Murphy, the political editor at Guardian Australia, made the announcement on social media on Monday, reflecting on her nearly 30-year journalism career.

“28 years ago, almost to the week, I arrived in the Canberra press gallery,” Murphy said.

“I am deeply grateful to so many people for the opportunities I’ve had and for the generosity that has been extended to me by my mentors, colleagues and readers.”

I will be joining the office of @AlboMP

I want to say farewell by thanking Australians who support good journalism.

It has never been more necessary.

Thank you for your company. It's been a honour.

— Katharine Murphy (@murpharoo) January 28, 2024

Murphy has worked at Guardian Australia since the British media outlet extended to Australia in 2013. She, alongside Guardian Australia’s editor Lenore Taylor, were key in the establishment of the independent media organisation in Australia.

“Playing a part in establishing Guardian Australia with Lenore Taylor has been the greatest privilege of my professional life,” Murphy wrote on X.

“But it’s time – after nearly three decades – for a new chapter.”

Murphy revealed she would be taking up a role in Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s office in Parliament House. According to reports, her final day at Guardian Australia will be on Friday.

“I want to say farewell by thanking Australians who support good journalism. It has never been more necessary,” Murphy wrote in her statement.

“Thank you for your company. It’s been an honour.”

Murphy is a respected journalist in Australia, reporting on Australian politics for nearly 30 years. In 2008, she won the Paul Lyneham award for excellence in press gallery journalism, and in 2012, was a finalist for a Walkley award in the best digital journalist category.

‘Go well, Katharine.’

Murphy’s colleague Lenore Taylor, editor at Guardian Australia, thanked her for her contribution to the online news site, saying her presence will be missed.

“Murph has been part of Guardian Australia project since the idea was conceived 10 years ago as what seemed like an audacious attempt to change Australia’s media landscape. It has succeeded beyond anything we imagined,” Taylor wrote on X. 

“Murph’s dedication, tireless work and brilliant political analysis have played a significant part in that success. On behalf of everyone at Guardian Australia, I’d like to thank her. We’ll all miss her terribly and so will our readers.”

Several journalists took to social media congratulating Murphy on her career and wishing her well for her new role.

“You’ve made a wonderful contribution to our collective understanding of Australian politics,” journalist Emma Alberici said. “All the very best in your new role.”

“What a huge loss to journalism in this country!” ABC Breakfast co-host Michael Rowland wrote on X. “I will miss your always considered and sometimes delightfully salty takes on the day and week in politics. Go well, Katharine.”

The news of Murphy’s career change did not go down well with Leader of the Opposition Peter Dutton. On X, Dutton wrote he was “genuinely shocked” to hear that Murphy will now be “officially running lines for Labor”.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is yet to publicly comment on the appointment.

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In an interview with Sky News, Lei said she’s been adjusting back to her normal life, doing the school run and cooking new recipes. 

Speaking with Sky News’ Washington Correspondent Annelise Nielsen, Lei recounted her emotional reunion with her children, 12 and 14, partner, and mother. 

“My kids running at me, and my mum, who’s aged a lot in the last three years,” Lei said. 

“And we all just screamed and my mum like wept and I just held onto her.”

“I could feel, I could see that she’d lost a lot of weight because of diabetes and having broken her ribs and just having to shoulder the burden mentally and physically, and just be strong for me all that time.”

Lei said that her family went to a Vietnamese restaurant for a celebratory meal before heading to the Queen Victoria Market. 

Upon her arrival in Melbourne last week, Lei took to X to express her immediate relief at being released:

“Tight hugs, teary screams, holding my kids in the spring sunshine. Trees shimmy from the breeze. I can see the entirety of the sky now! Thank you Aussies.”

She admits that because of her ordeal in China, she still has fears. 

“I keep expecting you know people to dropout of the sky and arrest me and maybe it’s something I need to get over.”

“Every time I look at the sky, I can’t believe… it’s 360 degrees, as opposed to just a little slip up the top of the cell.” 

Lei praised the efforts of DFAT and particularly, Foreign Minister Penny Wong. 

