Journalism's perfect storm? Confronting rising global threats from "f*ke news" to censorship, surveillance, and the killing of journalists with impunity

Some hail this period in journalism as a Golden Era, pointing to major global collaborative journalism projects and the biggest data dumps in history. True, large scale investigative journalism is ‘on fire’. But journalism and its democratic functions are increasingly ‘under fire’ globally. The killing of journalists with impunity, the indiscriminate jailing of media workers and bloggers, internet shutdowns, the ‘f*ke news’ crisis, mass surveillance and targeted interception, the platforms strangling digital profitability, erosion of trust in news, State-sponsored harassment of journalists, continuing mass layoffs in traditional newsrooms... these threats to journalism are converging to create what could be described as journalism’s ‘perfect storm’. This panel of international experts and leading editors will analyse the implications of these threats and consider ways to collaborate on the ‘fightback’.