Peter Geoghegan
Media TribeShaunagh talks to Peter Geoghegan
Peter Geoghegan is an Irish writer, broadcaster and investigations editor at the award-winning news website openDemocracy. Peter is the author of Sunday Times bestseller Democracy for Sale Dark Money And Dirty Politics, a book about the role of dark money in the Brexit referendum. Peter's work has been featured in The New York Times, The Guardian and The Irish Times among other outlets.
Follow Peter on twitter and buy his Sunday Times bestseller Democracy for Sale Dark Money And Dirty Politics here.
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.
Peter Geoghegan
In front of me was a free sheet of a newspaper called the Metro. And it had a big advert in front of us and it said, take back control. And that was a big slogan, the leave campaign for Brexit, but I turned it over. I know some of the back, it had a little logo of alliance and it said paid for by the Democratic Unionist Party, Northern Irish Unionist Party as the name suggests. So I was quite surprised by this. So it was like, boy is a DUP under to mine's way in Belfast spending my beside first.
Shaunagh Connaire
My guest today is Peter Geoghegan. Peter is the investigation officer at open democracy and Sunday times best selling author of democracy for sale, dark money and dirty politics. Since 2016, Peter has been a leading voice on the Brexit referendum in the UK, Peter Geoghegan. How are you?
Peter Geoghegan
Hello Shaunagh? I'm all good and loving to be on your show. I'm very excited.
Shaunagh Connaire
Well, I think we should, from the get-go establish that we are good friends. We grew up in the same estate in Longford for the non Irish listeners among us. Longford is our... What we would refer to as a wonderful town in the middle of Ireland at 40 miles from the border in Northern Ireland. But also we are both journalists from our Titans slash troublemakers, but it's such a pleasure to have you on the show to kickstart our conversation. Peter, can you tell us how you started in journalism.
Peter Geoghegan
Everyone's got such interesting stories about how they got into journalism. And the one thing that kind of struck me as lots of people ended up with quite secure as its roots into journalism. And I'd love to be able to turn it onto your show and say, look, I went to college and done. I did a master's in journalism and I got a job in a local paper and here I am today, but that's not the case either with me. I also had quite a long security's reach into journalism. I always feel like my journalistic kind of interests kind of was very much started when I was younger. I was always interested in media. I was always reading the newspaper. The Irish Times was always in my house growing up, which made me very happy. I was older and able to write for the paper when I was in college, I wrote for college news papers and all that sort of stuff.
Peter Geoghegan
But actually I spent 10 years in university. I was... did a PhD. I ended up very luckily kind of been all over the world. I studied in New York, studied in Ireland. I ended up in Scotland where I still live. I went to the university of Edinburgh, the PhD in social science. And that was kind of almost like a social scientist. I worked as a postdoc. I was a PhD in human geography. I was kind of really interested in the broader sense, I guess, of people in the world. And when I was doing my PhD, I used to always freelance as well. Like do bits of writing for people basically to try and earn a bit more money because the PhD stipend is never that great. You know, when I was living in Brooklyn, I didn't even lived in a mattress on the floor. I was working as a postdoc as a post-doctoral researcher in Derry, in Northern Ireland.
Peter Geoghegan
That's going a border city of Derry. And my job back in those days was I used to work in what was called a peaceful, a stage basically, and state that have bushes, a peace line, which is these kind of corrugated iron or other types of structures that divide Protestants from Catholics in flash point areas and ordinarily. So I was doing this. I was there for three or four months and all the time I was in Northern Ireland, I started doing a lot more freelancing for Northern Ireland. As my postdoc was coming to an end, I was having a plan with my boss from a now defunct website called culture ordinarily, which was funded by the art's council. And I said to him, look my contract is coming up to an end. I actually did an interview for a job in London. Another postdoc again in sociology, kind of starting a bit of an academic career, but an academic career.
Peter Geoghegan
It wasn't all that crazy. If I was, I didn't really want to be an academic. I wanted to write for a bigger audience. And so my boss said to me as he's getting the points and we're stuck for someone here you've been writing for us. It's quite good difference your job. And even though the wages I have to say were absolutely terrible. I mean, this is Northern Ireland, 2008 basement wages. I didn't have to think that long about it. And I said, yes. And that was my first job in journalism was basically as an arts journalist in Belfast and continued freelancing, started writing a lot more politics. I wrote a lot about an ordinary in particular, wrote a book about Northern Ireland. And I felt like that was how I started really becoming a journalist. I started asking all the same questions in many respects has actually been interested in as an academic. I was always interested in understanding social structures, people in the world, how they operated. In some ways I took that interest and just chunks it into journalism.
