Chris Rogers BAFTA Award-Winning Journalist Emmy-Nominated Investigative Reporter Former Senior Producer, Director - Longform Investigations, Senior Presenter, BBC Former Executive Producer and Programme Editor, Sky News Co-Founder, Fresh Start Media
Sustainable Development Goal 16 – Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions Changemaker for Truth, Accountability, and Human Rights (Global)
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For Chris Rogers, journalism is not just about reporting events—it is about speaking truth to power, exposing injustice, and giving voice to the voiceless. A BAFTA award-winning, multi-award-winning investigative journalist, documentary maker, and Executive Producer with over 25 years of frontline experience, Chris has built a career that redefines the role of media as a driver of accountability and systemic change. His body of work—spanning the BBC, Sky News, ITV, Fresh Start Media, and independent platforms—has not only generated global headlines but has ignited debates, influenced policy, and exposed human rights abuses on a scale few journalists achieve.
Chris’s career began with a meteoric rise at the BBC, where at just 19 he became the youngest-ever presenter of the daily children’s news programme Newsround. From there, he quickly transitioned into frontline reporting, serving as a presenter and Senior Correspondent for Sky News, ITV News, and later BBC News. Covering conflicts, crises, and corruption across the world, he earned a reputation for fearless reporting combined with a compassionate lens that placed humanity at the heart of every story.
As a producer and presenter for flagship programmes such as BBC Panorama, Newsnight, Our World, and ITV Tonight, Chris specialized in undercover investigations that exposed some of the darkest realities of our time. His groundbreaking exposés of Romanian and Turkish orphanages revealed systemic neglect and abuse, prompting European Union investigations and sparking international outrage. In one of his most high-profile projects, he led the undercover documentary Duchess and Daughters The Secret Mission, taking Sarah, Duchess of York, and her daughters inside orphanages to witness the appalling conditions firsthand. The film created diplomatic shockwaves, but more importantly, it forced global attention onto children who had been abandoned and forgotten. His subsequent book, Undercover, chronicled these investigations and became a top-ten Amazon bestseller despite facing state-backed legal opposition.
Chris’s investigative lens has not stopped there. From exposing the illegal trade in children and the plight of Palestinian child soldiers, to uncovering gang violence in London and corruption in global institutions, his films consistently reveal uncomfortable truths while demanding justice. His reporting has won some of the industry’s highest honors a Royal Television Society Award for TV Journalist of the Year, an Amnesty International Media Award.
00:00Hello, my name is Chris Rogers and I've spent my entire career as a journalist exposing the truth,
00:08trying to get people to talk, take notice, debate and change the world we live in because of the
00:16things I expose. So I suppose, really, in a nutshell, I'm an investigative journalist
00:23and at times I've taken a huge amount of risk to my own safety and my team's safety to expose the
00:32truth because we live in a world where journalists are shot dead, tortured and imprisoned for trying
00:41to tell the truth. I'll be posing as a buyer for a UK brothel. This girl is for sale for good.
00:48You are witnessing the purchase of a Romanian sex slave. We're offered moniker, believed to be just
00:5514 years old. How much you paid for one girl for six months? How much you earned for six months for one girl?
01:04Four thousand. Four thousand. One girl. This is wild and this is captive Kofi Luwak. Civic caps, caged for coffee.
01:15It's just become terrifyingly clear to all of us that we have hit a raw nerve.
01:23Our driver claims he's been threatened by two men, one with a gun. We've only been here half an hour and
01:29it's absolutely unbearable. Imagine being here for a month like Osama has.
01:34At this prison, teenage boys are locked up with sexual offenders. One giggled as he told us he had a
01:40special relationship with the boys. They call him the miracle child. A machete was sliced through
01:47Alan's head and neck in an attempt to behead him. The men Alan claims kidnapped him for sacrifice live
01:54in this village. They were arrested and released without charge. Awali sacrificed a goat to bring
02:00luck to the business. A few days later, we were invited back to his shrine to discuss what he says
02:06is the most powerful spell, the sacrifice of a child.
02:11Who is a boy?
02:16The whole head gets a scum of the devil. That's his genitals.
02:22You pay for as long as you want me, she says. You mainly find child prostitutes on the streets.
02:29They tend to look after each other, sisters or cousins, even their mothers watching over them.
02:34There are child transvestite prostitutes too. Do you think you'll ever stop doing this?
02:39Do you ever see yourself not working on the streets?
02:42I was about to witness a battle of stones against bullets.
