Harold Evans, a journalist of tenacity

Sir Harold Evans, whose 70-year career set the gold standard for investigative journalism, died this week at the age of 92

LONDON, ( REUTERS) - He was the icon that inspired a generation of young Britons to pick up a pen in anger inspired by his example that the relentless and carefully crafted exposure of facts could be used to fight injustice.

Harold Evans liked to quote his famous 19th Century predecessor at the Northern Echo regional paper, William Stead, who on appointment declared: "What a glorious opportunity of attacking the devil, isnt it?" Just as young American students idolised Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein and their storied role in toppling President Richard Nixon, in Britain, Harry Evans stood high in a pantheon of home-grown heroes of the late 20th Century who made us think that investigative reporting and journalistic campaigns could not only make the world better, but also be tremendous fun.

For Evans was not just the champion of using journalism to set wrongs right. He was also a quintessential British editor who, for all his high- minded causes, understood that journalism was foremost not an intellectual pursuit but a craft one that demanded muscular and clear language, captivating pictures, arresting headlines, perfect layout of the newspaper page and, above all else, a strong dose of ratlike cunning.

In Margaret Thatcher's 1980's Britain, Evans was the crusading editor of the Sunday Times who made famous its Insight Team, the paper's investigative unit, established by his predecessor as a feature squad. Insight under Evans exposed Russia's

most infamous spy in Britain, Kim Philby. It challenged the official account of the 1972 Bloody Sunday killings in Northern Ireland. And it fought for years and won justice against a corporation, Distillers, on behalf of the children disabled by the company's drug, thalidomide.

Evans did not invent campaigning newspaper journalism, the practice of running a series of shocking news reports not only to expose the facts but also to push for change. Tabloids got there sooner. But honing his experience, Evans added unheard-of persistence.

Backed by benevolent owners, what made Evans special was his realisation that, boxed in by the most restrictive press laws in democratic Europe, he needed to master and confront those laws to pull off his campaigns.

As Evans said in “Attacking The Devil,” a documentary about his life and thalidomide, a reporter could not move his arm in those years without touching the walls of libel laws, contempt of court laws and the Official Secrets Acts. Britain's laws on contempt of court barred coverage of ongoing civil lawsuits, including the one brought by thalidomide families against Distillers, the manufacturer. Determined to reveal the company's role in the scandal, Evans took his case to the European Court of Human Rights. He won, forcing legal reform and enabling the UK press to cover matters in court that are in the public interest.

In Insight, Evans had established a formidable forensic machine. The object of each investigation was to find the guilty person or the guilty part. Insight did the latter in its investigation of DC-10 aircraft crashes, which were linked to a cargo door lock. The formula: relentless effort and team work, bold source cultivation, over-research of every detail, and then constant condensing of essential facts and a timeline into a state of knowledge memo.

For Evans it wasn't enough to print a story on the front page of his paper, one of the most respected broadsheets in the western world. He also wanted to make sure that every decision maker read it. That wasn't easy before social media and email. In the case of thalidomide that meant writing personal letters enclosing an article to every one of Britain's 600-plus members of parliament.

According to Elaine Potter, one of the main reporters on the story, one key to Evans was his big heart and empathy that made him approachable in the newsroom, alert to injustice in society, and passionately interested in the stories of those affected. Of all the things he did in his career, thalidomide meant the most to him. He never let go of the thalidomide story or the thalidomiders, the children who had only to ask and he would make himself available.

Though an advocate of the public interest, Evans was not a political figure; certainly, at least, not partisan. But Britain's media and political landscape, like America's, changed around him.

In 1981, the Sunday Times was purchased by Rupert Murdoch from the Thomson family, who had supported Evans and who now control the company that owns Reuters. Evans was moved by Murdoch to run the Times, the sister daily, but left within a year after a dispute over editorial control.

After that, there grew among some in Britain the suspicion that some of the Sunday Times investigations came to be driven by Murdoch's own agenda. Evans would later write that Murdoch went on to manipulate both papers for political ends; Murdoch denied this. A sense of partisanship has bedeviled British journalism ever since.

Evans set a golden standard for investigative journalism and he has been inspiring reporters for over 50 years. But more than his techniques, what shone through were his impulses, his sensibility. It was his humanity and fierce sense of injustice that drove his career.