Across too many EU member states, press freedom is weak, faltering or in decline with little comment and less action from the EU’s leaders or the European Commission. And in neighbouring member states, including applicant countries like Turkey, the EU is failing to tackle substantive attacks on the media.

In Hungary, the independence from political interference of the country’s central bank, judicial system, media regulation and more has been called into question as its government drew up a new constitution and regulatory approaches. This is now so bad that the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (Europe’s human rights watchdog – quite separate from the EU) is proposing putting Hungary on its monitoring list. If it does, Hungary will joning Bulgaria as the two EU member states on this list of shame. Yet where are the EU’s leaders? More concerned on the whole with whether Hungary’s central bank is genuinely independent than whether a core element of political and economic accountability, a free media, is under attack.

A similar picture can be seen in Greece. As the ferocity of the economic crisis, and the measures imposed by the EU’s Troika, tear at the fabric of Greek society, media freedom is deteriorating – from a position that was already weak by EU standards. Journalist Kostas Vaxevanis, winner of this year’s Index Press Freedom Award, was prosecuted in 2012 for publishing the so-called Lagarde list of Greeks who have Swiss bank accounts, and may be evading tax as a result. Having won his case, Greek prosecutors rapidly announced a retrial, due this June – which if he loses will see Vaxevanis jailed. This case is ignored in Brussels. When Index and its international partners wrote to Commission president Barroso, he delegated the reply to a junior official who wrote in a letter to Index this January that the case had been positively resolved but the Commission would keep a careful watching brief. This dismissive ignorance would be laughable if it wasn’t so serious.

Meanwhile, across the EU’s border, Turkey’s government is attacking media freedom with ever more brazen impunity, something Index recognised by putting Turkey’s imprisoned journalists on its press freedom Award shortlist this year.Turkey now stands ahead of China and Iran in the number of journalists it has jailed, while other journalists week by week lose their columns, their jobs, are censored by editors or owners or have learnt to self-censor. The EU is in – slow and lengthy – membership negotiations with Turkey. Any such candidate state is meant to meet basic standards of democracy including a free and fair press before talks start. So where is the EU and why has it not suspended talks until Turkey stops attacking the cornerstone of its democracy – the media?

Going North to the UK, there is chaotic disarray as British politicians attempt to establish a new system of press regulation in response to the phone-hacking scandal. The cross-party consensus on the proposed new regulator oversteps a crucial press freedom red line, with MPs voting on detailed characteristics of a new regulatory system. The bulk of the press has rejected this new approach – one that would impose exemplary damages for those not joining its ‘voluntary’ regulator – something the European Court of Human Rights will doubtless be called to judge on if the new regulator goes ahead. The Telegraph, Daily Mail, News International and others have proposed a different form of ‘independent’ regulator – one that gives them a veto on core appointments, an industry own-goal where genuine backing for a truly independent regulator would have given them the moral highground. It’s a shambolic mess – parliament showing itself careless on press freedom, and the UK apparently incapable of designing a tough, new regulator that is genuinely independent both of politicians and the press.

Where is the EU in all this? Mostly still ever-focused on the euro crisis. Senior EU leaders are starting to worry about the vertiginous loss of political trust in the EU across most member states, but showing little concern for a key element of European political systems, a free press. European Commission Vice-President Nellie Kroes did establish a High Level Group on Media Freedom and Pluralism. But while its report had some welcome recommendations, the Group, rather anachronistically failed to begin to address and embrace the freedoms of the digital age where we are potentially all reporters and publishers.

On this World Press Freedom Day, it is time that the EU remembers its roots in democracy and freedom of expression and starts to hold its members – and candidate countries – seriously to account wherever press freedom is under attack.

Tunisia: Press faces repressive laws, uncertain future
Egypt: Post-revolution media vibrant but partisan
Brazil: Press confronts old foes and new violence

Photos: Shutterstock

The post World Press Freedom Day: Is the European Union faltering on media freedom? appeared first on Index on Censorship.

