Trouble with the Truth

In this final episode of Trouble with the Truth that concludes Season Two, we turn to the most inescapable topic of the summer - the upcoming US presidential elections. We will leave the details of the political drama to the pundits and instead focus on what we know best - journalists covering the elections. With president Trump’s divisive rhetoric and increasingly hostile attitude towards mainstr...

On the surface, Hong Kong remains a dazzling city and a successful financial hub with hundreds of thousands of visitors every year. However, local journalists and activists will tell you a very different story. In 2019-2020, Hong-Kong was swept up in a wave of protests in response to the draconian National Security Law introduced by China to end Hong Kong’s autonomy from the mainland. Despite the...

On 30 May, a new report produced by the digital rights organisation Access Now and Citizen Lab revealed the details of the latest Pegasus attack on Russian and Belarusian journalists and activists. Pegasus, a sophisticated spyware made by Israel’s NSO Group made headlines in 2021 when it was discovered to have been targeted at thousands of people from all over the globe, including human rights act...

Online harassment, intimidation, lack of access, government monopolies on media - we’re used to seeing such offences in countries with poor media freedom records. But what if all this was happening right on our doorstep, here in Europe? In this episode of Trouble with the Truth, Lana discusses the declining state of media freedoms in the EU with Oliver Money-Kyrle, the Head of Europe Advocacy and...

On the 28th May, the Georgian parliament overturned the presidential veto of the highly contentious ‘Foreign Agents’ law that had sparked weeks-long mass protests across the country and was strongly condemned by the international community. Should it come into force, any non-profit or media that receives over 20% of funding from overseas sources will have to register as “organisations acting in th...

In this new episode of Trouble with the Truth, Lana secures an exclusive with Rana Ayyub, one of India’s most prominent journalists. In 2016 she published an investigative book titled the ‘Gujarat files’ looking into the 2002 Gujarat riots that took the lives of nearly 1000 people, mainly Muslims. In 2024, Rana reflects on how the current anti-Muslim propaganda pushed by the Indian PM Narendra Mod...

Before 2019, Natalia Zubkova was a homemaker and a mother of three from a coal-mining Siberian city of Kiselyovsk. But when extreme air pollution caused by open-pit coal mining covered white snowy cityscape with black soot, it was time to act. ‘Black Snow’, a documentary directed by Alina Simone and produced by Kirstine Baford, tracks Natalia’s journey as a citizen journalist, documenting environm...

In this episode of Trouble with the Truth, Lana speaks with the founder of the Tehran Bureau media Kelly Golnoush Niknejad. As a teenager, Golnush left Iran with her family following the 1979 Islamic Revolution and later became a journalist in the US. In 2008 she launched Tehran Bureau, at first as a blog and then as a website. Since then, this English-language media has been offering in-depth, nu...

In 2022, Kyrgyzstan was ranked 72nd out of 180 countries on the press freedom index but in 2023, it plunged all the way to the 122nd spot, the sharpest decline of any country ever. Despite high levels of corruption and state-mandated human rights violation, Kyrgyzstan has always had a strong civil society and thriving independent media. However, since president Sadyr Japarov took over in 2020, the...

Russia’s illegal and brutal war against Ukraine has entered its third year. For two years, Ukrainian journalists have tirelessly covered the full-scale invasion while taking cover in bomb shelters and arranging the evacuation of their loved ones. Not only have they uncovered the horrific massacres of Bucha and Irpin and documented the siege of Mariupol but also held their own government to the acc...

In Ecuador, 2024 set off to a dramatic start, as the whole country anxiously watched masked gunmen storm a local TV station and take journalists hostage on live broadcast. This was part of a series of coordinated attacks that spread across the country like wildfire, resulting in 30 car explosions and kidnapping of seven police officers - a grim reality of an ongoing war between the local drug gang...

In this episode of Trouble with the Truth, we pivot from our usual themes by delving into the murky world of disinformation campaigns amplified on social media platforms and the ways to combat it with a Coda Story senior reporter Isobel Cockerell.  The rapid advancement of Big Tech over the past decade and the more recent AI revolution is irrevocably changing the way we live and think. It also cre...

