Latest news with #PeterGreste
ABC News
3 days ago
- Politics
- ABC News
The dealiest conflict ever for journalists
More journalists have been killed in Gaza, adding to the highest ever media death toll recorded. Why are journalists being killed in such high numbers and are conflict zones like Gaza and Sudan becoming black holes for news coverage? Former foreign correspondent Peter Greste is adamant that foreign correspondents are necessary, but we're fighting a losing battle. New "Post and Boast" legislation has got journalists and lawyers in Western Australia worried. The State Government has been debating new law this week which could have a profound effect on freedom of speech. SBS Managing Director James Taylor has announced he will step down from his role this year in order to head up Ooh Media. it leaves SBS without a chairperson or clear MD at the same time. And Netflix is getting more expensive, again! Can the streamer justify $28.99 a month to content hungry viewers? Guest: Professor Peter Greste, Executive Director of the Alliance for Journalists' Freedom, Professor at the University of Queensland and former correspondent for Al Jazeera in the Middle East
ABC News
5 days ago
- Politics
- ABC News
Peter Greste on Israel's strike on journalists
Sam Hawley: Earlier this week, five Al Jazeera journalists were killed in an Israeli strike in Gaza. Israel confirmed it had targeted one of the men it says was the head of a Hamas terrorist cell. His employer denies that. So who's telling the truth? Today, former Al Jazeera journalist and executive director of the Alliance for Journalists' Freedom, Peter Greste, on the problems that arise when foreign reporters are blocked from covering a war. I'm Sam Hawley on Gadigal land in Sydney. This is ABC News Daily. News report: This is Al Jazeera breaking news just coming out. Sad breaking news out of Gaza where Al Jazeera journalist Anas al-Sharif has just been killed in what appears to be a targeted Israeli strike. Anas was killed after a tent for journalists was hit outside the main gate of the hospital. The 28-year-old was a key source of news from Gaza City and the north for international audiences since Israel's war on the strip began some 22 months ago. Sam Hawley: Peter, in Gaza on Monday, there was a funeral procession for five of them was Anas al-Sharif. Just tell me about him. Who was he? Peter Greste: Anas was one of the most prominent, most recognisable Palestinian journalists and videographers. He was working for Al Jazeera Arabic. He was a 28-year-old journalist, married, he had two kids. He was part of a Reuters team that won a Pulitzer Prize for breaking news photography. Clearly someone who had a very high profile, but he was also accused by the Israelis of being associated with Hamas. News report: Israel says it deliberately targeted their tent and have accused one of the correspondents, Anas al-Sharif, of belonging to Hamas. The UN, the Al Jazeera network and the Committee to Protect Journalists have condemned the attack and rejected the accusation, saying there is no credible evidence of this. Sam Hawley: Yeah, the Israeli military says that Anas al-Sharif was a Hamas operative who'd previously actually launched rockets at Israel. That's their claim. Peter Greste: That is their claim. We haven't seen any evidence to substantiate that. The Israelis have shown documents that claim to show some kind of connection between Anas and Hamas. Those documents certainly don't support the claim that he was an active member of Hamas. But there are a couple of points I think I really need to make. The first is that any journalist working in a place like Gaza is going to have a relationship with the power that controls a region like that. You can't avoid it. I mean, you're going to have their numbers in your contacts books, you're going to have a record of phone calls to them, of communications with them, you're going to have meetings with them. And particularly when they are the power that controls movement in a place like Gaza. So you're inevitably going to have to have a close working relationship with them. That doesn't make you an active member. And we haven't seen any evidence from the Israelis that he was actively involved in terrorist operations. It seems highly circumstantial at best. And even if he was in some way involved with Hamas, that is not the justification for a bombing, a targeted killing like this. Sam Hawley: He'd even written Anas his own obituary, his own will, I suppose, if you like, fearing that he would be killed, didn't he? Peter Greste: Yes, he did. And that was after the Israeli authorities had already accused him of being associated with Hamas. He knew that there was a very good chance that he would be targeted. It seems that he was right in that regard. I guess the thing is that whatever the Israelis say about Anas in particular, there is a really disturbing pattern of attacks, of strikes against working journalists. There have been bomb attacks on the homes of journalists. There've been attacks on journalists who've been working with clearly marked body armour and in clearly marked vehicles. The Israelis have always accused them of being involved in terrorism in some form. And we don't have any specific evidence, the Israelis have never produced any clear-cut evidence to substantiate those allegations. The Israelis, of course, always deny that they target journalists, always deny that they target civilians. But what we have is a clear pattern of circumstantial