Eric Wishart is Standards and Ethics Editor, and former editor-in-chief, of Agence France-Presse, and the author of Journalism Ethics: 21 Essentials from Wars to Artificial Intelligence.
He teaches journalism ethics at Hong Kong University and is a tutor at Hong Kong Baptist University, where he taught international conflict reporting for several years. He is also a member of Organisation of Ombudsmen and Standards Editors.
His areas of expertise include media ethics, including the challenges of AI and disinformation, press freedom, and the safety of journalists.
A native of Glasgow, Scotland, in 1999 he became the first non-French editor-in-chief in the history of AFP, the world’s oldest news agency that traces its origins back to 1835.
He has served as a judge for several journalism prizes, including the Hong Kong News Awards,the SOPA (Society of Publishers in Asia) Awards, the Mind HK awards, and the Fetisov awards. He is a former president of the Foreign Correspondents’ Club Hong Kong, and a member of the Asian American Journalists Association.
As a member of AFP’s global news management, he drew up the AFP Charter setting out the Agency’s guiding principles; its code of code of ethics, which has been published in English, French, Arabic, Spanish and Chinese; the Agency’s 20 Principles of Sourcing; and he edits the AFP Stylebook.
He has been a regular speaker at international conferences on journalism and AI, media ethics, combating “fake news” and disinformation and on how journalists can restore public trust in the media. He has spoken on these topics at events held in a wide range of countries including India, Japan, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Laos, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Qatar, France, the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, the Czech republic and mainland China, as well as Hong Kong and Macau, and at the European Commission in Brussels.
During his time as a desk editor in Paris he covered NATO meetings in Brussels, the return of 39 US hostages from Beirut to Germany in 1985, and the start of the Algerian civil war after the cancellation of elections in January 1992.
His first book, “Journalism Ethics: 21 Essentials from Wars to Artificial Intelligence”, was published by Hong Kong University Press in 2024, and Chinese editions in both simplified and traditional characters are scheduled for 2026.
Eric’s first taste of journalism began at school when he contributed reports on football and school news to his local paper, and he supplemented his pocket money by working as a copy boy for the sports edition of the Evening Times in Glasgow on Saturday afternoons.
He officially began his career in 1972 when he joined Scottish and Universal Newspapers in Glasgow as a trainee journalist. He studied journalism for a year at Edinburgh College of Commerce, now Edinburgh Napier University, and then worked as a trainee in several Scottish newspapers before joining the Lennox Herald in the Scottish town of Dumbarton in 1974.
He worked there until 1979 as a reporter and then news editor. He also wrote a column on music, interviewing leading recording artists including Freddie Mercury, Joan Baez, Leonard Cohen, Paul McCartney, Steve Jones of the Sex Pistols, Black Sabbath, Linda Ronstadt, Johnny Cash, Bruce Springsteen and Marc Bolan. He is working on a book about his experiences in the music world.
He then joined the Paisley Daily Express as a reporter, and also had a weekly column on cars, which involved test driving a wide range of vehicles, from London taxis and Ladas to Ferraris and Porsches.
In 1984, and wishing to enter the world of international journalism, he joined Agence France-Presse in Paris. As standards and ethics editor he is a member of the agency’s news management in Paris, while living in Hong Kong.