In this episode, Lana talks to the Financial Times correspondent Polina Ivanova about the arrest of the Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich on espionage charges by Russian authorities, and the inspiring campaign for his release. It has been ten months since the arrest of US citizen Evan Gershkovich, whose parents emigrated from the Soviet Union in the 1970s. Evan is being held at the not...

Since the beginning of the Russian invasion on 24 February, Ukraine has become one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a journalist. There is evidence that the Russian army has been deliberately targeting journalists who are telling the truth about the war. At least eight media workers have been killed so far, countless more kidnapped, harassed and turned into refugees overnight. Nonet...

SLAPPs or Strategic Lawsuits against Public Participation are lawsuits that are designed not to win in court but rather to silence, intimidate and bankrupt the defendants. Over the past years, this type of vexatious litigation has become a tool to stifle independent journalists all over the world, especially those who write about the rich and powerful. London had a reputation for being a “libel ca...

From early January of this year Kazakhstan was rocked by a wave of protests.    They started in Zhanaozen over fuel price hikes but soon spread all over the country. The initial demands –economic reforms and regime change –were overshadowed by looting and violence. It’s been reported that 225 people lost their lives in the bloodshed, although the real number might be higher.     This new episode o...

In this new episode of Trouble with the Truth, Lana talks with a journalist from Uzbekistan about the state of media freedom in the country.  The 25 year old dictatorship of Islam Karimov was accompanied by human rights abuses and silencing of independent voices. When president Shavkat Mirziyoyev took power in 2016, it appeared that Uzbekistan was to take a new direction rooted in reform and liber...

  In this new episode of Trouble with the Truth, Lana Estemirova interviews journalist and writer Sonya Winterberg about the challenging evacuation of Afghan journalists after the Taliban takeover.  Sonya learned of the Taliban entering Kabul while she was a recording an interview for a radio show. Her first thoughts were about friends and colleagues left behind and since the middle of August, she...

 In this new episode of Trouble with the Truth, Lana interviews Lebanese journalist Mohamed Kleit. They discuss the horrors that unfolded on the day of the explosion and the political and economic turnmoil that followed. Mohamed shares his own personal journey  and the struggles he faced in the aftermath of the blast.   On 4 August 2020, an enormous amount of ammonia nitrate that was stored in Bei...

In this new episode of Trouble with the Truth, Lana speaks to a senior investigator from the Sentry about the Central African Republic- one of the most dangerous countries in the world. They discuss a recent Sentry report that exposes the links between a major French sugar refinery and local militias implicated in massacres and human rights violations. They also touch on the infamous Wagner group...

In the latest episode of Trouble with the Truth, Lana meets Jake Hanrahan, the founder of Popular Front. He vowed to produce a different kind of conflict reporting – raw, independent, accessible, and sponsored solely through public donations. Popular Front has released documentaries, podcasts and articles on conflicts all over the world- Palestine, Ukraine, Hong-Kong, Turkey, Northern Ireland and...

 She was threatened, harassed, attacked and sent to prison for 2.5 years but it only made Azerbaijani journalist Khadija Ismayilova more determined to pursue the truth. For years she’s been exposing the corrupt underbelly of the Azerbaijani elite, linking it to international firms and European politicians. Her work, including the Panama Papers investigations, has gained her notoriety all over the...

In 1990 Columbia was shocked by the horrific murder of popular investigative journalist Silvia Duzan. She was working on a hopeful story about how several peasant leaders banned together against the violence of cartel rule but ended up being assassinated alongside her interviewees.   Thirty years later, filmmaker Paola Desiderio is exploring the tragic event and the story around it in her upcoming...

In this episode of Trouble with the Truth journalist Mariam Nikuradze recalls the shocking attacks on journalists that took place in Tbilisi on 5 July. That day was supposed to be a celebration of Pride but the organizers were forced to cancel the event because of numerous threats. Despite, the cancellation far-right mobs still turned out in force and targeted anyone who looked LGBTQ. It was journ...

Journalist and filmmaker Dairus Bazargan talks to us about his upcoming documentary on Nazanin-Zaghari Ratcliffe and his undercover work investigating ritual killings in Malawi that almost cost him his life.  Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a British-Iranian citizen, has been held hostage by the Iranian government since 2016, following her arrest on trumped-up spying charges. Nazanin was released in 20...