BBC Panorama
Hannah O’Grady, Joel Gunter, Rory Tinman, Richard Bilton, Andrew Head, BBC
Hannah O’Grady has worked as an investigative journalist with BBC Panorama for more than a decade – responsible for exposing the retailers exploiting Syrian children to produce clothes for the British high street, evidence that British American Tobacco negotiated a bribe for Mugabe and revealing the corporate manslaughter case against one of the Grenfell manufacturers. She has led the BBC’s investigation into SAS killings since 2018, uncovered highly classified operations resulting in the fatal shootings of children, previously unknown to the public. Travelling to Iraq and Afghanistan, she was able to track down the sites of such killings, as well as convincing members of UK Special Forces to speak. Hannah has unearthed secret military documents and gathered “compelling” evidence never-before brought to light. Reporting which has resulted in a public inquiry, the quizzing of ministers, criminal investigations, and interventions by the International Criminal Court.
The shortlisted pieces were:
- Panorama – Special Forces: I Saw War Crimes
- Ex-UK Special Forces break silence on ‘war crimes’ by colleagues
- Top UK Special Forces general oversaw blocking of Afghan ‘war-crime’ witnesses to Britain
- Special Forces officer blocked 1,585 Afghans from UK
The Panorama investigations show a willingness to examine the conduct of powerful institutions even where doing so may be professionally risky, politically controversial, or emotionally difficult. The persistence in investigation and reporting — the slow accumulation of evidence over several years, the securing of insider testimony, and the insistence that allegations of unlawful killing deserve democratic scrutiny regardless of the status of those accused is journalism that combines courage, discipline and public-interest reporting and is deeply aligned with the Orwell tradition and core Orwell Prize values.
– Sayeeda Warsi, Judge, The Orwell Prize for Journalism 2026
