By William Horsley, CFOM International Director The European Union claims it has understood that the demise of free and independent media spells the death of democracy. Europe, it’s said, has “learned the lessons” from being duped for years by Putin’s victim-blaming...

By William Horsley, CFOM’s International Director What responsibility should be borne by journalists who knowingly propagate lies which promote and enable the mass killing of civilians in war? That question came into stark relief when Anna Murlykina,...

By William Horsley, International Director of the Centre for Freedom of the Media, University of Sheffield. The decisive moment for the countries concerned to grasp this nettle was to be a virtual meeting of Commonwealth Law Ministers in March. Prominent on the draft...

By, William Horsley, CFOM International Director The Norwegian Nobel Committee has awarded the Peace Prize to Dmitry Muratov, the editor of Novaya Gazeta in Russia, and Maria Ressa, the co-founder and editor of the investigative media outlet Rappler in the...

By William Horsley, International Director of CFOM Dutch crime reporter, one of the Netherlands’ best-known journalists, was shot and seriously injured on Tuesday evening in a street in downtown Amsterdam shortly after leaving the studios of RTL TV. Amsterdam’s mayor,...

By William Horsley, International Director of CFOM The June 10-11 ministerial conference on Media and Democracy co-hosted by Cyprus and the Council of Europe shone a rare spotlight on the actions of European governments accused of persecuting journalists and  ‘state...

By William Horsley, International Director of CFOM Uğur Mumcu, a renowned Turkish investigative journalist and columnist for the leading newspaper Cumhuriyet, was murdered just 28 years ago, in a car bomb explosion on 24 January 1993. The perpetrators of that crime...