David Mcknight is a well-known journalist, writer and academic. An Honorary Associate Professor at the University of New South Wales, in Sydney, Australia, his books include, Rupert Murdoch: an investigation of political power (published in the UK as Murdoch's Politics), as well as Big Coal (co-author) and Beyond Right and Left which discusses renewal of the progressive political vision.

He has also written on political surveillance during the cold war in Australia Spies and their Secrets and on Soviet intelligence in Espionage and the Roots of the Cold War.