News

This is the op-ed by Prof. Peter Greste published in The Australian this morning, to start our campaign for a Media Freedom Act.   One of the central tenets of a successful liberal democracy is press freedom. As voters, we employ our elected officials to run the government on our behalf, and as with all bosses, we have a right…

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s relationship with the press has reportedly fractured and become increasingly complex. According to The Economist, Netanyahu, once the golden boy in the eyes of Israeli media,  has created a tangled relationship and then used negative media to his advantage by “playing the victim”, including erecting a billboard of four offending journalists. Read more here.  (To read…

It has been 1,110 days since Jason Rezaian, then The Washington Post’s bureau chief in Tehran, was released from Iran’s notorious Evin prison. In that time, he has recuperated, studied at Harvard on a fellowship, restarted his life in Washington along with his wife, Yeganeh, and returned to The Post’s headquarters as an opinion writer. For more read the Washington…

Buzzfeed is laying off 15% of staff in a bid to turn a profit, reports the NYT. To support the loss making news division, Buzzfeed has introduced businesses like selling cookware at Walmart and a toy store in New York. Read more here.   Photo credit: Thomson Reuters

How free expression and freedom of the press are under attack in an era of fake news and populism with foreign correspondents Peter Greste and Salil Tripathi.

A court in Myanmar has rejected an appeal by two reporters of the Reuters news agency, sentenced to seven years in jail for breaking the country's Official Secrets Act, in a case that rallied press freedom advocates. Lawyers for Wa Lone, 32, and Kyaw Soe Oo, 28, had filed the appeal in November against their conviction, citing evidence of a police set-up and lack of proof of…

Journalists in Gambia have launched a self-regulatory body they hope will offer legitimacy, and far more freedom, to media emerging from a dictatorship that ruled the tiny West African nation for more than two decades. During the 22 years of former President Yahya Jammeh’s rule, journalists were regularly abducted, tortured and killed. The new government has vowed new freedoms after…

This week the Committee to Protect Journalists released a report that revealed that 53 journalists have died as a result of dangerous work this year. This is the rise from the 2017 figures, which totalled  47 journalist deaths related to their work. The report found that the deadliest country for journalists this year has been Afghanistan. Thirteen journalists were killed,…

Time Magazine has named a collective of journalists their 'Person of the Year' for 2019.  Honourees include murdered journalist, Jamal Khashoggi, imprisoned Reuters journalists U Wa Lone and U Kyaw Soe Oo, Maria Ressa founder of news-startup, Rappler in the Philippines and the staff of the Capital Gazette newspapers in Maryland. The magazine heralds these journalists as guardians of the truth and goes on…

An insightful article and opinion piece by the New York Times that narrates the gradual decline of media freedom in Hungary after the election of far-right prime minister, Viktor Orban. First, the article. "Hungary’s leading news website, Origo, had a juicy scoop: A top aide to the far-right prime minister, Viktor Orban, had used state money to pay for sizable but…