02:52It was a blatant attempt to injure us, to stop the filming, and then we realised why.
02:57Determined to carry on, we captured the use of live ammunition.
03:00Despite the obvious dangers, I headed to an Al-Aqsa den to demand answers.
03:07Al-Aqsa is so determined to deny its use of children, one of its leaders agreed to come
03:12out of hiding to speak to me.
03:14They're illegal, in Britain, and desperate to return home.
03:18They pay human traffickers thousands of dollars to smuggle them from India to the UK.
03:23And when they arrive, this is what they get.
03:26In the world that we live in today, I don't think I am an icon of change.
03:42You are.
03:43We all are.
03:45To a huge degree.
03:46I had an editor-in-chief who I didn't like much, but there was something he said to me
03:54that I've never forgotten.
03:56He said, it is our role as a journalist to expose the truth.
04:01If that leads to change, that is just a glorious side effect.
04:06And he's right about that.
04:09Liberty means that we as journalists have the right to seek the truth and expose it,
04:18no matter how uncomfortable that may be for some people.
04:23Foreign journalists are all but banned from North Korea.
04:26Quite what I'm going to be able to film and how much we're going to see is anyone's guess.
04:30So those songs you're singing when you're marching, is that patriotism, that's all about
04:39the good of our country and...
04:42Constant monitoring by government minders is becoming wary.
04:50It seems like anyone's a target, if you're not one of them.
04:59What went on here, had only seen in films about the Second World War.
05:07So we're meeting a trainer of the use of knives.
05:13What makes them dangerous is never any of their extreme right-wing views, but they're clearly
05:18ready for violence.
05:19Bloody hell, we're not going to get out of here.
05:22Suddenly, the metalist hooligans spotted a new target, a small group of their own supporters.
05:28They were Asian.
05:29Are the police going to help you get home safely?
05:32No, no, no, no.
05:33Police are not helpful at all.
05:35I was witnessing the creation of mentally ill and physically disabled children.
05:39This is the treatment they receive.
05:42You're looking right at it.
05:44They sit on the benches all day or just lie here on the rug.
05:48Some of them with their hands tied behind their backs to protect themselves, but also
05:52the other children.
05:53With shocking ease and speed, we meet our first child for sale.
05:57A message for my wife, yeah?
05:59We pretend to film a home video to make a record of our prize finds.
06:03The code words, if you're worried about something, you've got a headache.
06:06Headache is red alert, let's leave, let's just go.
06:09Tell me if...
06:10You're looking worried.
06:10Yeah, I know.
06:11I'm dead scared.
06:12You're not going to ring the police, are you?
06:14That works.
06:15It seems our investigation caused quite a stir, generating international news headlines
06:27and a diplomatic storm.
06:29Earlier today, our foreign secretary, David Miliband, held a joint press conference with
06:34his Turkish counterpart, and our programme dominated the agenda.
06:39There's no public interest in the name of the protecting children.
06:41There's a lot of public interest in how children are looked after in a country that wants to
06:45join the European Union.
06:46Look, you could have protected the interests of children without filming.
06:51Is Turkey protecting the interests of children?
06:54I like to think that the many investigations I've done to expose human rights abuses and
07:00child rights abuses have given those victims, those people who have been exploited or exposed
07:07to criminality and wrongdoing, a voice.
07:11And I hope their voice inspires icons of change.
07:16I would like to think that it inspires politicians to make changes, inspires an aid worker to keep
07:25working, to keep helping people.
07:27It inspires a charity and an organisation like the United Nations to keep going, to keep seeking
07:34peace and trust and justice in this world.
07:39I would like to think my work as a journalist inspires just some normal everyday person.
07:46To sit and listen and think and accept the uncomfortable truth and perhaps be inspired to live their
07:54lives differently or to do something good to help other people.
07:59There's one word missing from the UN's message this year of peace and trust.
08:06There's something far more important than peace and trust that we need.
08:11There will never be peace and trust in this world if people don't learn to forgive and to forget, to be the first person to offer that hand and shake the other person's hand and say, I forgive.
08:29I often, during bedtime stories, tell my two children, my two sons, who are six and seven, about some of the adventures daddy's been on, exposing the truth, investigating criminality and human rights abuses and child rights abuses.
08:45And I hope that my stories about my adventures and I hope that my stories about my adventures will inspire them to seek peace and trust and forgiveness and change in this world.
08:58Thank you for this award.
09:01Thank you for inspiring me to keep going, to keep working, to keep taking risks, to keep working hard, to inspire change.
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