PETER GRESTE The Correspondent. Reviewed by Braham Dabscheck

Peter Greste’s 2017 memoir The First Casualty has been reissued and retitled following the release of the film. It remains timely reading.

In 2013 Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood government was overthrown in a military coup. Australian journalist Peter Greste was reporting on events in Egypt for Al Jazeera, English (which operates independently from Al Jazeera, Muslim), a media company based in Qatar. He had previously been a reporter for Reuters, CNN and the BBC. On 29 December 2013, he and his colleagues Mohamed Fahmy and Baher Mohamed were arrested on terrorist charges because they had had meetings with the Muslim Brotherhood and, it was claimed, their news reporting was damaging Egyptian national security.

The three were initially sentenced to seven years imprisonment. On 1 January 2015 the highest court in Egypt, the Court of Cassation, announced there would be a retrial. On 1 February, 400 days after his arrest, Greste was released into the custody of Australian authorities by order of the Egyptian president to serve out the rest of his term in Australia. He returned to Australia on 5 February 2015, and the Australian government declined to incarcerate him. In Egypt, a retrial was held in August 2015, with all three again found guilty but given shorter sentences. Fahmy and Mohamed were subsequently pardoned, while Greste was a free man back in Australia.

Greste published an account of his time in Egyptian jails and a broad-based examination of the importance of journalism in The First Casualty, published in 2017. The book has now been made into a film titled The Correspondent and reissued with a new postscript.

The Correspondent is organised into two alternating parts, moving between chapters on Greste’s time in jail and events associated with his trial and subsequent release, and his work as a journalist and broader comments on the importance of journalism to the good governance of society.

When first arrested, he was not ill-treated other than being confined in two small cells with too many other inmates,. He had brief periods in solitary confinement, but was able to communicate with prisoners in nearby cells. He spent most of his time with Fahmy and Mohamed. The prisoners were always provided with food (Greste even started baking his own bread!) and sanitation. He was not subject to physical torture or ill-treatment. He realised from the very beginning that his and his colleagues’ internment was high profile; knowing the world was watching afforded them protection that would not be available to less fortunate prisoners.

The major problems Greste encountered in jail were his feelings of powerlessness and worrying what would happen to him. He worried about maintaining his sanity. This he achieved by a combination of meditation, regular exercise (he would run when allowed into an exercise yard), working out ways to play games, and interactions and disagreements with fellow inmates on what to do. He found that the best way to pull himself out of the abyss when feeling depressed was to focus on how he and his colleagues were involved in a struggle on behalf of all journalists and freedom of the press.

Greste provides details of various events associated with his trial and eventual release. His release and that of his colleagues resulted from the continuing pressure of the press, human rights groups and Western governments, especially the Australian government. Greste was told that the US’s preparedness to provide Egypt with military equipment helped secure his freedom.

The most interesting part of The Correspondent is Greste’s analysis of the broader role of the press, and how it is increasingly becoming circumscribed, not only in dictatorships but also within so-called free or democratic societies. Greste sees freedom of speech and press freedom as being integral to the operation of democracy: the role of the press is to inform the populace. Such information, provided without fear or favour, holds power to account and enables a society to make informed decisions.

On a couple of occasions Greste refers to John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty (1859).

Mill points out that the only way to be sure we have made the right choice in any situation is to test it against all the alternatives, and with access to all the facts. This can’t happen without genuine freedom of speech, and in a democracy it requires a media that is free to interrogate all the arguments and protagonists.

He also quotes directly from Mill:

The time, it is to be hoped, is gone by when any defence would be necessary of the ‘liberty of the press’ as one of the securities against corrupt or tyrannical government. No argument, we may suppose, can now be needed, against permitting a legislature or an executive, not identified in interest with the people, to prescribe opinions to them, and determine what doctrines or arguments they shall be allowed to hear.

Unfortunately, such a notion is under substantial attack. Greste spent most of his career in war-torn parts of the world reporting on issues associated with Al Qaeda, the Islamic State, the Muslim Brotherhood and the War on Terror. Virtually all the parties involved in such struggles do not want journalists reporting their activities such as bombings and the killing of defenceless people who get in the way, or challenging the rhetoric used to justify these things. Journalists and media organisations that don’t support them need to be eliminated.

The inside cover of The Correspondent says that ‘According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, between 9/11 2001 and November 2024, 1866 journalists have been killed in the line of duty.’ As of 1 December 2024, 361 journalists across the globe were behind bars.

Greste documents a number of examples of terrorist acts inflicted on the West, such as 9/11, and acts in England and France, including those associated with Charlie Hebdo. In all cases, governments introduced anti-terrorist legislation, ostensibly to keep the population safe. Greste identifies two problems with such legislation and the associated War on Terror. First, it distracts journalists for holding governments to account. The classic example here is the Bush administration’s rhetoric concerning weapons of mass destruction to justify the invasion of Iraq. There were no such weapons. It also absolves journalists from scrutinising the operation of governments and government bodies more generally.

Second, the War on Terror ‘triggered a rapid build-up of intelligence agencies, special military forces, covert operations and contractors’. Greste reports on a Washington Post survey on the extent of America’s security network.

The Post found a total of 3984 federal, state and local agencies working on domestic terrorism alone … The Post estimated that around 850,000 people … have top-secret clearances. In total, some four million people have some kind of security clearance.

Since 2001 successive Australian governments have passed almost 100 security laws to increase surveillance of the population by government security agencies.

Governments can use these agencies to gather information on persons who are critical of government actions that have nothing to do with national security but are just politically embarrassing – for example, government agencies operating outside the law, or corrupt behaviour. Whistleblowers who provide information can be tracked down and prosecuted. In addition, governments can gather information and take action against those ‘others’ who are regarded as less deserving than the blessed majority. A good example of this is America’s Big Beautiful Bill and the allocation of more resources to the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency to deport immigrants. Western societies are slowly, or maybe not so slowly, embracing the characteristics of dictatorial societies; societies they ostensibly abhor.

The Correspondent is an important book. While it provides more or less interesting information on the incarceration and eventual release of Peter Greste and his colleagues, its more significant contribution is its account of the eroding of our freedoms and the role the press has played, and needs to continue to play, in helping us to maintain our freedom. 

Peter Greste The Correspondent UQP 2025 PB 368pp $36.99

Braham Dabscheck is a Senior Fellow at the Melbourne Law School at the University of Melbourne who writes on industrial relations, sport and other things.

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Tags: democracy, Egypt, fim tie-in edition, freedom of speech, journalism, memoir, Muslim Brotherhood, Peter | Greste, press freedom, The First Casualty