evidence that, at the very least, demands independent investigation and independent inquiry to get to the bottom of the matter, because it is very difficult from the outside to look at that circumstantial evidence and to agree that the Israelis are, in fact, simply operating to attack and kill terrorists. Sam Hawley: Well, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, in the 22 months of the war, more than 180 Palestinian journalists have actually been killed. Peter Greste: That's a huge number. And again, to be clear, the CPJ's numbers are very, very conservative. Other press freedom organisations put the number at far higher. But regardless of how you do the maths, again, it's hard to escape the conclusion that the Israelis are targeting journalists. Sam Hawley: Mm. Alright, well, Peter, of course, you worked for Al Jazeera leading up to your imprisonment in Egypt. It does so much good journalism, we know that, right around the world, but Israel accuses it of being the mouthpiece of Hamas and it actually banned the network operating in Israel last year. What do we know about the network's perspective, particularly within the Middle East? Peter Greste: Look, I've never seen anything to suggest that Al Jazeera... Certainly, while I was working with them, never saw anything to suggest that the network has a policy of supporting Hamas or Islamist organisations. But having said that, you've got to remember that any news organisation tends to view the world through the lens of the place where its headquarters is. The ABC sees and understands and interprets the world, through an Australian-centric view. The same with the BBC, the same with CNN and The New York Times. They all see the world from the perspective of the country that they're anchored in, and that is the case with Al Jazeera, which understands and interprets the world from Qatar. Now, Al Jazeera also has a really extensive network of correspondents across the Middle East, in particular. They've got very strong relationships with groups all over Gaza. And so, inevitably, it is going to be taking a view from inside Gaza. And remember, too, that if you're sitting... If you're a Palestinian, you're sitting at the sharp end of the Israeli attacks over the past couple of years, you're also going to see and report on the effects of those attacks from a position that's incredibly sympathetic to the people that you're working with. That's just a function of perspective. It does not invalidate the truth of what they're reporting. It does not make them propagandists for Hamas. It simply makes them reporters who are covering the story on the ground as they see and experience it. There are going to be critics, and Israel and a lot of Israeli supporters will accuse them of being involved in promoting Hamas propaganda. But I think that's a pretty long bow to draw, particularly when it seems as though anybody who is creating a narrative that runs counter to the Israeli view of things has been accused of being propagandists or supporters of Hamas in some way. Sam Hawley: Mm. Well, Peter, as we know, the only journalists who are able to cover the war on the ground in Gaza are Palestinian, that is, the people that are actually living there, because Israel has barred foreign journalists from entering Gaza. That helps Israel, does it, control the narrative? Is that why it does it? Peter Greste: Well, yeah. It's certainly hard to come to any other conclusion. The Israelis, as you said, have repeatedly refused to let foreign journalists in. And just to be clear, I'm one of the earliest signatories on a petition by almost 1,000 international journalists demanding access for foreign correspondents into Gaza. That's not because we want to diminish the work of the Palestinians or somehow claim that they are inherently biased. But the only way we're going to get information that people will be able to trust, that we'll be able to see as independent of either the Palestinians or Hamas or the Israelis, is if we are able to get foreign correspondents into Gaza, working independently as witnesses and reporters. Now, the Israelis, as you said, have repeatedly refused that. They say it's because they can't give security guarantees to the foreign correspondents. But it also does seem very much to be about controlling the flow of information and the reporting that comes out of there. Sam Hawley: So, without international journalists on the ground, as you say, it does allow doubts to be raised about the legitimacy of the images and the reporting that emerges from there. Peter, we saw that most recently, I guess, with this case with The New York Times, where it published a photo of an emaciated child with its mother, which Israel then claimed was fake. Just tell me about that. The New York Times did have to clarify that image. Peter Greste: That's right. They said that the image was, in fact, of a child with a pre-existing condition that was exacerbated by hunger, by starvation. And I think that underlines the central point, that it's incredibly difficult for news organisations like Al Jazeera, and The New York Times, the BBC, or even the ABC, to report accurately on what's going on there without having people on the ground who are capable of verifying and following up those sorts of images and those sorts of details. Sam Hawley: Benjamin Netanyahu this week accused the international press of having bought Hamas's propaganda hook, line and sinker. Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli Prime Minister: Everything that I told you could be verified easily, but it hasn't. And the international press has bought hook, line and sinker. Hamas statistics, Hamas claims, Hamas forgeries and Hamas photographs. Sam Hawley: I mean, he's threatening to sue The New York Times, although the paper does stick by its reporting. It does defend its reporting. Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli Prime Minister: I'm looking right now into the possibility of a governmental suit against The New York Times, because this is outrageous. It's the kind of malignant lies that were levelled at the Jewish people in the Middle Ages, we won't suffer. We won't allow it to go unchallenged. And this is the purpose of this press conference. Peter Greste: Yeah, and again, the answer would be simply just for the Israelis to allow foreign journalists into Gaza to work alongside the Palestinians to be able to report freely and unhindered. And that's the easiest way of resolving this crisis. Sam Hawley: Just tell me how it works now, though. How do media outlets like The New York Times or the ABC, for that matter, verify the images that are actually coming out from the journalists on the ground in Gaza? How can they be certain of the veracity of the information or the images that are being provided? Peter Greste: There's a whole host of tools that news organisations will use. They'll use the metadata associated with the images to confirm locations and times of particular shots. They'll also use other clues in the photographs that can confirm the time and location of the shots, position of the sun, shadows, and other details in the background of the photographs and so on. And they can generally do a pretty good job. But that kind of verification, as I said, is never going to be a substitute for being there on the ground and being able to take the photographs yourself. Sam Hawley: Well, Peter, as an international correspondent or a former correspondent, yourself, you have covered a number of conflicts. The work is vital, though, as you found, of course, when you were jailed in Egypt and at other times, it can be incredibly dangerous, can't it? Peter Greste: Yes, and I've not only been in prison myself, but I've also lost friends and colleagues in covering these kinds of conflicts. Journalists who go there know and understand the risks that they're taking. The journalists that are covering these places are highly trained, often highly experienced, and they know full well what is at stake. You've got to let the journalists themselves make informed choices about whether or not they're willing to go. And if they are willing to go, then they need to be given the freedom to do it. Sam Hawley: And history shows us how important that is, right? From Vietnam to Iraq and beyond. Peter Greste: Yeah, absolutely. And we've seen reporting change the way that governments respond to conflicts. We saw the way that the public turned against the Vietnam War over time because of the reporting. We've seen the way that the public has turned against the wars in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. That only comes from good reporting. Sometimes the governments don't always like it, but that's a part of the way that democracy works. Sam Hawley: All right. Well, Peter, as you mentioned, news organisations and journalists across the world, including the ABC, are calling on Israel to allow journalists to move in and out of Gaza to report from there. How important is that at this particular point now? Peter Greste: Look, I think it's increasingly vital. We've got claims and counterclaims about the levels of starvation and malnutrition that are taking place inside Gaza. As you've mentioned earlier, Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister, has repeatedly accused the foreign press of swallowing Hamas propaganda hook, line and sinker. The only way we can get to the truth of the matter is by having independent eyes and ears on the ground in Gaza reporting what they see is taking place. Palestinian journalists are doing incredible work, but they will always be seen as vulnerable to allegations that they are working as Hamas propagandists and not independent eyewitnesses. It's unfortunate, but foreign correspondents are the only ones capable of doing that. Sam Hawley: Peter Greste is the Executive Director of the Alliance for Journalists' Freedom and a Professor of Journalism at Macquarie University. This episode was produced by Sydney Pead. Audio production by Sam Dunn. Our supervising producer is David Coady. I'm Sam Hawley. Thanks for listening.
AU Financial Review
15-07-2025
- Politics
- AU Financial Review
What I learnt as a Jew at Al Jazeera
In the feature film The Correspondent, award-winning Australian journalist Peter Greste is portrayed by Richard Roxburgh as a reporter working for Al Jazeera in Egypt who is imprisoned for simply doing his job, for telling the news. But coverage of Al Jazeera generally omits its controversial history since it was founded in 1996 by the Qatari royal family. Al Jazeera made its reputation after the attacks of September 11, 2001, doing frontline reporting from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. But it is not an independent TV network; it is a project that serves the Qatari leadership and shapes Arab public opinion. Qatar backs the extremist Muslim brotherhood, and Al Jazeera has been banned for incitement in Arab countries including Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia.
