The Ferret: pizza, optimism and truth

Ten years ago a small group of us sat round my kitchen table in Edinburgh eating carrot sticks and pizza. We had an idea, and we were trying to work out how to make it a reality.

The idea was to create something that would help stem the decline in investigative journalism. A new online publication that would hold power to account, whoever wields it, without fear or favour, underpinned by an enduring belief in truth, honesty and transparency.

Those were the heady days in the wake of the Scottish independence referendum in 2014, and we were full of optimism. I burnt the pizza, while the talented and experienced journalists round the table gradually gave birth to The Ferret.

The founding statement we drafted in 2015 said that “without serious, fact-based journalism in pursuit of the public interest and beholden to no-one, Scotland would be a smaller place.”

We promised that The Ferret would not be owned by some distant corporation. “It will be owned by its members and run as a not-for-profit operation in Scotland,” we said.

“It will not be aligned with any political party or any vested interest. It will be utterly transparent and totally accountable in all it does.”

We also aimed “not to be dour”, and to listen to our readers, who would all have a say in what we did. We became a multi-stakeholder co-operative, registered with the UK Government’s Financial Conduct Authority.

We designed logos, launched our first crowdfunder, applied for grants and asked people to join us as members. We relied heavily on sweat equity, opted to be independently regulated by Impress, and gradually grew.

In 2017 we launched the Ferret Fact Service, the first in Scotland to be internationally accredited. Since then we have rigorously checked more than 500 facts from politicians and others, finding some to be false, some true and many somewhere in between.

Our first major investigation was into fracking for underground gas. Remember that? We exposed the pollution and risks, and helped ensure that it was ruled out by the Scottish Government in 2019.

Over the years since we have investigated many other important areas of Scottish life, including human rights, the arms trade, housing, homelessness, asylum seekers, drug deaths, the health service, land ownership, political lobbying, dark money, fossil fuel pollution, the far right, fish farming, animal welfare and much else.

With the help of our readers and funders, we have conducted major investigations into who runs Scotland, private finance, marine pollution and climate change. We have worked with most other major media outlets to co-publish stories, and increase their impact.

In all, we have published more than 2,600 stories, have more than 2,500 members and an annual turnover of over £300,000. We employ nine people, either full or part-time, and reach over half a million readers every year.

We have produced podcasts, won a series of media awards, and successfully acquired many big and small grants. We have held many meetings for members and the public, including one with the actor, Michael Sheen.

We have often influenced public policy. Our reporting in 2018 caused the then first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, to pull out of a conference featuring the US rightwing influencer and one-time Trump supporter, Steve Bannon.

In 2023 the environmental campaigner, Greta Thunberg, withdrew from an event at the Edinburgh International Book Festival because it was sponsored by Baillie Gifford, which invested in the oil and gas industry. Protest erupted, and Baillie Gifford subsequently stopped sponsoring book festivals.

Along the way we have inevitably had our fair share of caricatures. We’ve been compared to Gradgrind, the harsh and fact-obsessed school master in Charles Dickens’s Hard Times. We’ve also, bizarrely, been likened to “a self-important pub singer who, despite it being busy, insists on playing Ralph McTell songs all night.”

Like many journalists, we take a perverse pride in annoying the powerful, especially the corrupt, comfortable, complacent and coddled. That means, though, that we have also received a series of legal threats, a few of them potentially threatening our existence.

Of course we haven’t got everything right. We’re not diverse enough. We’ve had to learn how to become a business, strangely the collective noun for ferrets. We’ve had to make corrections, and even withdraw a few stories as a result of complaints.

This is all rightly part of what we do, and how we develop. We always endeavour to act with integrity, and when we make mistakes, we learn from them, and move on. Mostly, though, we’ve got it right.

For all this, we depend crucially on our members and readers, for whom we exist. Without their backing and subscriptions, we wouldn’t be able to function. We have to work hard to earn the income we need to keep us going – and we need to keep going.

Much has changed since 2015, in Scotland, the UK and the world. Some of those gathered round my kitchen table have moved on to other, great, things. Some are still around, with one even deciding to acquire two pet ferrets.

New and gifted people have joined us, believing in the vital role of independent journalism in a free and democratic society. Without doubt, The Ferret now has one of the best teams in the Scottish media.

Scotland feels like a different place from a decade ago, with a declining legacy media, a growing distrust of government and increasing uncertainties about the future. Globally, there is much to fear, as truth retreats, tyranny advances and murderous wars intensify.

Never, in our small part of the world, has it been more important to fight for the truth by uncovering secrets and exposing wrong-doing. With your help, that is what we are here for – and what we’ll keep doing for decades to come.

Cover image of a ferret thanks to iStock/MaaraJuberte.