Johannes Wahlström

Johannes Wahlström is a Swedish journalist and filmmaker.

Background and career

Johannes Wahlström was born in Israel in 1981. His father is the writer Israel Shamir. Wahlström grew up in Jaffa, Moscow and Stockholm. After completing his masters thesis in media and communication at JMK at Stockholm University Wahlström returned to where he grew up in Israel/Palestine. There, together with Palestinian, Israeli and international journalists he founded the news service IMEMC.[1][2]

Since 2005 he lives in Sweden where he has worked for Aftonbladet, Svenska Dagbladet, Verdens Gang, and the documentary department of Swedish Television.

Work

Johannes Wahlström has worked as a journalist in Ukraine, Russia and Palestine on behalf of Aftonbladet, Journalisten and Fria Tidningar and has worked with freedom of speech related issues for the Alternative information centre in the Palestinian territories and the Swedish Institute in Russia.

Cablegate

Johannes Wahlström played an active role in the leak of US state department cables known as Cablegate that was released by Wikileaks. Being the only Swedish journalist with full access to the WikiLeaks material he produced articles and TV-programs for among others SVD, Aftonbladet and Dokument inifrån at Swedish Television.[3] In the SR program Studio Ett he was interviewed as a representative of Wikileaks, during which he criticized Swedish media for having a power dependent view of the world.[4]

Freedom of speech related issues

In October 2013 Wahlströms documentary film Mediastan premiered at the Raindance Film Festival in London. The festival described the documentary as "essential viewing for any media student as well as individuals concerned about democracy." [5] In November 2010 Wahlström and the journalist Dan Josefsson initiate an expose over the monopolistic tendencies of the Swedish media conglomerate Bonnier. The investigation lasts for a week in the form of articles in the largest Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet. In December 2009 Johannes Wahlström became the spokesperson of the independent magazine union Samarbetet. The Initiative was launched as a protest against the largest Swedish newspaper distributor Tidsam that was claimed to discriminate against newspapers that were not part of its media holding.[6] In 2008, as the editor of the magazine Tromb, Johannes Wahlström exposed corruption in the Swedish ministry of foreign affairs and later made an expose of the head of his magazine. In 2005, he wrote an article about how Swedish media censor their news reports of the Israel-Palestine conflict. The article was heavily criticized in Swedish media after two of the six journalists that Wahlström had interviewed claimed to have been misquoted.[7]

References

  1. ↑ IMEMC
  2. ↑ http://www.ordfront.se/Ordfrontmagasin/Tidigare%20artiklar/1205sraelmedia.aspx
  3. ↑ SvD torsdag 2 December 2010 s. 8
  4. ↑ Maria-Pia Boëthius, "Femte folkmakten granskar de styrande", ETC #48, 2010
  5. ↑ http://raindancefestival.org/films/mediastan/
  6. ↑ DN 20100126 s. 42
  7. ↑ DN Debatt 20 jan 2006
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