Joanne McCarthy
The Newcastle Herald
“Journalism is an essential part of democracy … you take on power. The whole point of journalism was to take on power for the right reasons. ”
Joanne McCarthy first exposed child sexual abuse by Catholic clergy in 2006 and spent the next 14 years uncovering more perpetrators and the concealment of the abuse by church officials. She wrote more than 1000 articles that helped trigger a royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse. She won a Gold Walkley, Gold Kennedy and the Graham Perkin Australian Journalist of the Year award.
Career Timeline
1965: Fowler leaves college and is offered a cadetship with the Mid-Sussex Times in Haywards Heath, Sussex. He begins by reporting general news then specialises in sport.
1968-1972: Fowler joins Brighton Evening Argus newspaper as a general reporter. He then reports in turn for the Oldham Evening Chronical, Coventry Evening Chronicle and the Luton Evening Post.
1973: Fowler joins the London Evening News, covering police, major crime and terrorism related events, including IRA attacks in central London.
1976: He emigrates to Australia and works casual shifts in Sydney on the Daily Mirror and the Daily Telegraph.
1977: Joins The Australian as a senior reporter.
1978: He is appointed The Australian’s Chief of Staff and later becomes acting Foreign Editor.
1981: Fowler moves to Channel 7 conducting live interviews on the 11AM program and undertaking major investigations.
1985: On SBS’s Dateline program where he is now employed he travels the world reporting from countries including Panama, Greece, France, the Philippines, South Korea, Japan, Iran and the former Soviet Union.
1988: Fowler moves to the short-lived upmarket Channel Ten documentary program Page One as a producer.
1989: Page One ends. He returns to London looking for work. He is offered a job as a reporter but decides to return to Australia after gaining a position as a reporter-producer on the ABC’s new start-up program Lateline.
1995: Joins Four Corners as a producer and then switches to reporting, covering a wide range of investigations, including ‘Party Tricks’ into a covert Liberal Party operation against former Labor Prime Minister Paul Keating.
2003: He heads up the ABC Investigations Unit. Its stories are broadcast on Four Corners, Foreign Correspondent and ABC Radio. Most notably AF 447: which exposed evidence why an Air France passenger plane crashed in the Atlantic killing all on board; and Truth or Dare: the inside story of the rise of WikiLeaks.
2009-2013: Fowler returns exclusively to Four Corners covering a wide range of stories including Sex, Lies and Assange which reveals the dirty tricks used by the US to trap Julian Assange; Flying Blind, revealing problems with the troubled US F35 military aircraft; Taxing Times in Timor on East Timor’s battle with an energy giant; and Hack Attack showing how the blueprints for ASIO’s new building were stolen. In 2011 his first book is published: ‘The Most Dangerous Man in the World: the inside story on Julian Assange and Wikileaks Secrets’. He leaves the ABC in 2013.
2015: ‘The War on Journalism: Media Moguls, Whistleblowers and the Price of Freedom’ is published.
2018: ‘Shooting the Messenger: Criminalising Journalism’, is published
2021: Contributes to the ‘Journalism Ethics Handbook’.
2024: ‘Nuked: The Submarine Fiasco that Sank Australia’s Sovereignty’ is published.
2025: ‘The Most Dangerous Man in the World: Julian Assange and his secret White House deal for Freedom’ is published (the book’s fifth update/reprint).
‘Nuked’ is published in French under the title : ‘Atomisé : Comment les États-Unis ont fait sombrer la souveraineté australienne…et un contact stratégique avec la France’ (La Route de la Soie -Éditions, Paris 2025)
Awards
1983: UN Peace Prize. Penguin Award by Television Society of Australia for excellence in broadcasting.
2002: Logie award. Walkley finalist. Human Rights Commission Award.
2010: Gold World Medal New York Festivals.
2015: Walkley Book Award finalist, ‘The War on Journalism: Media Moguls, Whistleblowers and the Price of Freedom’ (Random House).
2024: Walkley Book Award winner, ‘Nuked: The Submarine Fiasco that Sank Australia's Sovereignty’ (Melbourne University Press).
2025: Australian Political Book of the Year, shortlisted for ‘Nuked’..
Books
The Most Dangerous Man in the World: Julian Assange and the inside story on WikiLeaks (Melbourne University Press, 2011, 2012).
The War on Journalism: Media Moguls, Whistleblowers and the Price of Freedom (Random House, 2015).
Shooting the Messenger: Criminalising Journalism (Routledge UK).
A Secret Australia (Monash University Publishing, 2020) as contributor.
The Most Dangerous Man in the World: Julian Assange and his Fight for Freedom (Melbourne University Press, 2020).
Journalism Ethics Handbook (Springer, 2021) as contributor.
Nuked: The Submarine Fiasco that Sank Australia’s Sovereignty (Melbourne University Press, 2024)
The Most Dangerous Man in the World: Julian Assange and his Secret White House Deal for Freedom (Melbourne University Press, 2025).