Wendy Bacon

Professor Wendy Bacon (born 1946) is an Australian academic and investigative journalist who now heads the Journalism Program at the University of Technology, Sydney. She was awarded Australian journalism's highest prize, a Walkley Award in 1984 for her articles about police corruption in New South Wales.

Wendy Bacon is the daughter of a doctor and the sister of the late former Premier of Tasmania, Jim Bacon. Educated at the Presbyterian Ladies' College, she attended the University of Melbourne in the mid-1960s where she was active in the anti-Vietnam War campaign.

Early life and education

In the late 1960s, Bacon attended the University of New South Wales, where she edited the student newspaper Tharunka. She was also part of a group that distributed a publication called the Little Red Schoolbook which had explicit information about sex.[1]

When she was 23, Bacon was convicted for exhibiting an obscene publication and jailed at Mulawah Women's Prison for eight days. Her brief experience in prison led her to later co-found the support group, Women Behind Bars, in Sydney and also exposed her to incidents of police corruption.[2]

Career

Wendy Bacon wrote a series of articles in the National Times newspaper on the attempted bribe and murder of Detective Michael Drury in the 1980s and this story formed the basis of the award-winning ABC television series, Blue Murder.[3]

Bacon has worked in both print and television, working for Nine Network's Sunday Program and for Sixty Minutes, The National Times and The Sun-Herald, and Dateline on SBS.

Bacon enrolled in graduate law school in 1977.[4] Upon graduation in 1979 she applied to join the NSW Bar,[4] but was rejected on character grounds as an unsuitable person. In his judgment, Justice Reynolds stated that the decision was "a question of whether a person who aspires to serve the law can be said to be fit to do so when it is demonstrated that in the zealous pursuit of political goals she will break the law if she regards it as impeding the success of her cause".

Subsequent to this she became a journalist and, during the mid-1980s, was involved in reporting the case of High Court judge Lionel Murphy. Murphy, who was alleged by some to have connections to organised crime,[5] was charged with perverting the course of justice, and convicted, but was acquitted after two appeals. Bacon received a Walkley award in 1984 for her exposure of official corruption in New South Wales.[6]

Since 1991, Bacon has been an academic at the University of Technology, Sydney, where she teaches journalism. She continues to write as a freelance investigative journalist, with a series of articles about one police officer's corrupt framing of his ex-wife eventually leading to the overturn of a miscarriage of justice.[7] Bacon also runs courses in freedom of information law for Fairfax Media.[8]

References

  1. ↑ James Franklin. "Corrupting the Youth: A History of Australian Philosophy". Retrieved 2010-08-30.
  2. ↑ Tracy Sorensen. "Wendy Bacon: 'a more repressive mood'". Retrieved 2010-08-30.
  3. ↑ "Trove Biography". Retrieved 2010-08-30.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 Wendy Bacon (2003-11-22). "I Fought the Law..". The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 2011-05-30.
  5. ↑ Whitton, Evan. "Can of Worms II". Networked Knowledge. Retrieved 2013-02-21.
  6. ↑ "Miles Ago". Retrieved August 30, 2010.
  7. ↑ Bacon, Wendy (2010-07-24). "Roseanne Catt ordered to pay former husband". The Sydney Morning Herald.
  8. ↑ "ACIJ". Retrieved 2010-08-30.

External links