Lucy Johnston

Last updated

Contents

Lucy Johnston
Born1969
NationalityBritish
OccupationJournalist
Years activeSince 1992
EmployerThe Sunday Express
Known forInvestigative journalism, part of the original editorial team of The Big Issue
Awards Genesis Award, 2001

Lucy Johnston (born 1969) is a British journalist, currently health editor of the Sunday Express , and previously a staff reporter and investigative journalist for The Observer .

Johnston was a member of the original editorial team of The Big Issue in 1992. She has become known for her investigative articles on London's drug culture, deaths in police custody, animal research, and the pharmaceutical industry, and for her campaigns to improve healthcare provision to the elderly and mentally ill.

Education and career

Johnston was educated at Culford School in Bury St Edmunds. She moved to London in 1992 to work as a volunteer for The Big Issue, becoming a reporter with the newspaper's original editorial team, before working her way up to news editor, then assistant editor. She was known from then until 1996 for several investigative pieces, including on deaths in police custody and street drugs in London. [1]

Tessa Swithinbank writes that Johnston was headhunted by The Observer in 1996 as a result of her ability to work with the kinds of sources few journalists were able to access. [1] After several years with The Observer as a staff reporter, she joined the Sunday Express investigations team in 2001, later becoming health editor. She has conducted undercover investigations for the newspaper, including one in 2001 where she took a job as a care assistant in Lynde House, a nursing home owned by Westminster Health Care, which was headed by Chai Patel. Her story was highly critical of the treatment the elderly residents were receiving; Patel, at the time a government adviser on care of the elderly, later sold the company and resigned from his government post. [2] She has also campaigned in the Express to highlight the treatment of people with mental-health problems, and has written articles opposing the requirement that pensioners pay for medical treatment while in nursing homes. [3]

Reception

Johnston won a commendation in 1998 from the Natali Prize for Journalism, awarded by the International Federation of Journalists, for "Barred from animals' kingdom," an article in The Observer on the conflict over land rights in northern Tanzania between the Maasai people and the establishment of the Mkomazi National Park, a conservation area for animals. [4]

In 2001 she and a colleague, Jonathan Calvert, won a Genesis Award from the Humane Society of the United States for a Daily Express article, "Terrible despair of animals cut up in name of research," on xenotransplantation experiments conducted by Imutran and Huntingdon Life Sciences. [5] Johnston was shortlisted that year for a "Journalist of the Year" award by Mind, the mental-health charity, and in 2012 the Sunday Express won Mind's "Making a difference award" for its "Crusade for Better Mental Health" campaign, with the work of Johnston and a colleague, Ted Jeory, highlighted in the citation. [6]

An article by Johnston in the Sunday Express that was critical of the cervical cancer vaccine, Cervarix, was the subject of a complaint to the Press Complaints Commission in 2009. The newspaper published a correction and apology. [7]

Selected works

See also

Related Research Articles

Animal hoarding

Animal hoarding, sometimes called Noah syndrome, is keeping a higher-than-usual number of animals as domestic pets without ability to properly house or care for them, while at the same time denying this inability. Compulsive hoarding can be characterized as a symptom of mental disorder rather than deliberate cruelty towards animals. Hoarders are deeply attached to their pets and find it extremely difficult to let the pets go. They typically cannot comprehend that they are harming their pets by failing to provide them with proper care. Hoarders tend to believe that they provide the right amount of care for them. The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals provides a "Hoarding Prevention Team", which works with hoarders to help them attain a manageable and healthy number of pets.

Institute of Mental Health (Singapore) Hospital in Buangkok Green Medical Park, Singapore

The Institute of Mental Health, formerly known as Woodbridge Hospital, is a psychiatric hospital in Singapore. It is located on a 25-hectare campus at Buangkok Green Medical Park in the north-east of Singapore.

Barbara Keeley British Labour politician

Barbara Mary Keeley is a British Labour Party politician who has served as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Worsley and Eccles South, previously Worsley, since 2005. She was Deputy Leader of the House of Commons from 2009 to 2010 and served in Jeremy Corbyn’s Shadow Cabinet as Shadow Minister for Mental Health and Social Care from 2016 to 2020.

Mind (charity)

Mind is a mental health charity in England and Wales. Founded in 1946 as the National Association for Mental Health (NAMH), it celebrated its 70th anniversary in 2016.

Child protection Protecting children from violence, exploitation and abuse

Child protection is the safeguarding of children from violence, exploitation, abuse, and neglect. Article 19 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child provides for the protection of children in and out of the home. One of the ways to ensure this is by giving them quality education, the fourth of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, in addition to other child protection systems.

The British Press Awards is an annual ceremony that has celebrated the best of British journalism since the 1970s. A financially lucrative part of the Press Gazette's business, they have been described as "the Oscars of British journalism", or less flatteringly, "The Hackademy Awards".

