The New Censorship: How the War on the Media is Taking Us Down

Alumna, Dr Ayala Panievsky, is a researcher, journalist and activist and a Presidential Fellow, Department of Journalism, City St George’s, University of London. A PhD Gates-Cambridge scholar in Sociology, she was awarded the International Communications Association’s 2024 Outstanding Dissertation Award and the AEJMC 2025 Outstanding Dissertation Award. Ayala works with journalists worldwide to improve the future of news and what we get to know in times of new and sophisticated threats to democracy. She is the recipient of prestigious grants and awards, and her research has been covered in the BBC, The News Agents, LBC, Politico and more.

Her first book, The New Censorship: How the War on the Media is Taking Us Down, is based on the dissertation that she wrote during her time at Murray Edwards. It will be published on 4 September 2025, with a moving preface by the brilliant Emily Maitlis, and is available to order now.

Ayala says:
“When I started thinking and writing about how journalists cope with authoritarian efforts to capture and intimidate the media, I couldn’t imagine how painfully timely this dissertation would become”, Ayala says. “For too many years, we took it for granted that someone would always be there to tell us what’s truly going on. Unfortunately, that was an illusion. Just like we came to realise that we will have to fight for the planet if we want to keep living on it, it is time we start fighting for our right to know. No political battle will be won without it”.

About the book

As we find ourselves in a time of democratic decay all over the world, with relentless attempts to undermine truth and facts and unprecedented technological tools to spread disinformation and incite violence, brave journalism is needed more than ever.

In The New Censorship esteemed academic, former journalist and activist Ayala Panievsky focuses on the unfortunate and unexpected mechanisms through which today’s media has inadvertently amplified the anti-democratic movement that looms over our societies. From the birth of ‘the strategic bias’ to weaponising liberal norms against liberal democracy, the populist right has found a way to exercise a more effective and socially acceptable type of silencing and manipulation. Instead of banning stories, they spread flows of disinformation, which take hours and days to debunk. Instead of silencing, they shout louder. Instead of blue-pencilling, they employ fake users, bots, and outrageous smear campaigns to dominate the conversation. Heavy-handed censorship is unnecessary when one can manipulate people to censor themselves, or simply stop listening.

Based on cutting-edge empirical research, personal experience in newsrooms and parliament corridors and a decade of living under populism in power in Israel, Panievsky will not only explain how we got here but also lay out what we all could (and should) do to restart the conversation and protect our right to know.