Shaunagh Connaire
You've gone on to do amazing stories. You're now at open democracy, the investigation's editor there, and you've spearheaded a new brand, which is dark money. And of course, you've just written a Sunday Times bestseller democracy for sale. My next question, which I'm obviously planting the seed. Is there a moment in your career or a story rather that you're very, very proud of? And Of course I want you to tell us all about dark money.
Peter Geoghegan
Well, this is such... it's not even a story. This is a moment to be honest in my career and actually a moment in my life that in many respects changed a lot of aspects of how I work and how I live. And it was, I can tell you the exact date, it was the 21st of June 2016. And somebody listening might think that dates or that timeframe sounds familiar. And so that was 48 hours, two days before the Brexit referendum, before the United Kingdom voted on its membership of the European Union. As many will know subsequently voted to leave. And I was in the town of Sunderland, which is a place of about 80,000 people in the Northeast of England, former industrial Heartland gone on tough times now, shipyards are closed all the rest of it. I was there working for the Irish Times and I was doing that thing that lots of reporters do before a big electoral event, whether it's a general election or a referendum, you're going to a place you don't really know that well.
Peter Geoghegan
And you're trying to get a sense of what's going on that parachute into a place for two days, if you're lucky, I got two days in Sunderland trying to get a sense of what's happening and you've got to, write it up for the paper the next day. And I was leaving Sunderland that day. I was just going to get ready. And it almost in my head already starting to file my copy mentally. And I was at a train station and sort of getting the train and in front of me was a free sheet of a newspaper called The Metro, which we're pretty budget free newspaper that you'll find in train stations across the United Kingdom. And it had a big advert in front of us and it said, take back control.
Peter Geoghegan
It was one of those wraparound ad for it. So the whole newspaper was covered. And that was a big slogan at the leave campaign that fought leave campaign for Brexit. But I turned it over. I know some of the back, it had a little logo of a lion's head and it said paid for by the Democratic English Party and the Democratic English Party to DEP our Northern Irish Unionist Party as the name suggests they don't normally spend money on adverts in some [inaudible] . So I was quite surprised by this. So it was like, why is the DUP hundreds of miles away in Belfast spending away in this advert. And so I did that thing that I often do, which is I took a picture of it and they tweeted it out and I went well. That's interesting. And partly as well, I was particularly interested in it because I've worked in Belfast.
Peter Geoghegan
So I knew something interesting about Northern Irish Electoral Law. I knew that political donations in Northern Irelands was secrets because of the troubles, because we... this history of violence in Northern Ireland, I think it was... it could be very risky people, their names were put out into the public domain to do with giving money to the causes. So I thought that's interesting. I wonder if someone's given mine to DUP to spend it over here. I wonder if that's about, okay. And then I just, the train arrived and it just kind of bundled the newspaper up and stuck it in my bag and got on the train and took out my laptop and started furiously typing away my copy for the next day's paper. And then the following weeks and months, I became a little bit interested, more interested in that advert. That's curious. I had a couple of conversations with people I knew in ordinary, but it didn't really go anywhere. I haven't let it lie is that often happens with stories. Well, that's interesting, but you move on.
Shaunagh Connaire
Definitely, it's just all feels so serendipitous that you were sitting on that train that day, you came across your well formed Metro and you were heading to Sunderland as you say the... I think they were the first people to vote leave weren't they in the referendum and of course you have that background in Belfast. So you're so familiar with Northern Irish politics. It just all feels like it was meant to be
Peter Geoghegan
Well at an equity 2017. I got a message from Adam Ramsay. He was a journalist open democracy. And Adam said to me, I hear you're interested in the DUP Brexit campaigning because I am too. And he had been in Edinburgh and the run-up to the Brexit vote. And he'd noticed lots of posters and placards that had the same slogan take back control vocally. But literally imprinted said paid for by the Democrats Genius Party. And we were able to establish the DEP. It spent at least a quarter of a million pounds under Brexit campaign is a huge amount of money for an ordinarily in a place. So they don't even run candidates. That's very strange. So we published this story, being able to say this, that they spent this money. We didn't know where to come from. And we publish this story about two weeks before a snap election in Northern Ireland.