‘The Prime Minister is right not to have made a shoddy compromise with Nick Clegg and Ed Miliband, which would have meant statutory underpinning of press regulation. Politicians should not pass laws that specifically control the press if those politicians are to be held to account by a free press.

“The Royal Charter is itself a compromise as it does mean some political involvement – which Index opposes. It is also quite wrong to say – as supporters of the statutory route have –  that David Cameron is doing what the press barons want. A tough new independent regulator whether set up by Royal Charter, or preferably by a route with no political involvement at all,  is a big step forward compared to the previous system of self-regulation, which doubtless many of the press barons would still prefer.

“Cameron’s decision to put the Royal Charter approach to a vote is a risky one – and Index is concerned to see MPs voting in even this form on press regulation. But Cameron’s decision to go to a vote has clearly been forced by the threat of wrecking amendments being added into several bills, including one that is already threatening the passage of the Defamation Bill, which Leveson himself said should be kept separate from his work.”

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This article was originally published on Open Democracy, as a part of a week-long series on the future digital freedom guest-edited by Index

Threats to digital freedom are growing just as the number of people accessing the internet is taking off, with millions more likely to join the digital world through mobiles and smartphones in the coming years.

The range of challenges is wide: from state censorship, including firewalls and the imposition of network or country-wide filters, to increasing numbers of takedown requests from governments, companies and individuals, corporate hoovering up of private data, growing surveillance of electronic communications, and criminalisation of speech on social media.

The rapid growth of threats to our digital freedom, in democracies as well as authoritarian regimes, means that the next few years could prove to be a watershed period determining whether the net remains a free space or not. Defending our freedom online means taking action now — beginning with understanding the nature of the threats and who lies behind them.

Governments send mixed messages
In democracies such as the US, UK, Sweden, India or Brazil, governments and politicians will often make stirring calls to defend digital freedom, emphasising that fundamental rights to freedom of expression and privacy apply online as much as off. But faced with temptations, such as the growing technological ease of mass population surveillance — from mobile phones to internet usage, web searches and social media chat — too many governments in democracies are starting to look at the sort of mass gathering of communications data that previously only authoritarian regimes would consider.

This leads to strange contradictions in government policy stances. In the UK, the government has temporarily withdrawn its proposed “snoopers’ charter” (the Communications Data Bill) in the face of swingeing criticism from an MPs’ scrutiny committee and from wider civil society. The Bill in its proposed form would have represented the most extensive mass surveillance of a population’s activities in the digital world of any democracy.

Yet at the same time, the UK along with the US, Germany and many other European countries has stood firm against attempts by China and the Russia, with some support from an array of other countries, to introduce top-down global control of the internet. Instead the UK government, along with many other (though not all) democracies, has argued for the current more “multistakeholder” model where no one body, country or group controls the net. The Indian government wobbled to a disturbing extent on this before refusing to go along with China and Russia at the major international telecoms summit in Dubai last December, in their push for this top down control.

Countries such as China and Iran have, unsurprisingly, been in the vanguard of those trying to build firewalls, block websites, and in myriad ways limit, control and monitor their population’s use of, and access to, the web. Yet the number of countries limiting the internet in some way has grown sharply in the last few years. Some of the limits introduced may seem unimportant, such as the Danish government having a country-wide internet block on their population accessing gaming sites in other countries (not for censorship reasons but to preserve the Danish monopoly on this profitable business). But the more the internet is filtered at network or country level, the less free it becomes.

There will always be arguments why a particular filter is necessary — to tackle child porn, to protect children and young adults from legal adult porn, to tackle crime and terrorism, to stop offence. Filtering and blocking sites always run the risk of over-blocking, of hiding not stopping a problem, and of being used for reasons beyond those stated.

Unless governments stand up for free speech, there can be segments of the public who demand limits on speech that undermine free expression as a fundamental right. One key example of this is the growing sensitivity of many people to offence. Yet there is no right not to be offended, and one person’s offence is another’s honest argument or piece of creative art. In the UK and India, we have recently seen arrests and prosecutions for supposedly offensive comments or photos and other postings on social media (in the case of these two countries relating to the common root of a 1930s English law that criminalised ‘grossly offensive’ phone, and then electronic, communications). There is now growing concern and debate about this criminalisation of mostly harmless social media comment. In the UK the director of public prosecutions Keir Starmer has issued interim guidelines in an attempt to rein in the growing number of such prosecutions.

Corporations as censors
Another disturbing part of this growing set of threats to our web freedom is the role played by corporations. Many web hosting companies and internet service providers state their support for fundamental rights, including free expression, while insisting that they also have to obey the laws of countries they are in. Google and Twitter have led the way in publishing transparency reports showing the number of takedown requests and user data information requests they have received from different governments.

But companies can become complicit in censorship if they take content down too readily in the face of public or government complaints — avoiding the risk of court cases or libel suits, playing safe. Companies such as Facebook or Twitter also set their own terms of service which define what is and is not acceptable usage and behaviour on their platforms. Perfectly normal perhaps — just like a club sets the rules of behaviour of its members.

But when the club, in the case of Facebook, is a billion strong, and its terms of service dictate what types of images and language are and are not acceptable, moreover dictating that anonymity is not allowed, then these are the sorts of constraints on free expression that are usually the preserve of governments to decide — governments that can be held accountable by their citizens (in democracies) and challenged by civil society, in the courts and through the ballot box.

The retention and commercial use of increasingly large amounts of individuals’ data from their internet activities has also sparked an extensive and vital debate about privacy. Privacy online is very often closely intertwined with free expression online: if someone is monitoring what you do or say or gathering it up and exploiting it commercially, that can be a major chill on free speech.

Whether and to what extent there should be a “right to be forgotten” is one part of this debate. Given the pervasive nature of the web, actually deleting individual data is becoming increasingly difficult. At the same time requests to delete individual data from news reports, for instance, is a sort of censorship of the historical record which would be highly undesirable.

Digital freedoms closing down

There are a wide and growing set of threats to our digital freedoms. But there are positive trends too. The rapid, intense and so far successful fight back against various forms of extensive imposition of copyright controls (ACTA, PIPA, SOPA and others) shows this is not a one-way street.

Even in regimes like Iran and China, many ordinary citizens have found ways to evade the censor, to widen their ability to communicate and access information. Governments can be challenged — at least in democracies — if they go down the route of mass surveillance or criminalisation of social media comment. Defending our digital freedom means becoming active, engaging with the arguments, making the case: bad decisions and laws can be stopped, limited or reversed. It is a national and an international debate — and the debate is now on.

The post Gathering clouds over digital freedom? appeared first on Index on Censorship.

A recently released report from a European Union group contains recommendations that would endanger media freedom, says Kirsty Hughes

This article was first published in European Voice

Is “everyone who can hold a pen or type on a keyboard” a journalist? In our age of citizen journalism, the answer is surely “yes, if they choose to be”. But the European Union’s High-Level Group on Media Pluralism and Freedom answered differently: “The word ‘journalism’ would lose all meaning”, its members declared in a report published on 22 January.

Quite how to define journalism eluded the group, it admitted — not surprisingly since journalism has never been a profession like medicine or law. But this did not deter the group from making recommendations that might undermine, rather than promote, media freedom — including a proposal for EU member states to have media councils or regulators that could remove “journalistic status”.

But how could — or should — any regulator determine who can write for a newspaper, post a blog or make a radio programme or podcast? And how to stop someone exercising their right to ask questions, analyse politics, or write opinions? To attempt to do so would be futile as well as foolhardy. Are journalists to have less right to free expression than ordinary citizens?

The High-Level Group struggles to keep up with the digital age. Anachronistically, they declare “the media quite literally form the major locus of interaction between citizens and the political and economic driving forces active in any society”. “Normal citizens” are “readers, listeners, watchers” — which rather spectacularly misses the point of the interactivity, creativity, self-publishing, citizens-direct-to-power-holders activism of our tweeting, blogging, digital times.

This old-fashioned approach is also reflected in the group’s exclusive concern with “high-quality”, socially responsible journalism. Freedom of expression for raucous, irreverent tabloid-style journalism does not make a showing in the report’s pages.

Nor does the concept of the public interest feature. This is of deep concern. The group, for instance, recognises the importance of protecting journalistic sources unless a court decrees otherwise — but it does not see fit to mention how important public-interest defences may be (whether as a legal argument for protecting sources, or for defending intrusions into privacy, or even in some cases for breaking the law).

Some of the Group’s recommendations are welcome — including its emphasis on net neutrality and transparency of ownership. But even these recommendations rapidly tip into more dubious proposals — the Group wants media organisations to “follow clearly identifiable” editorial lines and make them transparent. But surely this is what is in daily or weekly editorials. Or should each newspaper solemnly declare which political party it supports and never be allowed to change its mind, and never write a fuzzy editorial?

More disturbing still is the demand for all member states to have “independent media councils with a politically and culturally balanced and socially diverse membership… monitored by the Commission”. This recommendation ditches the idea of self-regulation at a stroke for any member state, let alone the idea that different set-ups might be appropriate in different countries. And “political balance” could imply representation across political parties when the fundamental principle here should instead be to keep media free from political interference.

This desertion of basic principles is capped by the idea that the Commission would then monitor the national regulators. Surely, a fundamental role of the media in a democracy is to hold power to account, challenge, report, criticise and analyse. Yet the Group does not explain how the Commission’s political power would be held to account when it is the super-regulator entrusted with overseeing our press freedom. The idea is bafflingly bad.

Neither journalists nor media organisations are above the law in a democracy. But our media freedom is part of our freedom of expression. And attempts to define, limit and take away “journalistic status” or let political bodies oversee the media will undermine both our media freedom and our democracies. The High-Level Group should go back to the drawing board.

Kirsty Hughes is Chief Executive of Index on Censorship

The post Not the route to free media appeared first on Index on Censorship.

This article was originally published in Press Gazette

As newspaper editors are put under pressure by David Cameron to conjure up rapidly a Leveson-like press regulator that doesn’t require legislation, there is still much confusion around what Lord Justice Leveson’s voluminous report actually means.

Does it cross the Rubicon of statutory involvement in the press? Or does it really set out the path to an independent, voluntary and self-regulatory approach?

While the power and behaviour of large media corporations have rightly been under an intense spotlight, little attention has been paid to questions of political power and the reasons why politicians around the world can so easily be tempted to pressurise or even control the press. Leveson’s report is also remarkably easygoing on the misjudgements of politicians and police in their relations with the media, allowing for good faith even where bad decisions have been taken, especially by the police.

Yet part of what Leveson — and others — exposed so effectively to the world was an extraordinary cronyism in some media-political-police networking. Coming so quickly after the expenses scandal, it is surprising that so many people — hacking victims, politicians, academics, celebrities — are ready to say the answer to the phone-hacking scandal is to let politicians vote on regulating newspapers.

Leveson’s so-called “statutory underpinning” of a press regulator would mean MPs voting on the characteristics such a regulator should have, set out in 24 paragraphs that Leveson says would form the core of the definition of an acceptable regulator. This breaches the vital principle for a free press and freedom of expression — that state, politicians, and government should not have any sway over newspapers beyond general laws that apply to all citizens and organisations.

It is hardly new to point out that politicians care about their media image and how the press report on them, and do what they can to spin good coverage. Good coverage can help to keep them in power, impacting on what voters think and how they vote. And so we need journalists and politicians to be independent of each other if we want our democracy to function as it should.

A vote by MPs to establish the characteristics of a press regulator means that body would not be independent. Nor, if it follows his principles for an “independent” board with no current editors, is it ‘self-regulation’ either. Is it at least voluntary, like the Irish model, which is set up by statute but voluntary to join? Here confusions reigns. Leveson says it is. But one characteristic he insists a press council must meet is that “all significant news publishers” join.

So if anyone exercises their voluntary right not to join, the press council fails.

Leveson suggests (as a view not a recommendation) that if it fails, Ofcom should act as a statutory backstop. