DARLINGTON, England (AP) – British journalist Julia Breen’s scoop about racism at her local police force didn’t just get her on the front page, it got her put under surveillance.
In the months that followed Breen’s exclusive, investigators logged her calls, those of her colleague Graeme Hetherington and even their small newspaper’s busy switchboard in an effort to unmask their sources. The two were stunned when they eventually discovered the scale of the spying.
“It just never even crossed our minds,” Breen said in a recent interview in the newsroom of The Northern Echo, in the English market town of Darlington. “I don’t know if I was quite naive, but on a regional newspaper you don’t expect your local police force to do this.”
The Echo’s editor, Andy Richardson, said his small paper’s brush with police spying carries a warning as surveillance laws stiffen up and down the continent .
“This case might be about a relatively obscure newspaper in the northeast of England, but it asks much bigger questions about where we’re headed as democratic societies all across Europe,” Richardson said.