Peter Geoghegan
And what had happened was the default assembly, the local assembly, which is a power sharing assembly between Republicans and Unionists had collapsed over what was called the renewable heating incentive, scheme or cash flash. And basically what had happened was predominantly farmers and DUP supporters had been basically essentially been given money to burn wood pellets on limited amounts of money. And it was burning a huge hole in the Northern Irish budget was huge scandal and this embay collapsed. So they're having this snap election and into this, we published this story, which is about the DUP and dodgy money. And this forced the DUP to do something which they could easily avoid doing, which was to actually say something about where this money had come from. And so after about a week of pressure, newspaper lured, newspaper headlines, was it the Russians that gave DUP this money.
Peter Geoghegan
You know, how much they get all this sort of stuff. They pop... they come out and said, look, we got 435,000 pounds. And it came from a group called the Constitutional Research Council, which sounds really grand constitutional research council. You can imagine a big office in central London, actually, it's one man, really who lives in a Pebbledash house on the outskirts of Glasgow decision. I'm talking to you from now kind of series of failed conservative election candidates. And, but what happened was when the DEP came out and said, we got this money from the constitution research council, myself and Adam Ramsay, we were really across it. That's straight on what, who are these guys and what we know about them. And so we were able to identify the demand who ran them. This guy called Richard Koch. We were able to identify that really wasn't much of an organization at all, but very quickly were able to start burrowing into this man, Richard Cook's affairs and his kind of life.
Peter Geoghegan
And really, it reads a bit like an airport novelist. I say that's the line I use in my book. It's, it's quite incredible. This man's business history. Shortly before making this huge donation to the DUP. He had gone into business with the former head of Sony Secret Intelligence and a Danish man. Who'd been involved in gun running in India in the nineties who does deny that. He'd had a series of companies that were involved in shipping things like illegal waste around the world had signed $80 million contracts to buy railway sleepers and Ukraine that looked like they might may or may not have existed, shall we say? And you know, and again, he denies that there's any wrongdoing was ever done, but a very colorful business path. So we started writing about all of this, and again, this sort of brought this story, gave it a lot more animation and more and more questions I've been asked about, well, wherever this money come from and what happened, I started burrowing into this and writing more stories that, but I also started that kind of looking around with who spends money in British politics.
Peter Geoghegan
How does this work? How do you funnel money into someone like one guy who lives in the outskirts of classical concession up an organization that doesn't really have it doesn't have a legal structure. Doesn't find company accounts doesn't have a list of members. It doesn't have to say where our money comes from, and then it can get money into politics. That seems pretty crazy. So I started what became known as these dark money investigations. So it kind of snowballed from me standing in a train station in Sunderland, mentally writing a new story in my head to basically starting to kind of lift a lot of rocks really, and going what's going on here. What's what's happening with this. And I think in some ways, because I had a background as an investigative journalist, I've worked for channel four dispatchers. I've done a lot of investigative work.
Peter Geoghegan
So I kind of knew what questions to ask, but actually I was looking at a world I hadn't really done that much work in. So in some ways it was pricey. I think it was quite a nice mix because I was looking at an issue that I was interested in, but was really a non-original in many respects, I was able to bring some of my experience of investigations to bear on a book was asking questions that maybe if someone had been a political reporter for years would have told, were quite basic and gone without doesn't really matter. That's not very interesting. And I think that really helped being able to kind of see what was going on and put it into a context.
Shaunagh Connaire
And I think you're most definitely under selling yourself. When you say you were an ingenue at, and nobody should believe that. But what everybody should do is order your book democracy for sale. I think you're on your fourth print. You know, your journalism, it has been so important and so significant in this time as the Brexit negotiations unfold. But I want to talk to you about your reporting trip to the US just after you'd covered the Brexit referendum, and what comparisons you then drew between the two countries who were obviously both going through, or just by to go through some monumental shifts.
Peter Geoghegan
I'd covered the Brexit referendum in the North to bring them in Scotland. I'd follow the politics of a very closely, and then in the run-up to the 2016 American presidential election, myself and another Longford, man.
Shaunagh Connaire
I know that that was.
Peter Geoghegan
Garvin. Many people think he's from the states, but actually he's from Longford. And we, we sat together in primary school next to each other army at the same birthday, would you believe. So myself and Garvin traveled across the States for about a good few weeks bumps, but through three weeks before the American Presidential Election, we basically, I was freelancing at the time and I said let's go to America. Let's go and I'll report. I reported for pretty much everybody, like he was doing a lot of driving. I was doing a lot of typing as he went to dig a lot of radio and we went all across really the rust belt in the Midwest.
