‘Both are guilty’: How cancel culture tactics on the left and the right threaten free speech
In 2014/15, Peter Greste spent 400 days in Egyptian jail cells. He was accused of aiding and abetting a terrorist organisation, being a member of a terrorist organisation, broadcasting terrorist ideology, publishing false news to undermine national security, and financing terrorism.
“They were very, very serious charges indeed,” Greste tells RNZ’s 30 with Guyon Espiner.
It was the most severe form of ‘cancellation’, in a time before cancel culture was a recognised phenomenon.
A journalist who was in the country covering a “very toxic political environment” following a military coup, Greste was caught up in something much bigger than himself and his own alleged misdeeds in reporting the news for Al Jazeera.
“It wasn’t about anything specifically that we had done,” he says.
“The gap between what we were accused of and the fairly mundane routine journalism that we’d been actually doing was so vast … and so I realised, after quite a lot of thought and reflection, that this wasn’t about anything we’d done, it was about what we’d come to represent.
“And once I understood that, once I understood that this was an attack on the institution of journalism and press freedom, I realised that I had to stand up for this on principle rather than on my own volition. And that gave me a lot more strength.”
Greste’s struggle, and ultimate release, inspired a movie - The Correspondent. It also propelled him into his role as a champion of the free press, co-founding the Alliance for Journalists’ Freedom in his native Australia in 2020.
Cancel culture tactics
In an interview for RNZ’s 30 with Guyon Espiner, Greste is asked if ‘cancel culture’ is worse on the political left than the right, or if both are guilty.
He warns against “false equivalence” noting that each goes about it in their own way.
“I think the left tends to cancel more rhetorically than anything else,” Greste says.
“I think the right tends to cancel more aggressively using legal and political means, and I think that’s where we see a difference.”
Activists on the left “complain quite vehemently” about conservative voices.
“They’ll complain, they’ll ignore, they’ll turn off conservative voices that they don’t want to hear, that they think are being unreasonable. But I think the right tends to be more aggressive in the way that they approach it through political and legal means, and that’s something I’m always uncomfortable with.”
In the US, the Trump Administration has repeatedly threatened and filed legal proceedings against publishers and broadcasters reporting unflattering stories about it. Broadcasters have been threatened with the loss of licenses and reporters barred from access they previously had within the Pentagon and the White House.
“I’m deeply worried about the United States,” Greste says.
“The US has the storied First Amendment to their Constitution that guarantees freedom of the press, freedom of association, freedom of speech, and all of these steps are directly undermining that really essential freedom.
“I think it’s a real problem for the United States … but it also sends a signal to the rest of the world that those kinds of tactics are acceptable in democracies, and I think that’s a real problem. It’s something we really need to be pushing back on, because it’s a very, very dangerous thing.”
Media ‘isn’t entirely blameless’
Earlier this year, the seventh annual Trust in News in Aotearoa report found New Zealanders’ general trust in news increased from 32 percent in 2025 to 37 percent this year. While an improvement, New Zealand still trails the average (40 percent) in a 48-nations survey by the Reuters Institute.
The loss of trust in news media globally in part reflects “a decline in ethics and standards”, Greste says.
“Let’s be clear, the media isn’t entirely blameless in this,” he says.
“You can’t assume that journalists can and should be trusted, but there is a line that gets crossed where the media is targeted as a political tactic to undermine trust and confidence in the media, to undermine confidence in the work that journalists do.”
The New Zealand report also found 43 percent believed interference by media owners/boards or managers in editorial decisions would decrease their trust in the media, and 46 percent were extremely or very concerned about politicians publicly discrediting news.
“When governments really do overreach, when they really are abusing their authority, that is a really difficult problem.”
* 30 with Guyon Espiner comes out every week on RNZ, Youtube, Spotify and wherever you get podcasts.
The case for ‘sober analysis’
A lot of critics of the news media argue journalists have to “up their game” in order to address the trust problem.
“But the problem is that you’re asking journalists to up their game in an environment that rewards speed over accuracy, that rewards polemic over sober analysis that rewards sensational gossip rather than serious grown up news,” Greste says.
“We’re never going to have the kind of journalism that we need until we’re able to rethink how we fund good journalism.
“If you expect journalists to be reporting in the public interest, then we’ve got to make sure some public money goes into good journalism to support it.”
The rapid advance of ‘AI slop’ alongside sophisticated fake news is driving a growing recognition of the need for good journalism to underpin good public debate, he says.
“The system as it is isn’t working at all, but fundamentally journalists and journalism is still and will always be a core part of the way that our democracies function.”
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