Grey Zone: The Debate Democracies Cannot Afford to Lose

PEN Perth Annual Lecture by Peter Greste

Across the globe, the room for free thought and open debate is shrinking. Journalists are jailed in record numbers. Writers are muted by accusation of antisemitism and de-platformed. In the name of security and social cohesion governments extend their powers to restrict dissent.

It was an extremist group who first gave the fragile arena of debate and disagreement a name: 'the grey zone'. They feared it as the true enemy of their ideology. Yet today, in trying to contain extremism, democratic governments themselves are eroding that very space—unwittingly serving the extremists’ agenda.

Peter Greste, iconic Australian journalist, university professor and the real-life hero of the film The Correspondent, explores this unsettling paradox. What if the greatest threat to democracy is not extremism itself, but the way democracies choose to fight it? What if, by silencing rather than debating, even the most pernicious ideas, we are already doing the extremists’ work for them?

About Peter Greste

Professor Peter Greste is an academic, film maker, journalist and author. He is currently professor of journalism at Macquarie University and executive director of a not-for-profit advocacy group, the Alliance for Journalists’ Freedom.

He came to academia in 2018 after 30 years as an award-winning foreign correspondent for the BBC, Reuters, CNN and Al Jazeera, in some of the world’s most volatile places.

He is best known for becoming a headline himself, when he and two colleagues were arrested in Cairo on terrorism charges while working for Al Jazeera. In letters smuggled from prison, Peter described their incarceration as an attack on press freedom.

His campaign for freedom earned him numerous human rights and freedom of speech awards. Now, as an academic, he leads a research program investigating the impact of national security legislation on public interest journalism. Peter is the author of The Correspondent about his experiences in Egypt, and the wider war on journalism. The book has since been turned into a movie starring Richard Roxburgh.

This presentation is proudly brought to you by PEN Perth in partnership with Centre for Stories and Indo-Pacific Research Centre (Murdoch University).