Shorenstein Journalism Award Winner Shibani Mahtani Counts the Cost of a Diminished Press in Asia
Shorenstein Journalism Award Winner Shibani Mahtani Counts the Cost of a Diminished Press in Asia
Amid autocratization and newsrooms’ retreat, fewer local journalists and foreign correspondents covering Asia are left to hold power to account and tell universal, human stories, says Singapore-based investigative journalist Shibani Mahtani, winner of the 2026 Shorenstein Journalism Award.
When Shibani Mahtani reopened the Washington Post’s Southeast Asia and Hong Kong bureau in 2018, the paper was in the middle of a major expansion of its foreign coverage, adding correspondents and reestablishing reporting hubs from Seoul to London. She later served as The Post’s international investigative correspondent with a broad mandate across the Asia-Pacific region, reflecting the paper’s commitment to deep, accountability-driven journalism outside of the United States. Since then, however, The Post has shuttered its foreign desk as part of sweeping newsroom layoffs in February 2026. “There is no China bureau, no India bureau, no Southeast Asia bureau,” says Mahtani, winner of the 2026 Shorenstein Journalism Award for excellence in Asia coverage.
Speaking at the October 20 award ceremony, Mahtani, whose role was cut in the layoffs, acknowledged the irony of being honored largely for work at an outlet that has since withdrawn from the region. But in her keynote, titled “What’s Your Agenda?”: Attacks Against the Free Press and Democratic Backsliding in Southeast Asia,” she drew attention to what she called “a more sobering story” of an embattled media environment across Asia, and of what the world loses as a result.
The waning commitment to foreign reporting by outlets like The Post occurs as governments across Asia are increasingly weaponizing their laws against the media – with local news media in places like Hong Kong, Cambodia, Myanmar, and Singapore battered by sustained attacks against the free press – and as funding for independent, nonprofit outlets in the region is drying up following the closure of the U.S. Agency for International Development.
APARC Director Kiyoteru Tsutsui (left) and Stanford Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education James Hamilton, Hearst Professor of Communication and director of the Journalism Program, present Shibani Mahtani with the 2026 Shorenstein Journalism Award. | Photo credit: Rod Searcey.
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Accountability-Driven Investigations Across Asia
The Shorenstein Journalism Award, which carries a $10,000 prize, recognizes outstanding journalists and news outlets who have contributed to a greater understanding of Asia. Sponsored by APARC, it commemorates the legacy of the late Walter H. Shorenstein, the center's benefactor, by honoring two causes he cared about: promoting journalism at its best and an informed understanding of Asia.
In his welcome remarks, APARC Director Kiyoteru Tsutsui noted that this year’s ceremony marks the 25th anniversary of the Shorenstein Award. “With each new honoree, APARC is proud to carry Walter’s legacy forward and affirm our support for independent, nuanced, fact-based journalism. This commitment is critical as trust in the news media plummets and as the truth, and those who report it, are under attack.”
The 2026 Shorenstein Award honors Mahtani for her original, powerful accountability-driven reporting across the region, particularly Southeast Asia. As he introduced her, James Hamilton, Stanford vice provost for undergraduate education, the director of the Journalism Program, and a member of the Shorenstein Award judging committee, cited her chronicling of Beijing’s crackdown on Hong Kong; exposés on China’s quest to reshape Asia in its image; reporting on transnational repression; and investigations into the rise of organized crime syndicates connected to state actors. As the award judging committee put it, Mahtani “has broken stories that others would not or could not report.”
Following her keynote, Hamilton moderated a discussion with panelists Anna Fifield, a New Zealand journalist and foreign affairs analyst, former Asia-Pacific editor at the Washington Post, recipient of the 2018 Shorenstein Journalism Award, and a member of the award judging committee, and Oren Samet, an assistant professor of political science at Rice University and a former postdoctoral fellow at Stanford’s Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law.