“I just can’t begin to thank them DFAT and the PM and the media and just ordinary people with heart,” she said. 

“I was euphoric when I spoke to the embassy guys and just thanking them and wanting to sing because words really fail the amount of gratitude I feel for everyone who has believed me and supported me.” 

“Penny Wong is amazing. I’d met her in 2014 at a dinner and she was really impressive so I passed on a message to her because I heard about the tweets that she was sending and all the heartfelt messages.”

“[She contacted] my family and reassured them and she actually wrote me a personal message back and it wasn’t just poly speak or you know standard stock phrases. I really felt that she was a friend who was trying to help me trying to look out for my best interests.” 

Cheng revealed that she was detained in China and charged with “illegally providing China’s state security secrets abroad,” for breaking a story embargo by a few minutes.

“In China, that is a big sin,” Cheng said. “You have hurt the motherland. And the state authority has been eroded because of you.

“What seems innocuous to us here, and it’s not limited to embargos but many other things, are not in China.”

In August 2020, Cheng was working as a business reporter for China’s state-run English-language TV station, CGTN when she was called into a meeting by a senior official who told her she was wanted for “a very important meeting.”

“I went in thinking about work, and I get to this big meeting room, and about twenty people are there, and then someone stands up shows his badge and says you’re wanted for and immediately they take my belongings away.

Lei explained how she was escorted to her apartment.

“They’d already arranged with the security at my compound to go through the garage up to my apartment where they looked for evidence all day.”

“They tried to give me hints at the apartment as we were leaving, they said ‘turn off the power and water. Take some clothes. Take some toiletries.’ They said you sure you don’t want something to eat? So I made myself a homemade bread toasted sandwich with cheese and avocado. And those three things I ended up not having for over three years.”

Lei was taken to a Residential Surveillance at a Designated Location (RSDL) — a building that she said is meant to “make you feel isolated, and bored and pained and desperate.” 

“They say that they gave me 15 minutes of fresh air, but all they meant was, there’s a window up the top that a guard would open for 15 minutes,” she said.

“But the curtains are still drawn while the windows are open. You never saw anything except the blue curtains, the … carpet and the beige padded walls. It was just silence.”

She was transferred to another prison, where she had a cellmate. There, she taught herself Italian, Spanish and Japanese and read the books her partner sent her. 

“I built up a stash of over 200 books. And I used to think ‘wow, this is a book that Nick has lovingly chosen for me’ and has held in his hand,” she said.

“I would just caress the book and keep it close to me. And when there were wise words or encouraging words, I would feel that he had written them.”

For now, Lei is content in trying to ease her way back to being a mother to her children. 

“Just this whole idea that I am now here for them and meeting my daughter’s teachers who were so sweet.”

“They had been praying for me and I even met one of the teacher’s dogs who my daughter had written about in her letters. Family letters are like medication and when you get them it’s a huge boost to the immune system.” 

The post Cheng Lei is making up for “absent mummy” time appeared first on Women's Agenda.

As a female-run, independent media outlet, the journalists decide what they will cover, when, and how, offering a unique perspective and access to women’s lives and opinions. 

Since its operations kicked off, Bilan’s reports have been distributed locally on Dalsan and internationally through outlets including the Guardian, BBC, El Pais, and the Toronto Star. Now, it is set to grow their offices to support more female journalists across other cities.

It’s an important feat for the country which was ranked by the UN as the fourth-lowest for gender equality globally. Women and girls in Somalia face harrowing challenges, with maternal and infant mortality rates among some of the highest in the world, and early marriage being one of the most pervasive. Thirty six per cent of girls are married by the age of 18. Gender-based violence is widespread and more than 90 per cent of women aged 15 to 19 having undergone female genital mutilation. 

According to Reporters Without Borders, Somalia is the most dangerous country for journalists in Africa. More than 50 journalists have been killed in the past twelve years. In the Global Impunity Index by The Committee to Protect Journalists – a list that calculates the number of unsolved journalist murders as a percentage of a country’s population, Somalia ranks last. 

