A video recording of this program is now available on the Explore Content section of this website.
Who the public listens and looks to for news has changed dramatically over the last decade. Increased awareness surrounding fake news, censorship, and bias has contributed to a breakdown in trust—in the news and in journalism as a profession. Verification of information is becoming increasingly difficult for traditional broadcasters, citizen journalist and audiences, due to the rapidly increasing volume and sources available.
In this talk, we speak with Phil Rees, Director of Investigative Journalism Directorate at Al Jazeera Media Network, about his extensive career as a journalist; writing, presenting, and producing more than sixty documentaries, and winning 20 international awards.
This discussion will be introduced and moderated by Banu Akdenizli, associate professor in residence at Northwestern Qatar.
[Image courtesy of Noma Bar/Dutch Uncle]
-
Program credits
Phil Rees
Phil Rees is the Director of Investigative Journalism at Al Jazeera. He moved to Doha in 2013 and has been instrumental in building up Al Jazeera’s Investigative Unit. Rees graduated from Oxford University and joined the BBC as a trainee journalist in 1982. He covered Asia, the Middle East, Africa and the Americas during his 23-year career at the corporation. He has written widely, presented or produced more than sixty documentaries and won nearly 20 international awards. Rees’ 2006 book, Dining with Terrorists, was described as ‘outstanding’ by The Guardian and ‘a tour de force’ by Noam Chomsky.
Banu Akdenizli
Banu Akdenizli is associate professor of communication at Northwestern University in Qatar. She earned her PhD in media and communication from Temple University in Philadelphia. Prior to joining Northwestern Qatar, Akdenizli was an associate professor of communication at Yeditepe University in Istanbul, Turkey. She formerly worked as a methodologist and analyst for the Pew Research Center’s Journalism Project in Washington, DC., and was the research fellow of University of Southern California (USC) Annenberg Public Diplomacy Fellow, 2016–2018. She is the editor and contributor of Digital Transformations in Turkey: Current Perspectives in Communication Studies (2015), author of Toward a Healthier Understanding of Internet Policy Development, The Case of Turkey (2007), and co-author of Democracy in the Age of New Media: A Report on the Media and the Immigration Debate (2008).