Conflicting Ethics in Conflict Reporting

The Centre for Media Transition (CMT) partnered with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to consider the ethical quandaries faced by reporters in conflict zones, and how a virtues-based approach may help in these grey areas. Research by CMT Co-Director Professor Monica Attard, Dr Chrisanthi Giotis and Dr Sacha Molitorisz explored ethical decision-making processes that look beyond codes of conduct.

CMT were joined by former and current correspondents with experience reporting on conflict. Sophie McNeill, Kate Geraghty, Matt Brown and Hamish McDonald joined the first panel In the Field; and ICRC's Head of Mission David Tuck, Dr Kathryn Greenman and Stan Grant joined the second panel Virtues and Rights. 

Professor Monica Attard OAM

Professor Monica Attard is the Co-Director of the Centre for Media Transition. Monica holds a Bachelor of Arts, Bachelor of Law, and an Order of Australia for services to journalism, and is the winner of 5 Walkley Awards for excellence in journalism (including gold).  Monica came to UTS having spent 28 years at the ABC, working across radio and television. She is best-known for hosting some of the ABC's flagship programs, including PM, The World Today on ABC radio and Media Watch on ABC TV, and being a foreign correspondent. A journalist for 38 years, she has also been a TV and radio reporter, including for Four Corners and Lateline, was the foundation editor of the website, The Global Mail and the head of journalism at Macleay College in Sydney and Melbourne. She was the ABC’s Russia correspondent and reported on the coup against Mikhail Gorbachev, the collapse of Soviet communism, the rise of Boris Yeltsin and capitalism, the first Chechen war as well as several civil wars across the old Soviet Union. Four years of covering the revolution left her with just enough energy to pump out a book about the events – Russia, Which Way Paradise? Monica until recently was the head of journalism at the University of Technology, Sydney. 

David Tuck 

David holds a LL.M. in International Humanitarian Law from the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights, a Bachelor of Laws (Hons.) and Bachelor of Asian Studies (specialist in Hindi) from the Australian National University.  David has worked with the ICRC since 2006, first as a Pashtu Interpreter and Protection Delegate in Afghanistan. From 2011, he has been Legal Adviser to the ICRC’s Operations in Pakistan, in Afghanistan and for the Middle East. Between 2018 and 2020, David was the ICRC’s Regional Legal Adviser for the East and Horn of Africa based in Nairobi, Kenya. He is currently ICRC Head of Mission in Canberra. As the Head of Mission, David leads a team that works closely with government, military, diplomatic and academic stakeholders to foster support for the ICRC’s global operations and to promote international humanitarian law and universal humanitarian principles.  

Dr Chrisanthi Giotis 

Chrisanthi is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Centre for Media Transition where she experiments with new journalism practices focusing on how the most marginalised in society be heard more, particularly in debates which are both local and global. Chrisanthi spent a decade as a reporter and deputy editor in Australia and in the UK, and ran her own entrepreneurial journalism project www.itbeganinAfrica.com. Her PhD entitled Not Just a Victim of War was sparked by her reporting experiences in refugee camps in Sudan and in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Her first book, Borderland: Decolonizing the words of war, will be published by Oxford University Press next year. 

Dr Sacha Molitorisz 

As a Lecturer with the Centre for Media Transition at UTS, Sacha researches and teaches at the intersection of ethics, media and law. In 2020, his book Net Privacy, How we can be free in an age of surveillance was published in Australia by New South Books and in Canada by McGill-Queen's University Publishing. Shaun Micallef, Julia Baird, Robbie Buck and academics from New York to Oslo said nice things about it. Previously, Sacha worked for nearly 20 years at The Sydney Morning Herald and smh.com.au as a reporter, blogger, editor, reviewer and, for most of his career, as a senior features writer. His work is motivated by the question: how can we shape a more ethical media landscape, and what role should the law play? 

Sophie McNeill

Sophie McNeill is the Australia Researcher for Human Rights Watch. She was formerly an investigative reporter with ABC TV’s Four Corners where she produced programs on the Hong Kong protests and arbitrary detention of Xinjiang’s Muslims by the Chinese government. Sophie was also a foreign correspondent for the ABC and SBS in the Middle East. Sophie has twice been awarded Australian Young TV Journalist of the Year and in 2010 won a Walkley Award for her investigation into the killing of five children in Afghanistan by Australian Special Forces soldiers. She was nominated for a Walkley in 2015 for her coverage of the Syrian refugee crisis. In 2016 she won two more Walkleys for her coverage of Yemen and besieged towns in Syria. She is the author of We Can’t Say We Didn’t Know: Dispatches from an Age of Impunity. 

Matt Brown  

Matt Brown has been the ABC’s Deputy International Editor for the past three years. He was a foreign correspondent for the ABC for more than twelve years, posted to Jerusalem, Beirut and Jakarta. He has won five Walkley Awards, three United Nations Association of Australia Media Peace Awards, the Lowy Institute Media Award and a gold world medal at the New York Festivals. 

Kate Geraghty 

Kate Geraghty is an Australian photojournalist with The Sydney Morning Herald. She has covered many world events including the Bali Bombings, the 2003 invasion of Iraq, war in Lebanon, the 2004 tsunami, East Ukraine War, the Refugee Crisis in Europe, the Gaza Flotilla, the drug wars in the Philippines, the liberation of Mosul, the plight of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh, and covered stories in Afghanistan. Most recently, Kate covered the aftermaths of the Kasai war in the DRC and fall of the self-proclaimed Islamic State in Syria. She is the proud recipient of several national and international awards including 9 Walkley awards; most recently the 2017 Gold Walkley Award and the 2017 Nikon Walkley Press Photographer of the Year. 

Hamish McDonald  

Hamish McDonald has been made an inaugural Fellow of the Australian Institute of International Affairs in 2008 and is a frequent public speaker on topics ranging across contemporary Asia, the South Pacific, and Australia's foreign and defence policies. Hamish was formerly the Asia-Pacific Editor of the Sydney Morning Herald, a foreign correspondent in Jakarta, Tokyo, Beijing and New Delhi and senior editor at the Far Eastern Economic Review in Hong Kong. He has twice won Walkley awards, including his 2005 award for a feature on the brutal suppression of the Falun Gong religious movement in China. Hamish has had report on Burma read into the record of the US Congress and is the author of several books on Indonesia, India and Japan.  

Stan Grant  

Stan Grant is the Vice Chancellor's Chair of Australian/Indigenous Belonging at Charles Sturt University. He was formerly ABC's Global Affairs Affairs Analyst and has more than 30 years' experience in radio and television news and current affairs. Stan previously served as Senior International Correspondent for CNN in Asia and the Middle East. He has interviewed numerous world leaders including Nelson Mandela, Hillary Clinton, Mahmoud Abbas, Shimon Peres, Bill Clinton and several Australian Prime Ministers. Stan has won a Peabody Award, Columbia University Alfred I. duPont award, four times winner of the prestigious Asia TV awards including best news story and reporter of the year, and three times winner of the Australian Walkley Award. 

Dr Kathryn Greenman 

Kathryn joined UTS Law as a lecturer in June 2019. She researches the interrelation between the economic and the humanitarian in international law, touching on state responsibility, international investment law, and international humanitarian and human rights law. More widely, Kathryn is interested in the relationship between international law and imperialism, critical international legal history, and feminist and postcolonial approaches to international law. Kathryn’s work has been published in the Leiden Journal of International Law, the International Journal of Refugee Law and the Nordic Journal of International Law. Kathryn was awarded her PhD from the University of Amsterdam in 2019 and is admitted as a solicitor in England and Wales.