Peter Greste Peter Greste i(8622940 works by)
Gender: Male
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BiographyHistory

Peter Greste is an Australian journalist and foreign correspondent, who spent twenty-five years working with the BBC and Al Jazeera.

In June 2014, he was convicted of reporting false news and endangering Egypt's national security. On 1 February 2015, after 400 days in prison, Greste was deported and flown to Cyprus. On 19 February 2015, Greste, along with Mohamed Fahmy and Baher Mohammad, won a special Royal Television Society award for their sacrifices to journalism. Together with his family, he published Freeing Peter, a joint account of the struggle to have him released, in 2016. His autobiography recounting the experience was published in 2017.

In 2006, Greste was the photographer for the book, Owen and Mzee: The True Story of a Remarkable Friendship. It was on The New York Times bestseller list (children’s books) for 48 weeks.

In 2018, Greste joined The University of Queensland as UNESCO Professor in Journalism and Communication.

Most Referenced Works

Personal Awards

Awards for Works

y separately published work icon The First Casualty : A Memoir from the Front Lines of the Global War on Journalism Melbourne : Penguin , 2017 11953592 2017 single work autobiography

'In a world where the first casualty of war is truth, journalism has become the new battleground.

'Peter Greste spent two decades reporting from the front line in the world’s most dangerous countries before making headlines himself following his own incarceration in an Egyptian prison. Charged with threatening national security, and enduring a sham trial, solitary confinement and detention for 400 days, Greste himself became a victim of the new global war on journalism.

'Wars have always been about propaganda but today’s battles are increasingly between ideas, and the media has become part of the battlefield. Extremists have staked a place in news dissemination with online postings, and journalists have moved from being witnesses to the struggle to a means by which the war is waged – which makes them a target. Having covered conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia, as well as having spent time in prison in Egypt, Greste is extremely well placed to describe in vivid detail what effect this has on the nature of reporting and the mind of the reporter.

'Based on extensive interviews and research, Greste shows how this war on journalism has spread to the West, not just in the murders at the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo or the repressions of Putin’s Russia, but Australia’s metadata laws and Trump’s phony war on ‘fake news’.

'In this courageous, compelling, vital account Greste unpicks the extent to which modern investigative journalism is under threat, and the fraught quest – and desperate need – for truth in the age of terrorism.' (Publication summary)

2018 shortlisted Walkley Award Best Non-Fiction Book
2018 longlisted CHASS Australia Prizes Australia Book Prize
Last amended 30 May 2019 15:32:27
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