Wendy Bacon

Wendy Bacon
Leaving court, Sydney 1972
Born	1946 (age 77–78)
Occupation	Journalist, academic
Nationality	Australian
Alma mater	University of Melbourne(BA)
Website
www.wendybacon.com

ProfessorWendy Bacon(born 1946) is an Australian academic,investigative journalist,and political activist who was head of the Journalism Program at theUniversity of Technology, Sydney.She was awarded Australian journalism's highest prize, aWalkley Awardin 1984 for her articles aboutpolice corruptioninNew South Wales.

On her own website Bacon describes her approach to journalism and political activism:

I am an investigative journalist who is also a political activist. This means that I want my journalism to be useful to those who resist abuses of power and seek social justice rather than supporting existing power structures, which is what most journalism does. My emphasis is on information that I hope will empower people to take action.

Early life and education

Bacon is the daughter of a doctor and the sister of the formerPremierof Tasmania,Jim Bacon.During her early years the family lived in the Melbourne suburb ofReservoir.Educated at thePresbyterian Ladies' College, Melbourne,she attended theUniversity of Melbournein the mid-1960s where she was active in theanti-Vietnam Warcampaigning.

In the late 1960s, Bacon attended theUniversity of New South Wales,where she was a member of the Kensington Libertarians, edited the student newspaperTharunkaand later the underground anti-censorship paperThor.She was part of the group that distributed a publication calledThe Little Red Schoolbookwhich had explicit information about sex.

When she was 23, Bacon was convicted for exhibiting an obscene publication and jailed atMulawah Women's Prisonfor 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.

Career

Bacon wrote a series of articles inThe National Timesnewspaper 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 mini-series,Blue Murder.

Bacon has worked in both print and television, working for theNine Networkon theSundayprogram and60 Minutes,The National TimesandThe Sun-Herald,andDatelineon theSpecial Broadcasting Service(SBS).

Bacon enrolled in graduate law school in 1977.Upon graduation in 1979 she applied to join theNew South Wales Bar Association,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". Justice Reynolds and two other justices of the NSW Court of Appeal found unanimously that Bacon had lied in her evidence to the court about her role in conspiring with others to illegally get a prisoner out of gaol by putting up a dummy bail surety. The court described the plan by Bacon and her cohorts as a put-up job. It was principally on the basis of this finding that the Court unanimously determined that Bacon was not a fit and proper person to be a barrister. The court case was subsequently reported in the New South Wales Law Reports: In Re B [1981] 2 NSWLR 372 and for several years was taught to law students and Bar Course students in ethics courses.

Subsequent to this she became a journalist and, during the mid-1980s, was involved in reporting the case ofHigh CourtjudgeLionel Murphy.Murphy, who was alleged by some to have connections to organised crime,was charged withperverting 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.

From 1991 to August 2012 Bacon was an academic at the University of Technology, Sydney, where she taught journalism at theAustralian Centre for Independent Journalism(ACIJ).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.Bacon also runs courses in freedom of information law forFairfax Media.

Alongside her distinguished career as a journalist and academic, she has continued an interest in anarchism, feminism and political activism.In 2016 Bacon was arrested at a protest to stop the construction of theWestConnexmotorway.

External links

• Official website
• Australian Centre for Independent Journalism