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© 2024 Justice for Journalists
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Trouble with the Truth is the podcast produced by Lana Estemirova in partnership with the Justice for Journalists Foundation. Lana talks to brave and resilient journalists from around the world who face persecution just for doing their job and lets her audience hear voices that usually remain hidden behind the curtain.
45 Episodes
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In this final episode of Trouble with the Truth that concludes Season Two, we turn to the most inescapable topic of the summer - the upcoming US presidential elections. We will leave the details of the political drama to the pundits and instead focus on what we know best - journalists covering the elections. With president Trump’s divisive rhetoric and increasingly hostile attitude towards mainstream media, how can reporters best protect themselves when doing their job? How do they navigate t...
On the surface, Hong Kong remains a dazzling city and a successful financial hub with hundreds of thousands of visitors every year. However, local journalists and activists will tell you a very different story. In 2019-2020, Hong-Kong was swept up in a wave of protests in response to the draconian National Security Law introduced by China to end Hong Kong’s autonomy from the mainland. Despite the backlash, the bill became a reality. The wide list of provisions includes sending cases for trial...
On 30 May, a new report produced by the digital rights organisation Access Now and Citizen Lab revealed the details of the latest Pegasus attack on Russian and Belarusian journalists and activists. Pegasus, a sophisticated spyware made by Israel’s NSO Group made headlines in 2021 when it was discovered to have been targeted at thousands of people from all over the globe, including human rights activists and media workers. What makes this spyware so dangerous is that it doesn’t require clickin...
Online harassment, intimidation, lack of access, government monopolies on media - we’re used to seeing such offences in countries with poor media freedom records. But what if all this was happening right on our doorstep, here in Europe? In this episode of Trouble with the Truth, Lana discusses the declining state of media freedoms in the EU with Oliver Money-Kyrle, the Head of Europe Advocacy and Programmes at the International Press Institute. They talk about the gap between the values proje...
On the 28th May, the Georgian parliament overturned the presidential veto of the highly contentious ‘Foreign Agents’ law that had sparked weeks-long mass protests across the country and was strongly condemned by the international community. Should it come into force, any non-profit or media that receives over 20% of funding from overseas sources will have to register as “organisations acting in the interest of a foreign power” and face strict scrutiny from auditors and enormous fines. I...
In this new episode of Trouble with the Truth, Lana secures an exclusive with Rana Ayyub, one of India’s most prominent journalists. In 2016 she published an investigative book titled the ‘Gujarat files’ looking into the 2002 Gujarat riots that took the lives of nearly 1000 people, mainly Muslims. In 2024, Rana reflects on how the current anti-Muslim propaganda pushed by the Indian PM Narendra Modi and his BJP party reminds her of that dark chapter of her country’s history. As a staunch criti...
Before 2019, Natalia Zubkova was a homemaker and a mother of three from a coal-mining Siberian city of Kiselyovsk. But when extreme air pollution caused by open-pit coal mining covered white snowy cityscape with black soot, it was time to act. ‘Black Snow’, a documentary directed by Alina Simone and produced by Kirstine Baford, tracks Natalia’s journey as a citizen journalist, documenting environmental catastrophe in her city and trying to hold local politicians and coal-mining magnates to ac...
In this episode of Trouble with the Truth, Lana speaks with the founder of the Tehran Bureau media Kelly Golnoush Niknejad. As a teenager, Golnush left Iran with her family following the 1979 Islamic Revolution and later became a journalist in the US. In 2008 she launched Tehran Bureau, at first as a blog and then as a website. Since then, this English-language media has been offering in-depth, nuanced takes on Iranian politics and society. Golnoush shares her experience of settling in the US...
In 2022, Kyrgyzstan was ranked 72nd out of 180 countries on the press freedom index but in 2023, it plunged all the way to the 122nd spot, the sharpest decline of any country ever. Despite high levels of corruption and state-mandated human rights violation, Kyrgyzstan has always had a strong civil society and thriving independent media. However, since president Sadyr Japarov took over in 2020, the space for freedom of expression has rapidly shrunk. What happened? In this episode of Tr...
