Julian Petley

During his career, Julian has moved back and forth between working in the media and teaching about the media, and although he has been a full-time academic for the past twenty-six years he is still an active freelance journalist, now publishing mainly online in sites such as Byline Times and Inforrm. He is also a member of the editorial boards of the British Journalism Review, Porn Studies and Ethical Space, and of the advisory board of Index on Censorship. As a member of the Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom North and a supporter of Hacked Off he actively campaigns for media which are both free from restrictions which stop them from performing their proper social functions but, equally importantly, behave responsibly and display the same degree of openness and public accountability which they habitually demand from other institutions. This work involves making numerous submissions to official enquiries of one kind or another (including the Leveson Inquiry), giving evidence to parliamentary select committees, liaising with like-minded civil society groups, and maintaining a high media profile. His most recent books include the edited collection Media and Public Shaming, the second edition of the co-authored work Culture Wars: The Media and the Left in Britain, and the co-edited collection The Routledge Companion to Freedom of Speech and Censorship. Away from the Journalism area, he is one of the principal editors of the Journal of British Cinema and Television, and actively involved in the Brunel-based Knowing Our Rights project, of which he was a co-founder.