Gavin MacFadyen

Gavin MacFadyen
Born	Gavin Hall Galter (1940-01-01)January 1, 1940 Greeley, Colorado, U.S.
Died	October 22, 2016(2016-10-22) (aged 76) London, England
Alma mater	University of Chicago
Occupation	Investigative journalist
Spouse(s)	Virginia Daum (div.) Susan Benn (m. 2010)
Children	one son, three stepdaughters

Gavin Hall MacFadyen (né Galter; January 1, 1940 – October 22, 2016) was an American investigative journalist and documentary filmmaker. He was the Director of the Centre for Investigative Journalism (CIJ) at Goldsmiths, University of London, Co-Founder with Eileen Chubb of the UK whistleblower support group The Whistler, and a Trustee of the Courage Foundation.

In recent years, his work focused on facilitating and protecting whistleblowing activities. He was closely linked to Julian Assange, formed the official Julian Assange Defense Committee, which raises funds to pay the legal expenses of Assange and other Wikileaks staff and a director of WikiLeaks. He has appeared in a number of documentaries about Wikileaks, including We Steal Secrets and Julian Assange: A Modern Day Hero?

Early life

MacFadyen was born Gavin Hall Galter on January 1, 1940, in Greeley in Colorado, and grew up in Chicago. His mother was a pianist. He adopted the surname of his stepfather, a medical researcher. He studied at several high schools and universities before working as a union organizer with trade unions. He was jailed for participating in civil rights demonstrations. He moved to England, joined the International Socialist Organization and graduated from the London School of Film Technique (now the London Film School). He founded a documentary film group to chronicle the political turmoil in the United States during the late 1960s for the BBC. He covered the anti-Vietnam War protests, race riots and the police clash with demonstrators at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in 1968, where tens of thousands of Vietnam War protesters battle police in the streets, while the Democratic Party falled apart over an internal disagreement concerning its stance on Vietnam. He went on to report from the Nicaraguan Revolution, a war between the right-wing Contras and the Marxist Sandinista National Liberation Front in the 1980s.

Career

Filmmaking and Investigative Journalism

MacFadyen had produced and directed more than 50 documentaries since the 1970s many for Granada Television’s World In Action, investigating a diverse range of topics that includes industrial accidents, neo-Nazi violence in the UK, Chinese criminal societies, the history of the CIA, Watergate, election fraud in Guyana, the Iraq arms trade, child labour, nuclear proliferation, and Frank Sinatra's connection to organised crime. His programmes have been featured on Channel 4, the BBC, Panorama, Granada Television, ABC, and PBS Frontline.

Collaborating with Chicago director Michael Mann, he played Boreksco, a corrupt police officer, in Mann's 1981 debut feature film, Thief, and was a technical adviser to The Insider, Mann's 1999 film about Jeffrey Wigand, a researcher at the tobacco company Brown & Williamson in Louisville, Kentucky, owned by British American Tobacco, who became among the most famous corporate whistleblowers in the United States. Wigand revealed a the industry deceptions and practices of Big Tobacco that got people hooked. Wigand's decision to become a whistleblower came at great cost to his personal life, Brown & Williamson unleashed a smear campaign against him, and brought risks to his personal safety. Wigand's disclosures played a crucial role in the case brought by the states' attorneys general against the major tobacco companies, which resulted in a $246 billion settlement to offset medical costs incurred treating smoking-related illnesses, and in the decision Justice Department to seek billions of dollars in additional damages from the tobacco makers (Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement).

In April 2003 MacFadyen co-founded with Michael Gillard the Centre for Investigative Journalism (CIJ) as a non-profit organisation to address the worsening media climate for in-depth, sceptical and adversarial reporting. MacFadyen directed the organisation's International Journalism Summer Schools in 2003, 2004, and 2006. MacFadyen was a visiting Professor at Goldsmiths, University of London, and acted as a Visiting Professor at City University from 2003 to 2014 when it acted as CIJ's base.

As co-founder of The Whistler, a British organization designed to provide a legal, psychological and social support network to those in the UK brave enough to come out and blow the whistle on incompetence and crime from any sector, public or private, he helped to launch it in March 20, 2016 and was a supporter of Edna's Law. A number of international whistleblowers were in the UK and The Whistler was able to host them and hear their stories. The campaigner Eileen Chubb hosted the event and former intelligence officer for MI5 Annie Machon, former CIA analyst Ray McGovern, NSA whistleblower Tom Drake, Jesselyn Radack of the Government Accountability Project (GAP) (The Whistler's US counterpart) spoke.

MacFadyen became an early mentor and defender of WikiLeaks and friend of Julian Assange, an Australian computer programmer, who founded WikiLeaks in 2006 and published millions of secret documents, many supplied by Chelsea Manning, a US Army intelligence analyst. MacFadyen helped form the Julian Assange Defense Committee along with his wife Susan Benn and the journalist John Pilger.

Grants and other professional interests

MacFadyen co-designed the South African Power Reporting Workshops from 2005 to 2007 at Wits University in Johannesburg, and directed the New York conference on Financial and Business Investigative Journalism in 2005 at Columbia University. He has also acted as a mentor at the Fact/Fiction Workshops run by Performing Arts Labs.

He received an European Union MEDIA Programme grant in 1998 for work on a Social History website project, and was a Senior Research Fellow at Caledonian University in 2000 and at Glasgow University from 2002 to 2003.

Personal life

MacFadyen lived in the Pimlico district of London with his wife, Susan Benn. He died of lung cancer in London on October 22, 2016 at the age of 76. In addition to Susan Benn, he was survived by a son, Michael, from his first marriage, to Virginia Daum; three stepdaughters and six grandchildren. Assange's request to be allowed to temporarily leave his asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy, to attend the funeral of Gavin MacFadyen, was denied by Sweden's Attorney General Anders Perklev.

External links

• The Whistler website