A Beleaguered Free Press and Untold Stories
Mahtani began her career in 2011 as a Southeast Asia correspondent for the Wall Street Jouranl at a time of optimism about the region and its free press. In Myanmar, amid democratic opening, exiled outlets returned home. In Hong Kong, platforms like Apple Daily and Stand News made it “one of the most fearless press environments anywhere in Asia.”
Today, none of those outlets exist in the same form. “They've either been forced into closure by authoritarian governments, or pushed back into exile after a string of defamation suits,” Mahtani said. The Online Citizen, an independent news platform focused on public interest reporting, has been forced out of Singapore and now operates from Taiwan. Most recently, two Singapore ministers won a defamation case against Bloomberg News, sending a chill across the media industry operating there.
Mahtani explained that the question in her keynote title, “What’s your agenda?”, is one Singaporean officials often put to reporters. It captures “how governments across the region treat journalism as a threat rather than a pillar of democratic life.” From terrorism charges in the Philippines to lawsuits in Singapore and Thailand to cybersecurity laws in Myanmar and Vietnam modeled on China’s, “governments are increasingly weaponizing their laws against the media.”
Under these conditions, what go unnoticed are stories about “quiet, universal struggles”: demographic decline, disenfranchised young people drawn into violent online subcultures, anxiety over AI, and more. “Behind every single one of these stories are powerful institutions, corporations, and governments who must be held to account,” Mahtani said. “That work cannot be done without journalists.”
Granted, media entrepreneurs are creating new collaborative models across the Asia-Pacific, and some outlets remain committed to independent reporting on the region, such as Maria Ressa (winner of the 2019 Shorenstein Journalism Award) and Rappler in the Philippines, the Hong Kong Free Press, and Tempo in Indonesia. “But they are doing so with less support than ever before,” she emphasized.
No longer part of America's biggest news outlets, Mahatani herself is navigating a new reality, committing to independent investigative reporting on Asia, and trying to build a community of independent journalists and an Asia-centric journalism model.
“The work here at Stanford to support research on this region is deeply encouraging and should be championed by other educational institutions and media organizations with the resources to do so, especially at a time when Washington is distracted and fumbling,” she said at the conclusion of her keynote remarks. “ It is not an exaggeration to say that our collective future depends on it.”
Geopolitics, AI, and the Future of News
Fifield highlighted the costs of an increasingly dangerous environment for reporters in China and the information vacuum created by Beijing’s expulsion of many foreign correspondents. She warned that, as more correspondents report on China from outside its borders, coverage loses “the humanizing stories about the things that bind us all together have become almost impossible to tell from China.” This trend feeds into the narrative of geopolitical rivalry that “helps with othering.”
Samet expounded on two trends driving democratic backsliding in Asia. First, in today’s geopolitical climate, governments across the region, mostly autocratic but some democratic too, feel emboldened to attack the press, civil society, and the opposition. Second, the infrastructure underlying international support that once protected these groups and helped finance their work is being pulled away. He cautioned that viewing Southeast Asia primarily through the lens of the U.S.-China rivalry obscures the region’s own domestic and international politics.
Asked whether repression in Southeast Asia is inspired, or perhaps exported by China’s controls in terms of censorship and imprisonment of journalists, Mahtani said that the legal framework of repression as manifested in cybersecurity and espionage laws has been borrowed from Beijing’s sophisticated version of it. “But honestly, most recently, I think it's not China, but the lack of leadership from Washington that is also enabling authoritarian governments to do as they please in the region,” she stated.
Offering final reflections, Samet urged the audience to keep an open mind about the opportunities to change the trajectory of politics and developments in Asia, including through AI and other new technologies. Considering the future of news, Fifield identified news fatigue as a risk to the industry even greater than AI, but reminded the audience that, over the years, journalists and newsrooms have proven nimble and adaptable to major technology shifts that threatened to upend their industry. She noted she was “fundamentally optimistic about our profession and our calling.”
In the age of AI, Mahtani concluded, media literacy is crucial. “Whatever we can do to empower people to understand and differentiate between what they see on TikTok and what they see in the New York Times, the better all our societies will be for it.”
