The BBC recently announced plans to launch a new organisation to fund local journalism in Britain. Here are some facts about it: The new not-for-profit, set up in conjunction with Google and Facebook, is to be called the Local Democracy Foundation with a remit to report on council meetings, crime, and other local news. Google and Facebook’s financial backing of the…
The head of the United Nations has called on governments and the international community to protect journalists and media workers at a time when attacks on the media have become “the new normal”. Secretary-General António Guterres issued the call to action in a speech to the Association of United Nations Correspondents. In just over a decade, more than a thousand…
In a scene right out of a thriller, agents from the Filipino National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) raided journalist and editor Maria Ressa’s Manila office at 5pm on Wednesday February 13, after most courts had closed. They took her from the Rappler newsroom where she is editor, to a police watch house and threw her in a cell. Ressa’s lawyer…
Maria Ressa, award winning journalist and CEO of Rappler has been arrested in the Philippines, under the accusation of “cyber libel”. Shortly after receiving the arrest warrant, she told CNN reporters “the rule of law has been broken to the point that I can’t see it.” The grounds for arrest are blurred and the arrest warrant was issued too late…
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…