The 2017 Holberg Debate: "Propaganda, Facts and Fake News" with J. Assange, J. Pilger and J. Heawood

Holberg Prize Talks

Are we currently seeing a global war of information that is escalating, both openly and covertly, far beyond what many of us are aware of? And to what extent does the presence of propaganda and manipulated information in news and social media threaten our democracy and our ability to make informed decisions? 00:00:00 Introduction 00:10:19 Keynote address - Julian Assange 00:29:42 Interview with Assange 00:55:35 Assange's Q&A with the audience 01:19:07 Keynote address - Jonathan Heawood 01:43:26 Keynote address - John Pilger 02:17:27 Heawood's and Pilger's Q&A with the audience Julian Assange joins the panel via videolink. Assange is an award-winning journalist and the founder and editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks. He is also a programmer, cryptographer, author and activist. Founded in 2006, WikiLeaks has published millions of leaked documents and several videos. This includes logs that relate to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the controversial “Collateral Murder” video from Iraq, U.S. diplomatic cables, and election campaign related e-mails from the Democratic National Committee and from Hillary Clinton's campaign manager, John Podesta. Jonathan Heawood is the CEO and founder of IMPRESS, the only press regulator to be recognised as independent and effective under the Royal Charter in the United Kingdom. He has previously worked as a journalist and human rights campaigner, and he is a former director of English PEN. Heawood has written on free speech and regulation for various publications, including The Encyclopedia of Twentieth-Century Fiction, Critical Quarterly, Journal of Media Law, Ethical Space and Communications Law. John Pilger is an Australian journalist, author and documentary film-maker. Pilger has covered military, political and cultural conflicts around the world for more than five decades, and his criticism of American, Australian and British foreign policy is strongly reflected his documentaries and writings. He worked at the Daily Mirror from 1963 to 1986 and wrote a regular column for the New Statesman magazine from 1991 to 2014. Pilger has won numerous awards as a journalist and film-maker, and he is one of only two people to win British journalism’s highest award twice.