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 lectures in journalism at Hong Kong University and Hong Kong Baptist University, teaching news writing and reporting and international conflict reporting. He is also a member of the professional standards and ethics committee of the Society of Professional Journalists and the Organisation of Ombudsmen and Standards Editors.
His areas of expertise include media ethics, the challenges of misinformation, the erosion of trust in established media, 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 is a judge for the Hong Kong News Awards and the SOPA (Society of Publishers in Asia) Awards, and a former president of the Foreign Correspondents’ Club Hong Kong. He is also a member of PEN America and 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 edits the AFP Stylebook.
He has been a regular speaker at international conferences on 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 Japan, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Laos, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Qatar, France, the United States, the United Kingdom, and mainland China, as well as Hong Kong and Macau, and at the European Commission in Brussels.
During his time as a desk editor he also covered NATO meetings in Brussels and the start of the Algerian civil war after the cancellation of elections in January 1992.