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Fathi Mohamed Ahmed is the chief editor of Bilan. She told Reuters that due to the country’s deeply patriarchal culture, some people are unable to discuss women’s issues publicly. 

“We know Somalis, for them girls’ issues are shameful,” she said. “For example, signs of adolescence like menstruation, periods. Girls are not taught the symptoms of womanhood in the classroom.”

One story about the taboo surrounding menstruation went viral earlier this year, garnering 130,000 views on the outlet’s Facebook page.

Ahmed and her team are trying to highlight stories that have traditionally been ignored in her country by covering issues including domestic violence, family violence, female prisoners, gender pay gap and caregiving. 

According to Reuters, recent coverage by Bilan on issues such as HIV/AIDS, autism and menstrual hygiene education, have started important conversations online and in public spaces, leading to calls for material, political change for women. 

The story about the taboo surrounding menstruation from earlier this year sparked discussions within the Ministry of Women. They have since offered to work with the media company on an advocacy campaign to shift attitudes around menstrual health and wellbeing. 

The former Chief Editor of Bilan, Nasrin Mohamed Ahmed told the publication in an interview last year that being a female journalist [in Somalia] means “you have to be prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice.”

“Female journalists don’t just face the bombings and the harsh living conditions that everyone else faces, there are also other issues specific to being a woman in the media,” she said. 

One of Bilan’s five reporters, Farhio Mohamed Hassan, said that she has always been passionate about telling women’s stories, but that it has been extremely challenging.

“So many of my female colleagues have left the profession because of harassment and a lack of opportunities,” she said. “But I stuck it out because I believe women as well as men need to bring Somalia’s difficulties into the open, however difficult it may be.”

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) supports Bilan by providing funding and equipment.

A mentoring and traineeship programme is also offered to young, aspiring female journalists, with partnerships involving journalists from BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Al Jazeera. 

According to Abdallah Al Dardari, director of the United Nations Development Programme Regional Bureau for Arab States, the news station is revolutionising the industry of journalism in the country of more than 18 million. 

“With their unique voice and the growing reach of the Bilan Media brand, they’re creating a demand for change and better treatment of women and girls that can’t be ignored,” Al Dardari said.

You can find out more about Bilan here. 

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The editorial piece published in the Murdoch media broadsheet in 2021, titled “Greatest enemy of truth is those who conspire to lie”, was found to have breached four of the Council’s General Principles.

Releasing the adjudication this morning, the Council said the article presented misleading and unfair content that was “likely to cause substantial offence and distress without a sufficient public interest justification”.

Louise Milligan, reporter for the ABC’s program Four Corners and former employee at The Australian, filed a complaint to the Council in 2021, arguing the editorial implied she and her former boss Sally Neighbour conspire to lie.

“Many people at The Australian know well the work, the habits and the hubris of Sally Neighbour and Louise Milligan,” the editorial read.

Criticising The ABC as both “the game and the gamekeeper” in Australia’s media industry, the editorial went on: “The most dangerous enemy of the journalist is bad, lazy, deceitful journalism.”

The Australian argued the piece was of the “public interest” and intended to hold the national broadcaster to account. The publication believed its editorial was not defamatory because the author did not specifically reference her work, reporting or conduct.

However, the Council found readers of the editorial would draw an “unavoidable conclusion” that Milligan and Neighbour are “associated with ‘bad, lazy, deceitful journalism’”.

“For this reason, the Council considers the editorial misleadingly and unfairly infers that such undesirable traits are associated with the complainant and her journalism,” the Council concluded in its adjudication released today.

“The Council recognises the significant public interest in allowing an editorial to express robust views on matters of important public interest.

“However, the Council considers that naming the complainant, an ABC journalist in an editorial that commented on the ABC and what it considers are the attributes of poor journalism, was likely to cause substantial offence and distress without a sufficient public interest justification.”

‘Bewildering and vile attack’

In a statement posted to her social media accounts, Milligan welcomed the Council’s decision, which has been two years in the making.

“Two years ago, myself and my former boss, Sally Neighbour, were subjected to a bewildering and vile attack by The Australian,” she said.

