AustLit

'Australian journalist Peter Greste, the former Al Jazeera correspondent who spent 400 days in an Egyptian prison, delivered the Sydney PEN Free Voices address at the 2018 Sydney Writers’ Festival. Mr Greste, who also worked as a foreign correspondent for Reuters, CNN and the BBC, predominantly in the Middle East, Latin America and Africa, joined the University of Queensland as Professor in Journalism and Communication since his release from prison and return to Australia.' (Introduction)

'In a world where the first casualty of war is truth, journalism has become the new battleground.

'Peter Greste spent two decades reporting from the front line in the world’s most dangerous countries before making headlines himself following his own incarceration in an Egyptian prison. Charged with threatening national security, and enduring a sham trial, solitary confinement and detention for 400 days, Greste himself became a victim of the new global war on journalism.

'Wars have always been about propaganda but today’s battles are increasingly between ideas, and the media has become part of the battlefield. Extremists have staked a place in news dissemination with online postings, and journalists have moved from being witnesses to the struggle to a means by which the war is waged – which makes them a target. Having covered conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia, as well as having spent time in prison in Egypt, Greste is extremely well placed to describe in vivid detail what effect this has on the nature of reporting and the mind of the reporter.

'Based on extensive interviews and research, Greste shows how this war on journalism has spread to the West, not just in the murders at the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo or the repressions of Putin’s Russia, but Australia’s metadata laws and Trump’s phony war on ‘fake news’.

'In this courageous, compelling, vital account Greste unpicks the extent to which modern investigative journalism is under threat, and the fraught quest – and desperate need – for truth in the age of terrorism.' (Publication summary)

'When Peter Greste was arrested in Egypt, his family were shocked but not panicked. Peter had been a foreign correspondent for two decades in numerous dangerous countries, and been detained before. He was only in Egypt on temporary assignment – how much trouble could he be in?

'A lot, it quickly became clear. Peter was put into solitary confinement, then charged with threatening national security. No evidence was ever produced, but after a sham trial he was given a seven-year sentence.

'Peter’s family, meanwhile, were working to free him. Rather than wait on official channels, the Grestes were soon running an international media campaign, and for the 400 days Peter spent in prison his plight was seldom out of the headlines. The process was by no means plain sailing, nor was there always agreement, but the Grestes were galvanised rather than paralysed by the crisis.

'Here each writes frankly and movingly about how they pulled together as a family, and the times they didn’t. About the daily uncertainty, the paucity of information, the strain of decision-making, the emotional visits to the prison, the incomprehensible Egyptian legal system, and the overwhelming support from every level of Australian society. Peter superbly depicts the effects of incarceration on his state of mind, and his battle not to construct a mental prison within the physical one.

'Freeing Peter is an inspirational story about fortitude, resilience, and a highly functional family whose unity proved to be the saving of them.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.