A/ProfSacha Molitorisz

How can we shape a more ethical media landscape? How can the law best regulate journalism? And above all, how can media help us to flourish, both individually and collectively? In this digital age, my expertise spans ethics, law and media, and these are the questions that motivate my work.

As an Associate Professor with the Faculty of Law at UTS, I collaborate extensively with the Centre for Media Transition (CMT). Since joining the CMT in January 2018 as a postdoctoral fellow, my research and teaching areas include the ethics and regulation of journalism and media, public interest journalism and digital privacy. There's a lot to cover. In an era of algorithms and deepfakes, the media continues to be challenged and reinvented. Meanwhile, public interest journalism is under threat - and so too democracy. 

In 2020, my book Net Privacy, How we can be free in an age of surveillance was published in Australia by New South Books and in Canada by McGill-Queen's University Publishing. Shaun Micallef, Julia Baird, Robbie Buck and academics from New York to Oslo said very nice things about it. Net Privacy was based on my PhD, which applied Kantian ethics to digital media. I have taught at UTS, UNSW, Macquarie and NYU Sydney. At UTS, I teach and co-ordinate Ethics, Law and Justice, and I'm the academic lead of the Law Tech Challenge, where teams of students build apps for not-for-profit clients. Students often say it's the highlight of their uni years.

Previously, I worked for nearly 20 years at The Sydney Morning Herald and smh.com.au as a reporter, blogger, editor, reviewer and, for most of my career, as a senior features writer. It was too much fun to qualify as a real job. It also gave me a front row seat for the digital disruption of traditional media. Previously, I obtained law and arts degrees (with honours in English Literature) from UNSW, where I procrastinated by practising free throws.

As a lapsed journalist with a legal education, I have an abiding love of words and storytelling. My goal is to blend the nimbleness of journalism with the rigour of academia. And, where possible, to make it fun.