Peter Geoghegan
We just drove, we didn't have a set itinerary. And I think it was a way to do that. Something that I thought as well, we were just trying to understand what are the conversations like? And it was really, really fascinating. Some of them really struck me. I felt like, well what I noticed was it quite apparent to me that Donald Trump was way more popular than everybody in the media thought he was. So that was interesting. But the only thing that was really interesting I found was how you could see how nurses that weren't really playing that much in the mainstream media and immediate self that were playing on social media were really impacting. So for example, the kind of crooked Hillary sort of stuff, you could see a lot of people repeating stuff that they... and you'd asked them, where have you heard this?
Peter Geoghegan
Which I did quite a lot, because I'm always interested in that they were talking a lot about social media or about fringe websites that you wouldn't know very well. But one conversation really struck me. We were in Cincinnati, Ohio, which is kind of another post-industrial city, kind of a big democratic city. We're in quite a nice middle-class neighborhood on the outskirts. First, myself and Garvin, and we're outside a whole foods restaurant. A whole food shop, which is nice, fancy, you know.
Shaunagh Connaire
Very fancy.
Peter Geoghegan
Very fancy, yes, there was one in glass going to shut down because it couldn't do enough business. Cause we're not fancy enough for Japan. And so we're outside of whole foods. I was chatting to a couple of basic pensioners guys, three retired guys, and I was asking how we were going to vote. And if some are definitely couldn't vote for Hillary because she supports abortion up to three years old.
Peter Geoghegan
And I said, but that's called murder. That's a tough one. I think it's unlikely that's true. And then they started talking about how she supports abortion, you know, 40 weeks. And I was like, where do you see this? Like, where are you hearing this information? And they started putting a wonderful out their cell phone and started showing me up. This is the story. And it was from like a totally French website. And I was like this is cool. This is really interesting stuff swirling around here to, we're not seeing, we're not picking this up. We're not picking it up. And things like opinion polls for sure. And what became apparent as I started then a year later doing more investigations into the Brexit referendum, and looking back at what had happened was the rule of social media.
Peter Geoghegan
Then too, when I talk about it in my book, the leave campaign spent huge amounts of money on social media and that's where they realized something was happening. That the romaine campaigns just ignore it all.
Shaunagh Connaire
And particularly Facebook Peter, isn't that correct?
Peter Geoghegan
She had effect. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Dominic Cummings and the vote leave campaign spent about half of the money that they could spend to spend it on Facebook. The DUP spend some of their money on Facebook ads. Interestingly in British electoral law, you're not allowed to, what's called coordinate. You're not allowed to work together without declaring it, but just by chance, bought Dominic Cummings under DUP spent money with the exact same tiny little data data analytics firm. You were buying social media ads, Facebook ads on their behalf who were based above an opticians in a shopping center in the city of Victoria in British Columbia and Canada, many, many, many, many thousands of points.
Peter Geoghegan
But what was it coincidence that is who could possibly have told them the same company actually did have links with Cambridge Analytica and in the book I did. I do think this is a huge change in how politics is done. And we're seeing this now with the 2020 presidential election in America, it's going to be very interesting to see, but we're already seeing that this is a totally different conversation that's happening online and does the opportunities to influence politics online are vast. We saw it in Britain during the 2019 general election as well. So I found myself having an issue started looking really at money and politics and in a quite, almost kind of a very specific way who gave us particular amount of money that was often spent on and a big advert. I found myself actually asking much more systemic questions about, well, how do you, how has influence, how is it possible to kind of buy influence clandestine?
Peter Geoghegan
I need to shape political conversations way before people actually get to the ballot box. Way even before, you know, times, even before faults have been called, because what we saw say in Britain during the kind of period where it was a lot of uncertainty about the Brexit process from 2017 to 2019 before Boris Johnson became prime minister was hundreds of thousands of pounds. We've been spent anonymously on Facebook ads pushing for kind of a hard Brexit, targeting particular conservative MPS, encouraging people to write to their MP. So kind of changing political conversations in ways that you wouldn't even see as happening. It's very, very opaque. And I think that's how for me, that's been the big, huge change in politics that I was almost surprised. And I was, I think going to America allowed me to see how that was happening before I'd even started reporting on it.
Shaunagh Connaire
That's so interesting. And I remember after that trip, Peter, you were actually quite depressed. You couldn't believe what you had heard and well, it will be very interesting to see how 2020 plays out. I think now that media and journalists are very aware of, you know, the fake news that's prevalent and, and how these systems work in the background. But as you say, it's still a silent kind of enemy in the background, you know, warping its way through the web. So it is really hard to stop and find out before it's too late before, you know, some of these videos have been viewed over a million times. My final question, which I'm always really excited to ask people, is there a crazy moment that has happened to you while working in our industry that you'd like to delve into and tell our audience about?
Peter Geoghegan
Probably the more maybe something that people might think would happen to me in my line of work is that as well as doing investigations, you know, I'm a journalist, I've written about loads of different things. I've written very occasionally on myself, but I've done a lot of features racing over the years. I've made radio documentaries and about six years ago, I was commissioned to make a documentary for BBC radio for which involved me going to Mongolia to learn how to wrestle.
Shaunagh Connaire
I've never heard this story.
Peter Geoghegan
Oh, you should see the photos there. The photos of the BBC website, what is worse than evidence is question number, which it looks like I am naked. Just if anyone does go look them up, when you can see me wrestling with that guy, like it's just my briefs are kind of obscures. So I went to live with a bunch of Mongolian wrestlers on a step, basically outside all of butters, capital of Mongolia, about 50 kilometers outside.
Peter Geoghegan
And what had happened was I, I kind of rocked up. I had abandoned Mongolia basically, and it wasn't often journalists, the fixers people that we work with and they can range from, and they're often really important, but they can range from people who really are just journalists really. And fixers are really unkind title. And there are people who go and make stories for you. Sometimes, especially if you're working on a smaller book, just as I was at the time, they can be less professional, shall we say? So I had this kind of 21 year old student who spoke something that she was helping me. And what had happened was he thought that he had negotiated access to these wrestlers for me. But that actually wasn't really the case. We found out the night before we decided we'd go out anyway. But I brought a peace offering.
Peter Geoghegan
I brought all these jerseys. I brought like 25 extra large jerseys for all of the wrestlers. So I got out the wrestling cup and they were all playing, playing soccer. So I kind of decided to join them. And we were kind of playing football, but basically once I got there, I met the head of the wrestling camp, a guy who was called the Falcon because he'd reached his title in Mongolia, rested called a Falcom of SU, which means he got to a certain point in the nada, the big festival of Mongolian recipe. These are all very big men. I'm not a very big man. And so he... I kind of had a meeting with him and said, look through my translation. Look, I want I've... I've come here to make this documentary about you and you know, conduct, please come and stay in your camp tent.
Peter Geoghegan
And he said, okay, I'll let you come on. Honestly, let you come on one condition. You have to live exactly like we do while you're here. So is there for two weeks, you have to, you have to eat everything we eat, you have to do everything we do, eat a lot of food. Mongolian food surprise is really, really bland because the spice has never really reached Mongolia. So you're talking about like 10, literally like the kind of thing you hear body, but there's like 10 eggs in the morning, like 15 pancakes, lamb, everything would lamb. This is kind of what your tea does. Laminate. Like most of Mongolians were able to like skin a lot. Like we, a lot of evenings, they would take the alarm from live lamb to dead lamb to the table as a kind of in one week. But what I did, what was really interesting about it too, was I was constantly trying to find ways to win the... When they're not quite effective esteem, because you have to try and, you know, they have to see you.
Peter Geoghegan
What was really interesting. They were constantly appraising each other to work regular because if you've got really nice pets, you've got really this. And I do run a lot. They've run off for a very long time, but these ridiculous, the outside's calf muscles, I'm one of them nauseousness my top or they're kept on staring. And they all sort of pointing and they're all staring at my calves. And I thought they were like, kind of going look this weird. Falaise really skinny and scrawny. Or when you paste the inflationary risky stuff, these weird casts, but actually, no, they were appreciation the one Bishop, like they thought they could envy.
Peter Geoghegan
And they nicknamed the horse on the back. And then when I left the camp, the Falcon assume promise. He said, he made me promises to Peter, held his hands level. Is it Peter? Your brain is up here and you can raise one hand, but body is down here and he lowered it. When I next see you, I want them to be like this. And he brought the two hands level again and they keep on living in slight fear that the Falcons coming was going to turn off my house. One day I go, Peter you've failed.
Shaunagh Connaire
Well, Peter Horse Geoghegan, we should leave it there. Absolute pleasure chatting. I can't believe we didn't start off with the Mongolian wrestling story that I've never heard before, but thanks so much for your time, Peter. And as I say, everybody should go out and buy democracy for sale whenever you can. Peter. Thank you.
Peter Geoghegan
Thank you very much, lovely to be on the show.
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 at Shaunagh on Twitter or at Shaunagh Connaire 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.