“Today, a Press Council adjudication finds the editorial was inaccurate, unfair, lacked balance, caused unnecessary distress and was not in the public interest.”

Milligan thanked the journalists, including other former employees at The Australian, for their support throughout the whole process of her complaint to the Council.

“The support was vital because The Australian argued (laughably) the editorial wasn’t about Sally and me,” she said.

“I was able to show during the Press Council hearing that, for starters, two former editors in chief of their own newspaper disagreed.”

Although the editorial named both Milligan and her former boss Sally Neighbour, it was Milligan’s “decision alone” to proceed with the complaint to the Council.

“This process has been wearying and took two years… I can’t imagine how much more difficult it would be for an ordinary, vulnerable member of the public,” she said.

Murdoch’s media empire News Corp dominates the paying member base of the Australian Press Council, which Milligan said is a problem that has now been spotlighted by her case.

“It has demonstrated to me the Press Council needs proper public funding, unshackled from the publications it is adjudicating,” she said.

The post Editorial in The Australian “misleading and unfair” against ABC’s Louise Milligan, Press Council finds appeared first on Women's Agenda.

Standing on a suburban footpath, getting ready for the live video to begin, Hamblin is interrupted when a male voice can be heard shouting, “you look really nice, though”. Hamblin says thank you, politely trying to deflect the attention.

“You beautiful as hell. God damn,” the man continues before inexplicably claiming “this is why I can’t be around black women.”

When he then continues probing her about being filmed, she tells him to “go find a TV and watch Spectrum News.” The comments from the man grow increasingly sexual and offensive in nature, before she finally responds, “Alright. We are done here. Have a great rest of your day.”

Following the incident, Hamblin posted the footage on her Twitter page, where it’s been viewed more than five million times. 

The former CBS reporter hit back on Twitter, condemning the man’s actions.

“Being hit on and harassed as a woman, especially as a woman reporter out in the field, happens so often you learn how to roll with it or ignore it,” she wrote.

“This time it happened to be recorded only seconds before my hit. There are a lot of things wrong with this.”

In her Tweets threads, she continued to lay out what she believes is the issue: 

“1. If you don’t want to be on camera, simply avoid it or ask nicely to not be on camera. Don’t walk towards it or make a scene. Who said this was about you?

“2. ‘Oh, men these days just can’t give compliments.’ No. The first man’s ’you look nice’ as he continued to walk away is fine. It’s the second man who took this to another disgusting level it didn’t need to be.

“3. The audacity of the things men say to me never ceases to amaze me. What makes you think women want to be talked to that way? In no way is this endearing. It’s uncomfortable. It’s gross.

“4. Being a Black woman in this industry has its own headaches, but talking down on one group of women to ‘praise’ another group is never okay. It just shows you have a disgusting fetish based on stereotypes, which is just as racist.

“Oh wait! One more thing: I was lucky I had @barstow_scott with me. At my last job, I had to deal with this type of stuff alone, like most women MMJs. It’s not safe. It’s scary. But the convo about the dangers of reporters working alone is for another day.”

Reaction and support was strong behind the young reporter, praising her for the way she handled the criminal behaviour. 

“So glad you had a photographer out there to back you up,” one user wrote. “How uncomfortable! You handled it so well, though. Especially right before a hit.”

The post US reporter Brianna Hamblin hits back after on air sexual harassment appeared first on Women's Agenda.

Lattouf jokes that they’re her “biggest critics” and their opinions enable her to laugh at herself and find light and humour in dark places. “They are hilarious. They remind me that I can’t do a cartwheel, that I’m terrible at parking and my little one told me to get a real job because talking and waving your hands around for a living isn’t actual work,” she laughs.

But it’s Lattouf’s courage in waving her hands in the air that Australians should applaud.

Recently awarded the Women’s Agenda Leadership NFP Award for her work championing change in “a very whitewashed news industry,” Lattouf shares her drive to see more women in leadership roles in the media.

“I can’t help but feel that having women in positions of power in the media has contributed significantly to this reckoning that we’re currently enduring,” she says.