News.com.au
12-07-2025
- Politics
- News.com.au
Aluminium foil, soap save Aussie's life in foreign prison
When a colleague died in his arms on a packed Somalian street, anyone would have forgiven award-winning journalist Peter Greste for deciding that the job of foreign correspondent – the role he'd dedicated his career to – was no longer for him. 'It actually made me more bloody-minded about it,' he told Gary Jubelin's I Catch Killers podcast this week. 'I questioned our own decision-making. I questioned the processes that we went through. But I never really questioned the value or the importance of what we were doing.' Greste and his team – including producer Kate Payton – had been covering the story of 2005 Somalia, a country that, like Afghanistan before it – was being torn apart from rival clan militias. 'We knew it was dangerous. We went in with eight armed bodyguards and a technical with a 50 caliber machine gun mounted on the back. We had battlefield first aid kits. We had battlefield body armour.' 'But at the same time, we knew that Westerners and aid workers had not been targeted for almost 10 years,' Greste continues. Greste explains that after having a few meetings inside a compound where some other journalists had been staying in Mogadishu, his team had decided to leave. 'And as we walked out, I stood on the curb of the car and Kate walked around to the street,' he recalls. 'There was a single crack. Everyone dropped to the deck.' What happened next – a blur of shouting, some gunning of engines – still didn't reveal where the shot had come from, but as there was no additional gunfire, Greste stood back up. 'I saw Kate slumped across the back of the vehicle, and I went round to her, and as I did, she put her head against my chest and I rubbed her back – just to say, 'look, it's okay, I know you've got a fright.' I didn't realise she'd been hit until my hand came up with blood.' Kate Payton was rushed to hospital and into surgery, but she never made it out. And in spite of the horrific experience and the tragic loss of his colleague Kate, Greste became even more determined to keep covering the news the world needed to hear. 'And that's the fundamental point here, Gary,' he explains, 'It's the way in which both governments and extremists have come to regard journalism as the enemy. 'They've come to regard in this battle of ideas, the people that interrogate ideas, that transmit ideas, to try to understand ideas, those are the people that they need to get rid of.' In comments that feel particularly timely given global events, Greste reiterates that the war on media is happening all over the world. 'And as I said, it's not just those extremists – governments the world over have come to use [this as a tactic].' It was a lesson Greste would relearn in the most horrific of circumstances less than a decade later. In late 2013, having been working for Al Jazeera English for two years, Greste was sent to Cairo for Christmas. His assignment – covering the unfolding political crisis in Egypt following the military's ousting of President Mohamed Morsi and the subsequent crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood. Just weeks after arriving, on December 28, 2013, Greste heard a knock at the door. 'I was about to go out for dinner with a friend of mine, a BBC correspondent who was also in town over that period, who I hadn't seen for a while and I was looking forward to catching up,' he explains. 'I was getting dressed and there was a knock on the door. I didn't think too much of it. If anyone ever wanted to speak to me, they'd use the phone, but, you know, there was a … Rather more urgent knock. Soon after that, a lot more forceful. I remember cracking the door open and as I did, it was flung open as if there was a powerful spring behind it. 'The room was filled with 10 guys, who moved with a professionalism that suggested that these guys weren't just a bunch of thugs that were raiding the room.' Greste and two Al Jazeera colleagues, Mohamed Fahmy and Baher Mohamed, were arrested. They were charged with terrorism-related offences, including 'broadcasting false news to undermine national security' and 'aiding a terrorist group'. The Egyptian authorities linked Al Jazeera's reporting to the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, effectively criminalising their journalism. And while he awaited trial, Greste kept thinking one thing: this has to be a mistake. 'It was pretty scary,' he says. 'Fahmy and I were together in the first cell, and we had the night there in that box,' continues Greste. 'It was very, very tight. We were literally like sardines. If you're lying down, you all have to roll over together. You had to lie on the same side. You had to co-ordinate movements. 'The following night was even worse. Fahmy was taken to a different prison. I was taken into this police cell. It was about eight feet square. No reading, no furniture. You know, just a leaky tap and leaky sink in one corner with a tap and a rather stinky squat toilet in the other and a door and that was it. And in that concrete box there were 16 guys. 'Some of the guys had been in that cell for the better part of six months and they were quite literally losing their minds. The kind of psychological pressure of confinement, of that type of confinement is immense. And I realised then that this was getting pretty serious.' Greste was soon moved to solitary confinement, where he was housed alongside 'several leaders of the Arab Spring uprising, the pro-democracy activists, writers, poets, activists, lawyers, trade unionists, all sorts of civil society actors,' as he describes them. 'There's no reading material. You've got to look after your own mind,' he explains. 'In the absence of anything else to do with your mind, you start to play the movie of your life on the walls of the cell. 'I remember previous relationships, previous exes that I'd let down, Kate's murder, all of that stuff was going through my mind,' he continues. And then, the impossible reality Greste feared was realised in June 2014, when he and his colleagues were convicted of charges including 'falsifying news' and 'having a negative impact on overseas perceptions of Egypt' and sentenced to seven years in prison. In the face of despair, Greste explains that there were moments of beauty as well – moments that may well have saved him. 'Sometimes the food would come wrapped in aluminium foil,' he explains. 'And I don't know if you know it, but aluminium foil has a shiny side and a matte side, and I discovered that foil actually sticks quite well to the prison walls if you smear it with soap. And so we made these big murals on the wall, which reflected the light better than we anticipated.' 'It was beautiful,' Greste continues, 'It was actually quite beautiful.' Greste would spend another seven months in jail before an intense, prolonged international campaign forced a retrial, during which Egypt's Court of Cassation overturned the initial convictions. This legal development, coupled with a new Egyptian law allowing for the deportation of foreign nationals, paved the way. Finally, on February 1, 2015, after 400 days, Greste was released via presidential decree and deported to Australia, a moment widely celebrated but tempered by the continued imprisonment of his colleagues, who were finally released in September of the same year.
