Civilians Across the Middle East React to the Iran War: ‘A Fear That Settles in Your Heart’

Media & Culture

Amena found out about the war when air raid alarms woke her. Hossein first heard it when fighter jets blew up a radio station as he listened to it. Jad found out about it on the news, two hours before the bombs fell on his neighborhood. And the parents of several volleyball players found out when their daughters were pulled from the burning wreckage of a school gym. Most Americans have fortunately never seen war firsthand, and most of those who have were troops sent to fight far away. War in your hometown is a strange experience, especially a modern…

Media & Culture

Court Finds AI Hallucinations in Filing by Former State Senate Candidate

Tricia S. Lindsay, attorney for plaintiff Sai Malena Jimenez-Fogarty, responded to two motions to dismiss by filing a pair of memoranda of law that cited to numerous nonexistent cases. In response, the Court ordered Lindsay to show cause why she should not be sanctioned for her misleading filings. Upon consideration of Lindsay’s response to these orders, we find that she should be sanctioned in the amount of $2,500.00 …. [T]wo briefs were signed by Lindsay, and each contained a number of fabricated citations. When we say “fabricated,” we do not mean citations that arguably contain typographical errors—for example, Lindsay’s citations…

AI & Crypto

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Politics

Review: Latest Bridgerton Season Explores Personal Autonomy

Media & Culture

Netflix’s Bridgerton is a Regency-era drama known for its lavish balls and magnificently over-the-top dresses. In the show’s fourth season, released on Netflix in January and February, the show circles timely themes of journalistic freedom and personal autonomy amid all the pomp…

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People attend the funeral of Lebanese journalist Amal Khalil in Baissariyeh, Lebanon, April 23, 2026. Photo: AAli Hashisho/Xinhua/Alamy This Sunday is World Press Freedom Day. Like International Women’s Day, every day should really be World Press Freedom Day. Journalists are powerful watchdogs and protecting them should be a baseline requirement for a free society. But given how woeful the state of media freedom is right now – the number of murdered journalists being at a record high – a day of focus is clearly much needed. So too is a monument. The UK will have its first one dedicated to journalists killed in conflict zones next year, the design of which has just been revealed. Former Index trustee Sarah Sands spoke to us about it. Meanwhile, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), run by Jodie Ginsberg who used to to work at Index, is calling for an independent global body to support investigations into attacks on the media. Veteran foreign correspondent Christina Lamb echoed these calls, speaking days after Lebanese journalist Amal Khalil was killed in an Israeli airstrike. That there are many people working hard to address the dire situation is welcome. At Index these threats impact us on several levels. They feed into our campaigning programmes, while the editorial team work with people very much at the coal face. I joined the organisation in 2017 and one of the first articles I edited featured an interview with a Mexican journalist called Javier Valdez. A few months later Valdez was dead, shot 12 times by an unidentified gunman in broad daylight. That same year, and for several years after, I was in regular email correspondence with Andrei Aleksandrau, a former Index colleague and journalist from Belarus. In 2021 he was arrested in Minsk. A year later, another one of our contributors, Larysa Shchyrakova, was arrested. Fortunately Shchyrakova is out of jail and you can read about her experiences here. Aleksandrau is still being held. We also published Victoria Roschyna from Ukraine who was killed in 2024. I could list many similar examples, suffice to say the Index archive is a treasure trove, but it’s also a space where the words of the murdered and the wrongfully detained stand still, ossified, a sad and damning testament to the perils of simply observing. As I said, World Press Freedom Day should be every day and we work on media freedom issues 24/7. Still, we have commissioned a trilogy of pieces this week with the date in mind: Oren Persico writes from Israel on the media ecosystem there; Nedim Turfent, a former political prisoner in Turkey, talks about the threats directed at exiled media in Europe; and Dahlia Kholaif speaks to people on the ground in the Gulf about how the Iran war has amplified the ugly authoritarian reality of these states. Are journalists the canary in the coalmine, the first to be attacked during a democratic backslide? Perhaps, though I’ve heard artists and minority groups claim the same. What’s true is that journalists are the much needed fourth estate. They are a vital check on governments and the powerful. Journalists risk their lives to inform ordinary citizens about what is happening – and they’re now under unprecedented attack around the world. That fact should shame us all. READ MORE