CFOM International Director William Horsley reports on a meeting to imagine routes to a safe environment for journalists.The 2023 RSF Press Freedom Index highlights aggressive behaviour by governments towards journalists and the rapid growth of the “disinformation...
William Horsley, CFOM International Director, 26 April 2023“Is it time to scrap the Commonwealth?” The question was met with laughter when asked at a gathering of Commonwealth insiders last January in Windsor Great Park, but it was meant seriously. Joel Kibazo, a...
By William Horsley, CFOM International Director and Executive Committee member of the Commonwealth Journalists Association 12 December 2022 A meeting of Commonwealth Law Ministers in Mauritius ended on November 25 with agreement (see para. 24) to adopt a set of...
By William Horsley, International Director of CFOM, University of Sheffield The Role of Commonwealth Governments in Journalism Safety Years of inaction by Commonwealth governments in response to violent assaults and excessive restraints on the work of independent...
By William Horsley, CFOM International Director Zsombor György has a Catch 22 problem. The editor in chief of Magyar Hang, Hungarian Voice, has declared that the newspaper will go out of business this summer unless it finds a fresh injection of income. In Hungary’s...
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...