Russia’s illegal and brutal war against Ukraine has entered its third year. For two years, Ukrainian journalists have tirelessly covered the full-scale invasion while taking cover in bomb shelters and arranging the evacuation of their loved ones. Not only have they uncovered the horrific massacres of Bucha and Irpin and documented the siege of Mariupol but also held their own government to the account. In this new episode of Trouble with the Truth, Lana speaks to the editor-in-chief of Zaboro...
In Ecuador, 2024 set off to a dramatic start, as the whole country anxiously watched masked gunmen storm a local TV station and take journalists hostage on live broadcast. This was part of a series of coordinated attacks that spread across the country like wildfire, resulting in 30 car explosions and kidnapping of seven police officers - a grim reality of an ongoing war between the local drug gangs and law enforcement. How did this once peaceful, picturesque country descent into chaos in less...
In this episode of Trouble with the Truth, we pivot from our usual themes by delving into the murky world of disinformation campaigns amplified on social media platforms and the ways to combat it with a Coda Story senior reporter Isobel Cockerell. The rapid advancement of Big Tech over the past decade and the more recent AI revolution is irrevocably changing the way we live and think. It also creates a new reality in which line between truth and falsehood becomes blurred or altogether e...
In this episode, Lana talks to the Financial Times correspondent Polina Ivanova about the arrest of the Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich on espionage charges by Russian authorities, and the inspiring campaign for his release. It has been ten months since the arrest of US citizen Evan Gershkovich, whose parents emigrated from the Soviet Union in the 1970s. Evan is being held at the notorious Lefortovo pre-trial detention centre, isolated from his loved ones and awaiting a trial da...
Since the beginning of the Russian invasion on 24 February, Ukraine has become one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a journalist. There is evidence that the Russian army has been deliberately targeting journalists who are telling the truth about the war. At least eight media workers have been killed so far, countless more kidnapped, harassed and turned into refugees overnight. Nonetheless, the bravery and determination of Ukrainian reporters has no bounds and for this episode o...
SLAPPs or Strategic Lawsuits against Public Participation are lawsuits that are designed not to win in court but rather to silence, intimidate and bankrupt the defendants. Over the past years, this type of vexatious litigation has become a tool to stifle independent journalists all over the world, especially those who write about the rich and powerful. London had a reputation for being a “libel capital” for a while and the Defamation Act of 2013 did very little to change it. This new episode ...
From early January of this year Kazakhstan was rocked by a wave of protests. They started in Zhanaozen over fuel price hikes but soon spread all over the country. The initial demands –economic reforms and regime change –were overshadowed by looting and violence. It’s been reported that 225 people lost their lives in the bloodshed, although the real number might be higher. This new episode of Trouble with the Truth explores what happened in Kazakhstan during the...
In this new episode of Trouble with the Truth, Lana talks with a journalist from Uzbekistan about the state of media freedom in the country. The 25 year old dictatorship of Islam Karimov was accompanied by human rights abuses and silencing of independent voices. When president Shavkat Mirziyoyev took power in 2016, it appeared that Uzbekistan was to take a new direction rooted in reform and liberalization. Many dissidents and journalists were released from imprisonment and independent ...
In this new episode of Trouble with the Truth, Lana Estemirova interviews journalist and writer Sonya Winterberg about the challenging evacuation of Afghan journalists after the Taliban takeover. Sonya learned of the Taliban entering Kabul while she was a recording an interview for a radio show. Her first thoughts were about friends and colleagues left behind and since the middle of August, she has dedicated herself to helping Afghan journalists to flee and settle somewhere safe....
In this new episode of Trouble with the Truth, Lana interviews Lebanese journalist Mohamed Kleit. They discuss the horrors that unfolded on the day of the explosion and the political and economic turnmoil that followed. Mohamed shares his own personal journey and the struggles he faced in the aftermath of the blast. On 4 August 2020, an enormous amount of ammonia nitrate that was stored in Beirut port exploded, resulting in over 200 deaths, 7000 injuries and leaving ov...
In this new episode of Trouble with the Truth, Lana speaks to a senior investigator from the Sentry about the Central African Republic- one of the most dangerous countries in the world. They discuss a recent Sentry report that exposes the links between a major French sugar refinery and local militias implicated in massacres and human rights violations. They also touch on the infamous Wagner group – a secretive Russian military contractor that’s linked to Putin ally Evgeny Prigozhin. The Wagne...
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