Movement for the Intellectually Disabled of Singapore Singapore voluntary welfare organisation

Movement for the Intellectually Disabled of Singapore (MINDS) is a voluntary welfare organisation based in Singapore, that provides services for the intellectually disabled. They run four special schools and a centre called MINDSville@Napiri which offers therapy and residential care. Other MINDS services include sheltered workshops, social enterprises, and day activity centre. Founded in 1962, MINDS is among the largest charities in Singapore, with over 600 staff and 2400 beneficiaries. MINDS generates yearly expenses of 21 million Singapore dollars, as of 2005. Two other organisations, the Association for Persons with Special Needs and Metta School were formed as an offshoot of MINDS.

Marjorie Wallace (SANE)

Marjorie Shiona Wallace, Countess Scarbek, CBE FRCPsych is a British investigative journalist, author, and broadcaster. She is also the Founder and Chief Executive of mental health charity SANE.

Bill Lichtenstein

Bill Lichtenstein is an American print and broadcast journalist and documentary producer, president of the media production company, Lichtenstein Creative Media, Incorporated.

Lucy Goodison is a writer who has combined work as an archaeologist of the prehistoric Aegean with involvement in the practice and teaching of body psychotherapy and engagement with issues of social justice. She has focused on actively challenging the mind/body split and bridging the divide between thinking and feeling that is basic to the western world view. Her books include: Death, Women and the Sun: Symbolism of Regeneration in Early Aegean Religion; Moving Heaven and Earth: Sexuality, Spirituality and Social Change; and Holy Trees and Other Ecological Surprises.

Daniel Louis Lyons is the chief executive officer of the Centre for Animals and Social Justice, a British animal protection charity. He is an honorary research fellow at the University of Sheffield and the author of The Politics of Animal Experimentation (2013).

This is a listing of winners from the 2001 Genesis Awards.

The Paul Foot Award is an award given for investigative or campaigning journalism, set up by The Guardian and Private Eye in memory of the journalist Paul Foot, who died in 2004.

Lisa Sharon Chedekel was an American investigative journalist.

Katie Lorna Thistleton is an English television and radio presenter, National Council for the Training of Journalists (NCTJ) qualified journalist and author, best known for her work across the CBBC channel. She presents a show on BBC Radio 1 with her co-presenter Vick Hope.

Bryony Naomi Gordon is an English journalist.

Lucy Ozarin American psychiatrist

Lucy Dorothy Ozarin was a psychiatrist who served in the United States Navy. She was one of the first women psychiatrists commissioned in the Navy, and she was one of seven female Navy psychiatrists who served during World War II.

Allan Johnston (psychiatrist) British sports psychiatrist

Dr Allan Johnston MBBS, MRCPsych, Cert.Med.Ed(IU) is a consultant psychiatrist with the National Health Service in the United Kingdom, working at Derbyshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust and a world leading Sports Psychiatrist at Spire Leeds Hospital working with professional athletes, dance artists, Premiership and Football League managers and coaches.

Mary Starke Harper was an African American nurse who worked in bedside nursing, nurse research and health policy. She spent several years working for the Department of Veterans Affairs. She performed clinical research on the geriatric psychiatric population and minority health. In 1972, Harper created the NIMH Minority Fellowship Program. She served on four presidential administration advisory panels with regards to mental health and health care reform. She died in 2006 as the recipient of several honors and author of over 180 publications.

Lucy Kocharyan Armenian journalist (born 1984)

Lucy Kocharyan is an Armenian journalist and blogger known for having taken a stand in her country against gender-based violence. She was chosen as an International Women of Courage in March 2020 by the US Secretary of State - the first Armenian to win this award.

References

  1. 1 2 Swithinbank, Tessa. Coming Up from the Streets: The Story of The Big Issue. Earthscan, 2001, pp. 51, 70, 74, 96, 258.
  2. Johnston, Lucy. "Shame care tsar to run 250 homes", Sunday Express, 31 July 2011.
  3. For example, see:
  4. "Previous Natali Prize winners" Archived 30 September 2007 at the Wayback Machine , International Federation of Journalists, 14 October 2002.
    • "'Barred from animal kingdom'", Tanzanian Affairs, 1 May 1997.
    • For an extract from Johnston's article, see Brockington, Dan. Fortress Conservation: The Preservation of the Mkomazi Game Reserve, Tanzania. Indiana University Press, 2002, p. 116.
  5. "2001 Genesis Awards", Humane Society of the United States, 2001.
  6. "Evidence that media reporting of mental health issues is improving", Mind press release, 17 May 2001.
  7. Goldacre, Ben. "Cancer jab fantasy closes down a debate", The Guardian, 10 October 2009.

Further reading