Live tonight: MPs expenses – a triumph for journalism?

 

Tonight we’ll be discussing the ongoing MP Expenses scandal in the UK and whether or not the story was a triumph of journalism or the chequebook. Roy Greenslade chairs the discussion tonight 8 June and we start at 7:30pm GMT. As usual, if you can’t make it to the Club in person you can watch the discussion and join  in the chat live on the Frontline Club broadcast channel, on this blog post or on the Club events pages,

With each new tranche of revelations about MPs expenses the Daily Telegraph has continued to put on sales and gained kudos for its good old fashioned journalistic scoop. With a story that has shaken Westminster to its foundations the Daily Telegraph has been able to set the news agenda, releasing its revelations ahead of the 10pm news bulletins. The daily diet of scoops is said to have boosted newspaper sales by tens of thousands and web traffic has also increased and no doubt will, in financial terms at least, justify the cost of obtaining the information. But what does the expenses scandal tell us about journalism today? link

On the panel we have Andrew Pierce, assistant editor at The Daily Telegraph, Stephen Tall, editor at large with the Liberal Democrat Voice, the journalist Heather Brooke, author of ‘Your Right to Know’  and Frontline favourte Roger Alton, the editor of The Independent.