The Guardian
16-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
The Correspondent review – Richard Roxburgh is excellent as jailed journalist Peter Greste
Latvian-Australian journalist Peter Greste became the story when he was arrested in Cairo in 2013 on trumped-up terrorism charges with two of his Al Jazeera colleagues. In a sham trial the following year he was found guilty and sentenced to seven years in prison, ultimately spending 400 days there. It's no spoiler to say that director Kriv Stenders' grittily immersive film about Greste's story has a happy ending – Greste was returned to Australia in 2015 and freed – capping off a tense and twitchy viewing experience, where the pressure valve is released only at the very last minute. Richard Roxburgh is in fine form as Greste, eschewing the slippery charisma he does so well (in TV shows such as Rake and Prosper) to depict the protagonist as a pragmatic but deep-thinking individual, navigating a crisis in which he's close to powerless. At one point Greste is told by a fellow prisoner that he won't survive 'unless you're able to make peace with yourself'. Lines like that can feel on the nose, but this moment registers, feeding into an important part of Greste's characterisation – as a person who responds to extreme situations partly by looking inwards, analysing himself as well as his circumstances. The Correspondent opens with Greste's editor at Al Jazeera calling him as 'things are crazy in Cairo', asking him to 'cover the desk there, just in case something breaks'. Sign up for the fun stuff with our rundown of must-reads, pop culture and tips for the weekend, every Saturday morning Early shots incorporate visions of the crisis unfolding in Egypt at the time, when the political arm of Islamist group the Muslim Brotherhood was ousted from power and their supporters took to the streets in violent protest. We briefly see Greste reporting on the street, in the thick of it all, but the script – adapted by Peter Duncan from Greste's memoir The First Casualty – doesn't dilly-dally, with authorities raiding his hotel room very early in the runtime and carting him off to prison. Thematically (and to some extent tonally) the ensuing experience has obvious similarities to Peter Weir's The Year of Living Dangerously and Robert Connolly's Balibo, two other Australian films about journalists stationed overseas in terribly fraught political circumstances. There are also notes of Franz Kafka's The Trial, with Greste and his two colleagues – producer Mohamed Fahmy (Julian Maroun) and cameraman Baher Mohamed (Rahel Romahn) – facing preposterous allegations and an obviously crooked bureaucratic system, in which the concept of guilt has nothing to do with justice, entirely defined according to the motivations of those in power. About 20 minutes in, Stenders begins to deploy flashbacks, marking the first point where I felt pulled out of Greste's perilous circumstances. Initially I wasn't entirely sure about these intermittent scenes, which detail the relationship between Greste and BBC journalist Kate Peyton (Yael Stone), as it felt as if the film was sacrificing some immediacy. But rather than being pockets of the past presented here and there, they have a clear dramatic arc and the full weight of their significance is eventually revealed. Sign up to Saved for Later Catch up on the fun stuff with Guardian Australia's culture and lifestyle rundown of pop culture, trends and tips after newsletter promotion Cinematographer Geoffrey Hall (whose other collaborations with Stenders include Red Dog, Australia Day and a Wake in Fright reboot) gives the frame a coarse and grainy veneer – rough and banged up, which suits the material. As does the nervy editing of Veronika Jenet (whose work includes Jane Campion classics The Piano and Sweetie), which adds an additional element of jumpiness, as if the screen itself is being rattled. Like so many films, The Correspondent could do with a trim, feeling a little stretched in its second half. But this is unquestionably an important story, powerfully and robustly told; you've never seen a courtroom drama quite like it. The Correspondent opens in Australian cinemas on 17 April