In 2017, Lattouf founded Media Diversity Australia with Isabel Lo, a former ABC and CNN journalist. At the time, Lattouf and Lo were working journalists with four kids under five.

“In addition to holding down jobs as journalists, we started this not for profit to not only highlight the scale of the problem, but also provide solutions and pathways to betterment” she explains.

“There are so many incidents and moments that contributed to what I call my ‘F*ck this” moment,” Lattouf says. “I was tired of seeing (and continuing to see) all white panels on news programs.

I was tired of hearing racist and divisive tropes from commentators whose only interaction with, or understanding of multicultural Australia is via their Uber driver. With social media and politics polarising the masses more than ever, the media plays an essential role in our democracy to tell stories with nuance.

With journalists being overwhelmingly white and very often middle class and inner city, there are too many blind spots, implicit bias and in some cases outright discrimination in reporting.” 

Growing up as one of seven children (Lattouf is the second youngest of five girls), her mother would introduce her to friends as such: “This is Antoinette, my 5th, and she talks too much”.

“I think coming from such a big family and being kid number 5, I had to really scream to be heard,” Lattouf says. “I guess that’s helped me in my career too. I’ve managed to find my voice and use it in a very competitive industry.”

Holy white Jesus. This is not a joke. Not satire. It’s for real. I triple checked. pic.twitter.com/L0se5D20uf

— Antoinette Lattouf (@antoinette_news) June 11, 2021

Through her organisation, Lattouf spends a lot of time thinking about how power operates and is distributed in Australia and how she can work to shift it.

“Like politics and the judiciary – power is not fairly or evenly distributed in Australia’s media,” she says. “And it’s not a case of the ‘best person for the job’ – that mantra is just nonsense and has been disproven countless times, in countless different ways, in countless studies.”

Speaking about her own experience, working overtime for a grad position in television as a “20-year old Arab girl from western Sydney who went to a public school with a father working as a roof tiler and no relatives before me had graduated from university,” she vehemently rejects the notion of “meritocracy”.

“It is not about merit or hard work, too often it’s about who you are and who you know that lands you access to positions of influence.”

“I had to shoulder barge or kick my way in,” she says. “It can be tiring to always have to work harder, work faster, be smarter, but also to try and not make mistakes because the backlash is worse and there’s little room for failure when you’re a minority.” 

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Recently, Media Diversity Australia released a study that revealed shocking rates of homogeneity within the country’s media outlets.

For instance, 100 percent of free-to-air television national news directors in Australia have an Anglo-Celtic background (and they are also all male). Within this group of 39 directors, there is only one who has an Indigenous background and three who have a non-European background. 

The facts are staggering but sustain Lattouf’s conviction. Next year, she will be releasing her debut book, ‘How To Lose Friends And Influence White People’, which she hopes will start conversations and inspire actions. 

“I moved to Australia at the age of 7 from London, it took many years before I saw someone else who looked like me let alone on the TV. I feel very passionate about playing … to ensure that the 7yo me today is able to see more diverse cultures."https://t.co/CF3VJRAbTT

— Media Diversity AU (@MediaDiverseAU) May 14, 2021

“I was conscious of the fact that going into a space that challenges white institutions of power in Australia, wasn’t going to make me the most popular person on the block, so the title is a little tongue in cheek,” she says.

“I also watched on as Adam Goodes was treated abhorrently both by the AFL and large and loud parts of the media for taking a stance against racism. And of course for women of colour, it’s a double whammy of sexism and racism.”

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“I hope that it can work as a guide for white people who want to be better allies and advocates but also empowering for people of colour, to find their niche and their voice and go in eyes wide open. For such full-on subject matter, readers will be surprised that there’s also hope and humour.”

As for Media Diversity Australia? It’s growing with new staff hires and public acknowledgement. Lattouf hopes to step back from the nuts and bolts to use her voice and various platforms to contribute more broadly to public debate.

The post ‘I had to shoulder barge or kick my way in’: Antoinette Lattouf’s fierce pursuit for media diversity appeared first on Women's Agenda.