Anna Brees

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Thank you for donating to Patreon. From September 2021 I will be focusing on building the business directory at againstvaccinepassports.com. Any profits or income paid from the shop and donations will be spent on training and community events. 
I have a real passion for sharing my broadcast journalism skills with everyone. We all have a mobile phone, so we can all learn how to create professional video content for our channels.
I have been offered the opportunity on many occasions to lead a team of journalists - to launch a new media brand, but my passion and focus is training. I don't want to be the voice, I want to educate and inspire the new voices of the future:
Enabling others to use the skills I learnt in TV news to improve their presence on social media, and create content that reflects their values and principles.
This will lead to a more democtaic and authentic media service that feels like more like "us" where we stop getting angry watching the news, and feel yes - that looks and sounds a bit more like me. 


To make a one-off donation, please go here 

A bit about me:
Anna Brees was a BBC and ITV journalist until 2012, when she reached a turning point. She decided that returning to the newsroom at a time when everyone can produce, and publish via mobiles was the wrong direction to take, so instead launched Brees Media.

"During my time in TV news, I felt I was not representing all voices – not airing all sides of the story. I realised that the voice of TV journalists had too much power, and knew it was time for me to give my power away. I decided to teach people how to use video media to it's full potential, to create news reports and features using a mobile device – so people could learn how to spread their message online."

In 2018, she interviewed police officers who told her about an establishment cover-up of child abuse, this is when she knew her work and career had to take a different direction.  Having known Lenny Harper who led the police investigation into Jersey children's home, Haut de La Garenne, his horrific story rang true. What she heard truly shocked her, and she began to realise these were not 'isolated cases' - the public were being denied the truth and in reality media falls short of it's supposed role. It dawned on her that her former colleagues had not been holding power to account, and not exposing the corruption within these institutions.

Beyond Naivety: Illuminating Narrative
Seeing that the media was not 'doing it's job' opened her eyes and she discovered that some mainstream media journalists were purposefully distorting the narrative, and abusing their power to protect those behind the corruption.

Today her motivation is to shine a light into the darkness and unearth these buried stories that have been denied coverage, because journalists have naively trusted corporate communication departments, news and PR agencies, without taking the time to research these stories responsibly and comprehensively.

Anna's daily emails from the public tell countless stories of those desperate for injustice to be exposed, and that is why she has set up this Patreon page. Her primary focus is protecting children for the future, by real reporting and exposure of journalists who are abusing the influence and power they hold. She does this by training whistle-blowers, survivors and victims of injustice and abuse. As well as covering as many of these stories as she can in person.

The passage below is from Making the News, 2018. Available on Amazon.

"The BBC will trust a press release from a government or corporate organisation rather than an unedited piece of video footage from a viewer. They are very careful in what they broadcast to make sure it is true, but why do they trust these communications departments so readily? At the end of the day these are PR people, spin doctors, they either have the true message or a potentially distorted one from the person at the top, the head of the organisation. That could be a chief inspector passing down a few lines to the media department, or the head of the military doing the same, or a big business such as Tesco or Marks & Spencer.

The mainstream media is NOT a reflection of society, it is a version – an interpretation created by spin doctors and PR companies, organisations who have the money and time to foster relationships of trust with the mainstream media. They provide a financially-stretched and time-poor media with an ever-flowing resource of news - news that appears to be true, news that is very nearly true. Well I say that but, honestly, who knows?

It is the public who know the truth, we need to rely on them more, trust them more, and give them the skills to do what we as journalists can’t always do. I always felt I was missing a voice as a journalist, (and I was, I’d have just a few hours most days to do a TV report), but I no longer have to feel that way.

If people do lie, or manipulate or distort their message, then they will be found out and they will lose trust. That is how it’s going to work from now on. The BBC has cocked up on many occasions and covered stuff up, all organisations have, all people have. Jimmy Savile for example.

The mainstream media talk with authority, as if they have all the power, but they are losing it, and to address this imbalance I think passing on journalistic skills to the public is the way forward. It's a 'free for all' now, anybody can get their message out on these media platforms, and they do. However, established news channels are still defining them as alternative.  We can all blog, vlog and podcast. We can buy a team of staff/reporters and start interpreting our world. 

The Telegraph recently advertised a position for a video journalist, and I watched one of their reporters do a YouTube video reviewing the iPhone X. This video only had 600 views and it was of an inferior quality to what I could produce filming and editing on my mobile. The guy lacked energy in his presentation, but he was informative and professional. What was important about that broadcast was the brand, the Telegraph. That is what will sell news in the future, and convince people to believe – the brand and reputation.

BBC Radio Gloucestershire has just advertised for a mobile video journalist, this is a radio show, looking for a journalist to film and edit on an iPhone or iPad. But it is radio? Confusing, isn’t it? All media is converging and viewers are seeking out the people and channels they can trust. But being able to trust someone is getting harder."