AUSTRALIAN EXCLUSIVE: B&T Speaks To Cambridge Analytica Hero Carole Cadwalladr

Ahead of Australia’s own referendum on Voice To Parliament, Carole Cadwalladr (speaking at the Hay Festival) spoke exclusively to B&T’s Nancy Hromin on the importance of protecting news and holding truth to power. 

When the Cambridge Analytica scandal broke in 2018, the world finally woke up to big tech’s influence on democracy.

At the time, British journalist Carole Cadwalladr, who played a key role in exposing Facebook, was hailed as a hero, becoming a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting in 2019. 

However, five years later, Cadwalladr is still single-handedly fighting for the truth. Just last year, she had to fight a personal libel case put forward by millionaire Brexit financier Arron Banks. While the judgement came down on her side, she continues to fight ongoing appeals.

So what does she think about Australia’s attitude to big tech and the state of media right now? B&T finds out.

Nancy: In your keynote, you mentioned Australia’s world-first law (passed in 2021) that requires Google and Facebook to negotiate with news outlets to pay for their content or face arbitration. What are your thoughts on that?

Carole: You know, I’d love Britain to do the same. Because at the heart of this is the fact that an entire industry, and business model, which is news, you know, was destroyed by the internet. It is not like any other business. You can destroy other businesses, and another one grows up for consumers to choose from. But news is not a commodity, it is actually a mechanism by which we hold power to account. And without that,  we’re in really deep trouble. And I think, particularly, there’s this crisis in local news and local reporting.  The model was ads in the back of the paper classified ads, which paid for the journalists to go to the local council meeting and to report on what was happening. This doesn’t exist anymore.

Nancy: You shine a light where we haven’t really, as a general population, thought of these things and their consequences…..

Carole: You know, even the fact of having a journalist in the local council meeting makes a difference. There’s scrutiny and you can’t get away with shit. It’s just a massive democratic deficit, which is happening in countries all over the world. There’s a really interesting example in Britain if you think about the Grenfell Tower, [which was the high-rise apartment block that burned down killing more than 70]. The residents had been trying for several years to draw attention to the unsafe conditions, the cladding, the problem in the corridors, and Kensington, which is a borough of London, but actually, it’s the size of a small town, no longer has a local paper. Once there were two local papers in Kensington alone, and a dozen or more journalists, which were all reporting on these local issues. And now there is nobody covering those local issues so the residents weren’t able to draw attention to it. There was a realisation after this tragedy that the loss of life was entirely preventable.

Nancy:  In Australia, we watched your investigative reporting closely and felt it was incredibly brave. How did you come to do something so high-profile and risky?

Carole: What happened in 2016, which was these two elections (Brexit and the Trump elections) and then suddenly discovering that there was a link between them with this data firm. And, like, they were really shady, and had done something in these two elections, and so it was just going down that rabbit hole. The investigation did show that there were multiple laws broken, which had happened during the Brexit referendum, multiple irregularities and sorts of illicit and illegal behaviour. And you know, in a referendum, which is a sort of once-in-a-lifetime vote, it all just hangs on very small margins.

Nancy: This story is very relevant because Australia is about to have a referendum, – a voice to Parliament- what’s your advice to media in Australia and how the coverage for this referendum should be done?

Carole:  I do think referendums are probably particularly vulnerable. It’s outside the normal and party politics is more open. What we found in Britain was everything was thrown at it. And actually, it was the legislation that was built like an old-school gentleman’s agreement. You just had to file a return after the votes to say what you spent. So the whole thing was based on trust. The only penalty was going to be a fine, so there was a massive upside and almost no downside to doing shady and illicit stuff for the Brexit Referendum.

Nancy: What motivates you to keep going?

Carole: I was just very motivated because we had a three-year period in Britain between the referendum and changing of the legislation and leaving Europe. During that three-year period was when I discovered all sorts of illegal behaviour in the vote so I was just very motivated to try and make people aware of that, and to tell the story about what had happened, and to really raise the alarm on Facebook. I was continuing to do that right up to the US election because it was sort of obvious that Trump was going to use Facebook again to try and subvert the election, which he did. I acted with a sort of urgency during that time about this technology. Of course, now I’ve had this lawsuit to deal with, which has made it very very difficult for me. And I have had to withdraw now a bit from the public. I had to fundraise to cover my legal expenses because I was being sued personally, not under the Guardian or the Ted Talk brand.

Nancy: You tell a very compelling story about your Welsh family.

Carole: I’ve got cousins who live in Swansea, quite a working-class Welsh town They were really passionate labour voters, left-wing, hated the Tories. And they voted for Brexit. It just baffled me because Swansea receives so much money from the EU. They are the people that benefit the most. My cousin wouldn’t even talk to me about it, he was so pro-Brexit and now that all the facilities have closed, including the brand new Olympic Pool funded by the EU. Now they are saying: ‘Oh but we didn’t want to lose the pool.’

This interview took place at the Hay Festival Cartagena in Colombia.