Journalist and documentary film-maker whose investigations brought him into conflict with police and government
The Scottish documentary film-maker Brian Barr, who has died aged 70 from cancer, was one of those journalists for whom integrity was more important than self-promotion or material reward. In 1986, Brian helped reveal one of Britain's greatest postwar security scandals, when he and the investigative journalist Duncan Campbell exposed the existence of a £500m spy satellite which the government had somehow omitted to mention to parliament – Project Zircon. Working on a tipoff, they confirmed the existence of the project by putting a surprise question, during a filmed interview, to a visibly shocked government scientist, Professor Sir Ronald Mason.
Afterwards, special branch officers raided the Glasgow headquarters of BBC Scotland in the middle of the night and seized all film related to the programme, which had been made for the Secret Society series. This ignited one of the...
The Scottish documentary film-maker Brian Barr, who has died aged 70 from cancer, was one of those journalists for whom integrity was more important than self-promotion or material reward. In 1986, Brian helped reveal one of Britain's greatest postwar security scandals, when he and the investigative journalist Duncan Campbell exposed the existence of a £500m spy satellite which the government had somehow omitted to mention to parliament – Project Zircon. Working on a tipoff, they confirmed the existence of the project by putting a surprise question, during a filmed interview, to a visibly shocked government scientist, Professor Sir Ronald Mason.
Afterwards, special branch officers raided the Glasgow headquarters of BBC Scotland in the middle of the night and seized all film related to the programme, which had been made for the Secret Society series. This ignited one of the...
- 11/12/2013
- by Iain Macwhirter
- The Guardian - Film News
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