I just wanted to go somewhere where they were investing in investigative journalism and gave you the time and the space and the money to kind of do really big, important public interest investigations that matter and hopefully can make some kind of impact.

Shaunagh Connaire

And you did exactly that at Buzzfeed. I mean, you've a string, and such an amazing catalog of investigations under your belt since working there. And now of course, you're investigations correspondent at The New York times, which is obviously the pinnacle of amazing journalism. So you've had really an extraordinary career. So Jane, my next question, the big question of the interview, whether, which I'm sure you do, have a story or kind of investigation that you're rather proud of and that had impact along the way. And I'm very much hoping you'll talk to us all about your Russia and Russian intrigue.

Jane Bradley

Yeah. That was definitely one of I think the hardest and strangest most surreal stories I've ever done. Probably our biggest story at Buzzfeed while I was there at least was this kind of two year on and off investigation that we did into 14 suspected Russian linked assassinations that happened in the UK. It started with just a bunch of documents that came in from the ex-wife of this guy called Scot Young, who was this kind of super fixer to all the oligarchs, Boris Berezovsky, et cetera. And initially it wasn't about Russia at all. It was about how the British police, the Met Police in particular in this case, had basically failed to investigate all of these suspicious deaths that had happened in the UK. Russia didn't come into it at the start, but all of these men, all these 14 deaths had either kind of directly made an enemy of Putin or other powerful Russian figures, or they were linked to someone who had. And in all of these cases, almost all of these guys had reported death threats or assassination attempts or being targeted by Russian security services or the mafia.

Jane Bradley

And obviously in Russia there's often a crossover there. It's hard to tell them apart. But in every case the police basically ruled that every case wasn't suspicious, often quickly and without carrying out basic forensic tests or witness interviews, even CCTV checks. And then we had this big breakthrough really towards the end of the investigation, about three months before we published, where my colleague Jason Leopold had got hold of this document or this information about this document from US intelligence sources, which basically listed every single one of those 14 men who died as possible or suspected assassinations either by the Kremlin or Russian mafia. Yeah. I'll never forget when that intel came in. That was the big breakthrough.

Jane Bradley

And my editor Heidi and Mark Schoofs had kind of been having this meeting and Jason Leopold suddenly signaled us going, "Every single name is on that list in the UK. There are other names not in the UK who weren't on the list." And Heidi and Mark Schoofs came out of the meeting and was, "Have you seen this message?" And their jaw was just kind of hit the floor. And that was a turning point in that investigation. But the reason why I kind of want to talk about that story isn't just that it was a big success in terms of impact, but it was kind of lessons I learned as a journalist along the way.

Shaunagh Connaire

Just before you go on though Jane, so as a kind of a headline as to what you and your team at Buzzfeed investigated, basically, as you say, there were 14 what now look like murders or assassinations potentially directed from the Kremlin on British soil, whereby British authorities decided as a policy to kind of adopt this willful blindness. Just turn a blind eye. And they said that some of these were suicides and various other. They kind of had an excuse for every death. Whereas what your team discovered and showed was that au contraire, these people were most likely assassinated. And then of course the US authorities confirmed that as well.

Jane Bradley

Yeah. So just a couple of important points there. That's basically kind of what happened. However, the premise was that these were assassinated either by someone linked to the Kremlin or the Russian mafia. And the main upshot of that was not that every single one of these deaths were definitely Russian linked assassinations. I think that's highly unlikely. But it was that every single one of these potential Russian assassinations had been failed to be investigated by the authorities, either the police or the government. And some of that was incompetence. Generally it's incompetence rather than conspiracy theory I find in this work. And some of them was a willful looking away basically from the British authorities. And we spoke to several, 17 current and former intelligence officials who basically said that there was this kind of general policy, the UK government at the time, that it was too politically difficult to look into anything to do with Russia pretty much, or the Russian state because of the amount of money coming into London in particular from Russia, and just kind of how much of a power Russia is and how politically difficult it would be.

Shaunagh Connaire

Okay. So basically the Brits were anxious not to inflame diplomatic tensions with Russia. And your investigation came out in 2017. It was a seven parter. So that was before the Salisbury poisoning which kind of changed everything I think. And also really worth noting at that time, Theresa May who the majority of her audience will know because she was recently the prime minister, but back then she was the home secretary. Isn't that right? Sorry, I did interrupt you. You said the important part of your investigation is that you learned, I'm sure you learned a hell of a lot during that. I didn't mean to interrupt you, but just so the audience, if they haven't read your exposay, that they have a clear idea of what we're talking about.

Jane Bradley

Yeah. No, if they haven't read all 40,000 words. Yeah. You summed it up perfectly there. And you're right about the lesson. When you mentioned Salisbury, that kind of ties into the impact lesson that I learned, particularly doing investigations. So when we first published this story, we'd spent two years on this. We'd spoken to well over a hundred sources. We'd combed through 250 boxes of documents, crime scene evidence, CCTV. And we were so nervous when we published it, but excited, thinking, okay, this is a big story. Let's hope it lands. And we published it and pretty much, not complete silence, but almost silence from the rest of the press and kind of impact in terms of any investigation that's being reopened and things like that. I think it made page five of The Times and a couple of other smaller outlets picked up, but really this investigation we'd spent so much time working on it kind of just seemed to disappear. There was not really any impact.

Jane Bradley

And it was disappointing. We'd spent a lot of time and money. Buzzfeed had spent a lot of money on this. We had spent a lot of time and kind of, you put all your eggs in one basket when you're an investigative journalist working on one story out all year, which is what we'd done. And it wasn't until the Salisbury poisoning attacks happened that suddenly it just changed overnight. So as soon as reports started breaking about the attempted poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter, everyone was just calling us up to appear on BBC News, Sky News, CNN. Suddenly everyone was quoting our reporting going, "Hang on. Didn't Buzzfeed literally warn about this exact thing happen six months or so ago?" And suddenly all these important people, all these politicians, all these really senior police investigators were saying, "We should reopen the cases, re-examine the evidence, something needs to be done in it."

Jane Bradley

And it was even quoted in the recent Russia report published by the UK government a month ago. And then suddenly we were shortlisted or winning so many journalism awards, including the Pulitzer shortlisting, which is still surreal to this day. So for me, it was a real lesson and this applies not just to I think our Russia investigation, but generally investigative journalism. It's very rare you publish one big story and the impact happens immediately, right? You've got to keep chipping away and publishing multiple stories until the rest of the press start picking it up because our power is in numbers. Otherwise people in power can ignore a story and wait for the news cycle to carry it away.

Jane Bradley

So I think some of the biggest investigations, Windrush, for example. That wasn't just one story. Or even phone hacking. That blew the whole thing open. And as an investigative journalist, I think honestly, the biggest talent we've got is just we're bloody stubborn and determined and you've just got to keep going. And often just the success is just keep going for a month or a couple of stories longer or something. And that makes all the difference.

Shaunagh Connaire

Well, I think that's a great lesson Jane. That's really interesting. I remember reading it, your pieces back in the day in 2017 and one huge thing that stuck out to me back then and when I was re-reading this weekend was the fact that Russia gave assassinators a license to kill enemies of the state on foreign soil back in 2006. 2006, that blew my mind. And that to me is a story. How is that okay? And then the big, big question of course is why? I get that they are short on resources within the police, but why didn't MI6 investigate all of these murders, which clearly were suspicious at the time. And I think you guys answered that question really well. Well, that's huge impact Jane, and that is a great answer. You obviously you've done loads more stories with Buzzfeed's that have had huge impact as well. Is there anything else from your kind of catalog there that you were really proud of back in the day?

Jane Bradley

So the other story that I'm probably most proud to solve that I've done was one where we basically unmasked two members of the ISIS execution cell known as the Beatles. And I did that with my colleague, Adam Goldman, who's now at The New York Times. And we basically unmasked two of these guys as Alexanda Kotey and El Shafee Elsheikh, who were two young West London guys. And they were part of this notorious terror cell which was known for filming these really horrific beheadings and were probably the most wanted terror group in the world at a time and were being hunted by the authorities all over the world. And they were headed up by Jihadi John or Mohammed Emwazi.

Shaunagh Connaire

I do remember that one Jane as well. I remember you speaking to one of their mums. So that was a very, very moving piece as well. Well, Jane, another big question is whether there is some type of crazy moment within your career that you'd like to tell our audience about that perhaps your colleagues don't know about or something you haven't really delved into before that's slightly outrageous.

Jane Bradley

I think probably the craziest experience I've had in this job was doing a kind of undercover firewalk at midnight in the name of journalism. And that was on a story, a seven part investigation that I did into Tony Robbins, who is, for those of you who don't know, is described as the worlds most famous self-help guru. He's a millionaire. He travels around the world holding these kind of seminars, which are filled with thousands and thousands of people paying thousands and thousands of pounds or dollars. And he's a massive deal. He's worked with the likes of Donald Trump, Oprah, the Kardashians, Bill Clinton. And when we first started investigating him, which I did with my then colleague Katie Baker, one of the first steps was obviously kind of understanding how he worked. So just to go back a bit, the whistleblowers or the people who kind of came to us with a story, they had got in touch accusing him of serious sexual misconduct against his followers and against junior female employees. So personal assistants, sales reps.

