Stephen Sackur and Carole Cadwalladr: Hard Truth

Stephen Sackur is one of the most respected and talented news reporters in the country. As the lead presenter of the BBC’s HARDtalk, he deployed a fearless, forensic style of questioning as the programme’s inquisitor-in-chief.

Now he joins one of Britain’s most distinguished investigative journalists, Carole Cadwalladr, to issue a rallying cry for the vital and continuing role of investigative journalism in holding the powerful to account.

From Daniel Ellsberg’s exposé of the US government’s Pentagon papers to Alexei Navalny’s anti-corruption fight in Russia – via Daphne Caruna, who took on systemic corruption in Malta – Stephen will highlight cases when brave journalists told truth to power, sometimes paying the ultimate price. And we’ll hear from Carole about her world-changing investigation into Cambridge Analytica: a watershed moment in the way we understand the influence of the tech elite on our politics.

In a world turned toxic by disinformation, where lies are weaponised and the truth is targeted, independent journalists are increasingly on the frontline of the fight to save democracy. Stephen and Carole are here to demonstrate that it is a fight that can still be won.

This event is presented in partnership with How To Academy and The Nerve: a fearless, female-founded media title set up by a collective of five former Guardian and Observer journalists.

Event Schedule

6:15pm: Pre-event socialising and networking
A cash bar will be available for refreshments.

6:30pm: Event begins

7:45pm: Event ends

Speakers

Stephen Sackur joined the BBC as a graduate trainee and spent many years as a foreign correspondent, covering the 1989 revolutions and the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the first Gulf War. He was based in Cairo from 1992 to 1995, and in Jerusalem from 1995 to 1997. He then moved to Washington where he covered the 2000 election. He presented HARDtalk from 2005 to the final episode in March 2025. In June 2025 Stephen joined Times Radio as a regular presenter of The Times at One.

Carole Cadwalladr is an investigative journalist who worked for two decades as a feature writer at the Guardian and the Observer. Her journalism probes the nexus of politics and Silicon Valley power; she is the author of the Substack newsletter How to Survive the Broligarchy. She is the winner of a Polk award and the Orwell prize for political journalism and she was a Pulitzer finalist for her reporting on the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica scandal. She is one of the five co-founders of the Nerve which launched in September 2025.