JMSC Adds Documentary Studies to Specialist Areas
29 March 2012
April 20: Talk – Understanding the Role of the News Media in Health and Medicine
15 April 2012

April 13: Talk – What Limits to Press Freedom?

Thomas Abraham, Associate Professor of Practice at the JMSC, will talk about press freedom and lessons learned from the Leveson Inquiry in the United Kingdom, on Friday, April 13.

Thomas Abraham

The Leveson Inquiry was ordered after it became apparent that the News of the World, the Sunday tabloid owned by Rupert Murdoch, had hired private investigators to hack into the phones of celebrities and other people in the news in order to get stories.

It has since emerged that news organisations in the UK have used private investigators extensively for a variety of purposes including obtaining people’s bank account information and hospital records. The revelations from the Inquiry have re-opened the debate on press freedom and media regulation, and focused attention on what the boundaries of press freedom should be.

About the speaker:
Thomas Abraham is a former editor of the South China Morning Post. Prior to joining the SCMP, he spent 13 years as a foreign correspondent based in Sri Lanka, at the United Nations Office in Geneva, and in London, for one of India’s leading newspapers, The Hindu.

Abraham has reported on conflicts in Sri Lanka, the former Yugoslavia and Northern Ireland. He has also covered major global issues such as world trade negotiations, human rights, arms control and disarmament. He has worked for the United Nations in Geneva and been a regular commentator on South Asian issues for BBC World Service.

He is the author of Twenty-first Century Plague: The Story of SARS (Hong Kong University Press, 2004, 2007).

Date: Friday, 13 April, 2012
Time: 12-1pm
Venue: Shum Wai Yau Reading Room, Eliot Hall, The University of Hong Kong

For more information on the JMSC Media research seminar series, please click here.