William Horsley is CFOM’s International Director. He has a leading role to promote CFOM’s global mission to strengthen international protections for free and independent media and freedom of expression through research and analysis, advocacy, topical public events and seminars and policy advice to governments and media. He also engages with inter-governmental organisations, such as UNESCO and the Council of Europe.
His International Director’s Column focuses on issues of media freedom across the world alongside providing a snapshot of the advocacy work that William does. You can find his pieces below.
Out of Africa: The winning ways of the enemies of press freedom
World Press Freedom Day in Africa meant loud drums and a gathering of almost a thousand people - including Ghana’s president, senior African judges, hundreds of West African journalists and a keen circus of press freedom advocates from all corners of the world. The...
A media view of the Commonwealth summit: too much self-praise and not enough open democracy
Proposals which were described as 'important and timely' were submitted for the attention of Commonwealth leaders by an expert Working Group for a new 'code' on media-government relations, but they were ignored in the final Communique. Even so, foreign ministers from...
Poland, cradle of a democratic revolution, again a frontline in the fight for press freedom
Gdansk is a bitter-sweet symbol of Poland’s fight against tyranny back in the time of Lech Walesa. The three tall metal crosses erected over the Gdansk shipyard recall the heady days in 1980 when Solidarity, the East bloc’s first free trade union, triumphed in a...
Two thoughts on Nick Robinson’s plea for a re-think on journalism
Nick Robinson told some awkward truths about Britain’s broadcasting media in the inaugural Steve Hewlett Lecture on Thursday: above all the need for them to up their game by defending impartiality and engaging ‘dissident’ voices. He captured the excitement and...
Press freedom watchers see threats from enemies within
Journalists killed with impunity in Syria and Bangladesh, Kenya and Mexico. Insidious state controls through new technologies. More journalists in jail than ever before... Now is the most dangerous time ever to be a journalist: that is the dark and all too familiar...