Journalism & Truth: Do They Have a Future Together?

The tsunami of fake news and disinformation that engulfs us, combined with the rise of the mostly unregulated social media that disseminates them, threaten traditional journalism even as access to the truth – whatever that is, some say -- is more important than ever. Given the financial and other pressures that now constrain it, can journalism, as we know it, survive? And can the truth?

Lenore Taylor, editor The Guardian Australia; Ed Coper, author of Facts and Other Lies: Welcome to the Disinformation Age; prize-winning journalist and author Chris Masters; and Jennifer Robinson, human rights lawyer who acted for Julian Assange and the author of How Many More Women? Exposing How the Law Silences Women.

Featuring:
Ed Coper, Lenore Taylor, Chris Masters & Jennifer Robinson

Moderated by: Christina Slade

Location: Berry School of Arts

Sunday, 27 Oct: 10.30-11.30am

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Featuring:

Ed Coper

Ed is a leading expert on communications for social impact, and the author of the disinformation defence handbook Facts and Other Lies: Welcome to the Disinformation Age (Allen & Unwin). He has built social change initiatives, advocacy campaigns, and political movements. He pioneered techniques that brought politics into the digital age, has advised campaigns on every continent except Antarctica, and high-profile change-makers from Malala Yousafzai to Greta Thunberg.

Ed founded the New York-based Center for Impact Communications, which has led efforts to safeguard US elections from disinformation and overcome vaccine hesitancy. Ed also founded a New York City creative agency that serviced multiple Nobel Peace laureates, political and social leaders, to scale their social impact. His groundbreaking campaigns have raised hundreds of millions of dollars for causes, won landmark social change, and have featured in several museum exhibitions. Ed is the co-founder and CEO of Sydney-based strategic communications firm Populares, credited with being behind the recent 'Teal' political wave.

Chris Masters

Chris Masters is one of Australia's most acclaimed investigative journalists. He is the author of the bestselling Jonestown (2006), and in 2023, Flawed Hero: Truth, Lies, and War Crimes about Ben Roberts-Smith. In 1985, he won Australia's most prestigious award in journalism, the Gold Walkley, for his Four Corners report on the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior. His reports 'The Big League' and 'The Moonlight State' both led to royal commissions that helped transform the nation.

Jennifer Robinson

Jennifer Robinson is a barrister at Doughty Street Chambers in London. She has acted in key human rights and media freedom cases in domestic and international courts, including securing the recent release of Julian Assange. Jennifer sits on the boards of the Grata Fund, the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights and the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights at Oxford University and is a trustee of the Bureau of Investigative Journalism. In 2022, she co-authored How Many More Women? Exposing how the law silences women, published by Allen & Unwin.

Lenore Taylor

Lenore Taylor has been the editor of Guardian Australia since 2016. Before taking over the editorship, she spent twenty eight years in the federal parliamentary press gallery as a reporter and political commentator at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Australian Financial Review, The Australian and The Canberra Times. She spent three years in London as the Australian Financial Review’s European correspondent. She has won two Walkley Awards and twice won the Paul Lyneham Award for excellence in press gallery journalism. She co-authored, with David Uren, the book Shitstorm, about the Rudd Government’s response to the global economic crisis.

Moderated by:

Christina Slade

Christina Slade has published on critical and creative thinking, citizenship, language, and the role of media in national identity. Her research is at the intersection of philosophy and media. Christina is Emeritus Professor at Bath Spa University, where she was the Vice-Chancellor. Prior to that, she was Dean of Arts and Social Sciences at City University London, Dean of Humanities at Macquarie University, Professor of Media Theory at the University of Utrecht, and Head of the Creative Communication School at the University of Canberra.

The Berry Writers Festival acknowledges the Dharawal and Dhurga language-speaking groups who are traditional owners of this area. We acknowledge their customs and culture, which have nourished, and continue to nourish, this land. And we extend our respects to Elders, past, present, and future.