On Friday, November 14, Legal Initiatives for Vietnam (LIV) co-organized a lecture for the 25th JMC Communication Seminar at Ming Chuan University, in Taipei. The session brought together perspectives from East Asia and Central Europe to explore the evolving relationship between the state and the media in the 21st century.
The first part of the lecture featured Trinh Hữu Long, Executive Director of Legal Initiatives for Vietnam, who introduced three powerful personal stories illustrating the realities of media freedom in the region. He spoke about Swe Win, founder of Myanmar Now, who is now in exile in Australia; Steven Gan, co-founder of Malaysiakini, a pioneering independent news outlet in Malaysia; and Phạm Đoan Trang, co-founder of LIV’s magazine Luật Khoa Tạp Chí, who was arrested in Vietnam in 2020 and remains imprisoned. Through these examples, Trinh highlighted not only the challenges of censorship and political repression, but also the broader media environment issues—including disinformation, fake news, and digital manipulation—that shape journalism in East and Southeast Asia.
The second part of the event featured Dr. Martin Štefek from Charles University in Prague, who offered a comparative perspective from Central Europe. He described the region’s experience with censorship and state-controlled media during the communist era and the rapid transformation that followed the fall of the Soviet system. According to Dr. Štefek, the transition brought a swift revival of free and plural media, yet current developments show that the landscape remains fragile. Attacks on independent journalism, political pressure on public broadcasters, and controversies surrounding public funding demonstrate that media freedom in Europe cannot be taken for granted.