We've been here before: the continuous fight for press freedom
Sat 12 April 2025
15:00
Free
Calculating distance...
What does it take to stand on the front line of the fight for press freedom? What has evolved over the last decades, and what painful realities persist? At a cornerstone moment for global media freedom, with the rise of authoritarianism, disinformation, propaganda, media capture, surveillance, and attacks on journalists, this panel confronts these urgent challenges head-on.
We'll bring together frontline defenders of press freedom—a courageous, independent Ukrainian journalist, a fearless Mexican investigative reporter in exile, and a tireless advocate fighting for press freedom in Turkey—to explore their lived experiences, lessons from the past, and strategies to protect public-interest journalism. What can we learn from these reporters, who have displayed tremendous courage and resilience in fighting for media freedom and the free flow of news, even under consistent pressure and direct attacks?
Moderated by Scott Griffen, IPI Interim Executive Director, this conversation underscores the need for solidarity, collaboration, and a renewed commitment to our shared values to ensure resilient public-interest journalism for the future.
This session comes at a milestone moment for press freedom. As IPI, the world’s oldest press freedom organization, approaches its 75th anniversary in 2025, the challenges facing independent journalism have never been more urgent.
Organised in association with International Press Institute.
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Festival Internazionale del Giornalismo
Il Festival Internazionale del Giornalismo di Perugia è un evento annuale che riunisce professionisti dei media, esperti di comunicazione e appassionati di informazione da tutto il mondo. Si svolge nel centro storico di Perugia e offre conferenze, dibattiti, workshop e opportunità di networking sui temi più rilevanti del giornalismo contemporaneo.
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Lydia Cacho Ribeiro
Lydia Cacho Ribeiro is an award-winning Mexican investigative journalist and human rights expert. In Mexico, she has been imprisoned and tortured for her exposés implicating political elites. Today, she lives in exile in Spain due to threats to her personal security. The author of 20 books, Cacho has a global reputation as an expert in investigative journalism on organized crime, human rights violations, freedom of expression, gender and social violence. Her work on human trafficking and modern slavery in particular has gained her numerous awards and recognitions. In 2011, Newsweek magazine named her one of the world’s 100 most influential women. In 2008, she was awarded the UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize. Two years later, she became an IPI World Press Freedom Hero, an accolade for journalists who have displayed tremendous courage and resilience in fighting for media freedom and the free flow of news — often at great personal risk. She served as the jury chair of the independent jury of IJ4EU’s Investigation Support Scheme in 2021. Cacho is celebrated as a journalist, writer, TV anchorwoman, documentary director and producer and human rights activist. Her work has taken her all over the world while her books have been translated into French, English, Dutch, Portuguese, Italian, German, Croatian, Swedish and Turkish. She co-founded the Mexican, Central American and Caribbean Journalists’ Network. Her investigations have exposed flaws in Mexico’s justice system and international laws against human trafficking. Cacho’s investigative work resulted in the first life sentence for an international child pornography producer and child sex trafficker operating in Mexico — the first sentence of its kind in Latin America. She has won 66 international awards, including the Lincoln Brigades/Alba Puffin Award for Human Rights, the Human Rights Watch Award, the Ginetta Sagan Amnesty Award and the Courage in Journalism Award by the International Women’s Media Foundation. Cacho has been a guest lecturer at Columbia University, New York University, Syracuse University, University of Michigan, Stanford University, University of Utah, UCLA, London School of Economics, Universidad Complutense de Madrid and Universidad de Cadiz, among others. As the founder of high-security shelters in Mexico, Cacho has shown how victims of gender violence and sexual exploitation can become survivors and how civil society can transform the system to promote human rights. In 2011, the United Nations Office on Drug and Crime appointed her as International Ambassador of the Blue-Ribbon Campaign to eradicate sex slavery.
Scott Griffen
Scott Griffen is the executive director of the International Press Institute (IPI), the global network of editors, publishers, and media executives for press freedom. A respected media freedom advocate and expert, he joined IPI in 2012 and served as the organization’s deputy director from 2018 to 2024. He is the author of numerous reports on press freedom and independent journalism and has led IPI programs and in-country advocacy in dozens of countries on six continents. He holds degrees from Yale University, King’s College London, and Johannes Kepler University Linz.
Kadri Gursel
Kadri Gürsel is a commentator and columnist for Istanbul-based digital news platform Medyascope. He previously had a column at Turkish dailies Milliyet and Cumhuriyet and worked as a commentator for various TV channels including CNNTurk and HalkTV. His main focuses are Turkish domestic and foreign policy, international affairs, press freedom, Turkey’s Kurdish question, as well as Turkey’s evolving political Islam and its national and regional impacts. Before becoming full-time columnist in the fall of 2008, he was in charge of the foreign news desk of Milliyet as editor. Beginning from 1999, he fulfilled this task for 9 years. Kadri also worked for the Agence France-Presse (AFP) for nearly five years between 1993 and 1997 as an İstanbul-based reporter. In October 2016 he was detained and jailed for 11 months in the operation against Cumhuriyet daily for which he was writing columns and working as an editorial adviser. Kadri contextualizes this ordeal in the decay of democracy and freedom of the press in Turkey in his book titled Ben de Sizin İçin Üzgünüm, published in November 2018. While in AFP, he was kidnapped by the PKK in the mountainous south-east of Turkey in 1995. In his book entitled Dağdakiler (Those of the Mountains) published in 1996, he narrated his 26 days of captivity in the hands of the PKK. Kadri is also the author of a book titled Turquie Annéee Zéro published in 2016 in France. He has been in journalism since 1986. He worked for several daily newspapers and weekly news magazines before joining AFP. Kadri is former board member of Vienna based International Press Institute.