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...