Jane Bradley

And he was accused of kind of groping his employees, of making inappropriate sexual comments and touching. Of sending his bodyguards, his security, into the crowd at these events to try and basically solicit attractive young women to go up to his hotel rooms and things like that. So this started with one tip and before I kind of spoke to, in the end we spoke to well over, I think it was around a dozen women in total who kind of all had similar types of stories. But at the start of this, I kind of wanted to do my research properly and find out, okay, what does he teach at these seminars? So my bosses decided that I would go attend one of his seminars a couple of years ago this was now.

Shaunagh Connaire

And I mean, what did you learn at one of these seminars Jane?

Jane Bradley

Wow, what did I learn? Even the firewalk aside, it was one of the craziest things I've ever done in my life.

Shaunagh Connaire

When you say firewalk-

Jane Bradley

Literally walking over hot coals at midnight.

Shaunagh Connaire

Oh, I thought it was some type of euphemism for like a rite of passage.

Jane Bradley

My work often feels like a firewalk, but no, this was an actual fire walk.

Shaunagh Connaire

Okay. I think you need to tell us a bit more about that.

Jane Bradley

I mean, I will never forget. I will never forget the vision of as I walk down towards it. So I think it was one of his first days of his seminar in the ExCeL Centre in the London Docklands by the River Thames. And right at the end, he kind of pumps everyone up, getting ready for this big firewalk right at the end. And the aim is to kind of improve your confidence and believe in yourself and not be scared anymore. And the seminar started pretty bizarrely for any seminars I've been to where there's lots of hugging and high-fiving and massaging. Not COVID friendly at all now. It was kind of like being at a rave. There'd just constantly be this kind of pumping music, these bright lights, these dancers who would come on. And then it switch to suddenly people talking about or thinking about their greatest fears, their greatest mistakes, and the lights would go out and I would be walking across the floor and seeing people laid on the ground, banging their heads literally against the floor or a wall and in floods of tears.

Jane Bradley

It was a really intense seminar to start with and there was a lot of very vulnerable people there. And one of the concerns our whistleblowers had raised was that there were all these peoples with depression and mental health issues who were kind of brought into this very intense experience and weren't getting the kind of support, the medical help, et cetera, they needed when breakdowns inevitably occurred sometimes. So anyway, at the end of this crazy day, there's this firewalk and Tony Robbins and all his army of volunteers, all his army of helpers, kind of starts leading thousands of thousands of people out into the night. And it's pitch black at this point. Walking down this concrete slope. And at the end, you just see these, I think it was five rows of hot coals on fire at the bottom.

Jane Bradley

And you go and you line up and everyone's chanting. Everyone's kind of singing and it's kind of almost trance like. And then you kind of have to walk to the end of this and someone at the end, one of the volunteers, pumps me up, gives me a high five says, "Are you ready?" In my head I'm thinking, I can't believe I'm walking across hot coals for my job. But I said, "Yes, I'm ready." And you run across and then there's a bucket of water and they cool you off and make sure there's not any blisters or anything. And that's the end of your first day learning from Tony Robbins the self-help guru.

Shaunagh Connaire

Wow. I'm assuming you're in your bare feet at this point Jane. That's absolutely outrageous. I mean, that is hilarious. All in the name of journalism. And again, it's why you're such a great journalist. I hope your bosses at The New York Times are listening in and thinking, "Wow, this girl is dedicated."

Jane Bradley

I don't know if my bosses at The New York times with sign off on it.

Shaunagh Connaire

Exactly. It feels definitely like more of a Buzzfeed thing. Maybe the insurers has never knew about that. That's just simply outrageous and completely bonkers. So thanks a million for sharing that with us and thanks a million generally for coming on the podcast Jane. And I'm sure you inspire many more people to follow a path into journalism. Your journey isn't totally conventional, but it was brilliant to hear all about it. Thank you so much Jane.

Jane Bradley

Thank you so much for having me.

Shaunagh Connaire

If you liked what you heard on this episode of Media Tribe tune in next week, as I'll be dropping new shows every week with all sorts of legendary folk from the industry. And if you could leave me a review and rating, that would be really appreciated. Also, get in touch on social media, @Shaunagh on Twitter or @shaunaghconnaire on Instagram. And feel free to suggest new guests. Right, that's it. Until next week, see you then. This episode is edited by Ryan Ferguson.