Author: Sara Torsner

February 24 was a fateful day for world peace as President Putin staked his own and Russia’s future on an unprovoked military assault against the country’s neighbour and rejected the “rules-based international order” in the most public way possible. At a stroke he ensured Russia’s long-term isolation and completed Russia’s jagged journey into totalitarianism. That might in fact have been his goal as much as any territorial ambitions in Ukraine or beyond. For now at least, Putin has absolute control over the separate “Russian world” – “Russkiy Mir” — of his dreams.

What responsibility should be borne by journalists who knowingly propagate lies which promote and enable the mass killing of civilians in war? That question came into stark relief when Anna Murlykina, a leading Mariupol-born journalist, gave chilling testimony from Ukraine at an online event hosted recently by the Council of Europe .

The decisive moment for the countries concerned to grasp this nettle was to be a virtual meeting of Commonwealth Law Ministers in March. Prominent on the draft agenda was formal consideration of the matter of adopting a set of principles on ‘media and good governance’, with freedom of expression, the role of the media and journalists’ safety at their core. But on 15 February the Commonwealth Journalists Association (CJA) was abruptly informed that the ministers’ meeting is being postponed for at least six months.