Episode 3: 'Raided, Detained, Cancelled'
11am, Thursday 2 December

This copy was updated December 1, 2021.

Does the threat of cancel culture and social media abuse encourage media makers to self-censor?

And does cancel culture protect society from harm or starve it of diverse views and stories?

Whether you call it mob justice, accountability, censorship, call out or cancel culture, it is something Australian cartoonist Michael Leunig says he has contended with in various ways over 50 years working for mastheads.

His works on identity politics, vaccinations and parenthood have been met with criticism and a level of anger he feels is disproportionately malicious. Is this cancel culture if he is still working?

Meet Leunig online for 'Cancelled', the final episode in our three-part series, 'Raided, Detained, Cancelled'.

He will reflect on the shifts in social behaviour to media makers he has witnessed over the years, the different roles cartoonists and journalists fill in newsrooms, and the personal toll of social media abuse.

About the series

Raided. Detained. Cancelled.  A three-part digital event series exploring  the different ways journalists can be silenced. 

There always seems to be someone who doesn’t  want  a journalist  to  get  a  story out. Dictators stifling dissent. Governments protecting national security.  Or the mob on social media forcing journalists off the page or even out of their jobs.   

Raided, Detained,  Cancelled  focuses on the most challenging moment in any journalist’s career: the moment when they might pay for a story  legally,  financially,  professionally  or even, in some cases,  with their lives.  

Join us for a series of live online conversations featuring journalists with first-hand experiences of being raided, detained or cancelled. We will hear their stories but also  explore the reasons  journalists are silenced, whether these efforts really work,  and how journalists in different contexts around the world respond.   