From becoming the first female soccer writer in Australia to covering the Olympic Games, foreign affairs and some of the most defining stories from Lebanon and the Middle East, Daizy Gedeon has spent decades challenging the boundaries of journalism.
In this interview, the award-winning Australian-Lebanese journalist and filmmaker reflects on a career that took her from the sports desk to international reporting, and eventually to telling Lebanon’s story through journalism and documentary filmmaking.
Gedeon discusses what it meant to enter spaces that were not traditionally open to women, and whether breaking those barriers was enough or whether the real challenge was changing whose voices and stories were considered worth reporting.
She reflects on how international media has portrayed Lebanon over the years, what global audiences continue to misunderstand about the country, and whether Western journalism has genuinely moved beyond Orientalist narratives of conflict, instability and victimhood when covering the Middle East.
The conversation also explores the impact of constant exposure to images of war and suffering, the relationship between journalism and advocacy, and whether journalists can take a clear moral position while maintaining credibility and trust.
Finally, Gedeon addresses one of the defining challenges facing journalism today: in an age of endless information, has the real crisis become not a lack of news, but a lack of attention?
A conversation about journalism, women, Lebanon, the Middle East, truth, justice and the responsibility of telling stories differently.
