The rapidly changing media landscape is a hot topic, and one that goes to the heart of how we are represented as a nation. The Auckland Writers Festival has a range of events on this theme, featuring some of the world’s sharpest media commentators.

This year’s Auckland University Debate moot is Everyone Has the Absolute Right to Offend. Come along and make your own mind up whether any constraints on freedom of speech need to be made, as a trade off, to keep the peace. The Debate features New Yorker media correspondent Ken Auletta who has his own session The Media Revolution. British investigative journalist Nick Davies also takes part in the Debate and on Friday in his own session titled Hack Attack discussing media ethics.

NZ Herald editor Shayne Currie, journalist Janet Wilson and Nick Davies discuss what’s made the day’s newspapers in a free session The Front Page and lauded NZ writer Philip Temple puts the case for why writers should lead the way in public discourse in a free event, Speaking Truth to Power.

The vital role reviewers play in society is examined in two Festival events: New Yorker Daniel Mendelsohn is ‘our most irresistible critic’ according to The New York Times Book Review and the UKs Peter Holland and NZs Wystan Curnow talk about The Role of The Critic.

Metro magazine editor Simon Wilson, Jolissa Gracewood and Russell Brown appear in free event Stop Tweeting…Commit!, a discussion of social media and an exploration of the place for lengthy journalism and the public’s appetite for it.