KUALA LUMPUR, July 22 ― In the spotlight over her reports against debt-riddled 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB), British journalist Clare Rewcastle-Brown said her detractors have painted her scarlet after she retracted a mistake once made in a Sarawak Report (SR) article.

“I made a retraction on Sarawak Report. I cocked it up and put a wrong name to a report. That was about four years ago. They still refer to it sometimes when they’re trying to have a good, old round-up about my sins,” the founder and editor of the London-based whistleblower website told Esquire Malaysia magazine in an interview published in its July edition.

Rewcastle-Brown did not elaborate on the contentious article, but played down her “little” mistake that any investigative journalist dreaded making.

“You try to get it right on the big things, but you can often get it wrong on the little things,” she was quoted saying.

“It’s also easier to make mistakes in an environment like Malaysia, where there’s so little transparency,” she added.

It was a challenge, she said, to piece together “little bits of information” because the details requested were not forthcoming.

“But touch wood, I don’t think I’ve made any clangers so far on the 1MDB story,” she told the magazine.

The Sarawak-born admitted to being hit with lawyers, hackers and radio-jamming experts sent by those in power bent on putting a stop to her campaign to unearth corrupt government dealings.

However, the editor said she had learnt about objective journalism from her stint at the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and believed her work to be unbiased.

“The key thing is to be honest. I think if you’ve seen something that’s a crime you shouldn’t just report it as if you have no opinion of it,” she was quoted saying.

Her principles as an investigative journalist was to only publish material when she has “caught somebody out doing something naughty”, adding that in the course of carrying out her job, she had a “certain amount of licence” to give the perpetrator a hard time.

“That’s the job. I’m not trying to be objective, but I’m honest about what I say, and I’m critical where I think it’s deserved,” she was quoted saying.

SR and US-based Wall Street Journal had both reported on dubious cash transfers from state-owned 1MDB funds to personal bank accounts of Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak, allegations which are being investigated currently by a multi-agency government task force.