Wendy Bacon

Wendy Bacon "is a passionate journalist, who's now also passionate about teaching investigative skills to the next generation of journalists. Wendy has worked as an investigative journalist for publications and programs like Sixty Minutes, Dateline, Sunday, The National Times and The Sun Herald and won a Walkley Award for her exposure of official corruption in NSW. Now she teaches investigative journalism at UTS since 1991, and she has also trained journalists in Fiji, Papua and New Guinea.

"Wendy was born in Melbourne - one of five children in a family that was always a bit unconventional. "Even though at 15 I was a Sunday School teacher, around the dining room table, one of the main topics of conversation when we were having special dinners with guests and things would be, 'Does God exist?' And you know, usually the conclusion was that he didn't. So there was a very questioning atmosphere there and of course then I went off to university in the mid-60s."

"At university, Wendy became an editor of the University of NSW student newspaper, Tharunka, which evolved into publishing the underground paper, Thor, and a newspaper version of The Little Red School Book. According to Wendy, The Little Red School Book, "would send John Howard off his brain even today. I mean, it was basically, you know, how to sort out your teachers at school, and how to get basic information about sex and health and actually a lot of very sound information, but nevertheless written in a very frank way that back in those days was rather shocking...

"She also became involve in the famous Sydney Libertarian group called 'The Push'. "One of the good things about The Push is that there was a very strong belief in open inquiry and discussion, but I guess the core of The Push was certainly more radical. One of the things I think that attracted me to it, for whatever deep psychological reasons I have got a fairly strong anti-authoritarian streak."

"In 2002, AusAID published her report ( with Chris Nash ) Newsworthy, a major study on how the Australian media report on aid and humanitarian issues. She is currently undertaking further research in the reporting of development and humanitarian issues."

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 * Marian Wilkinson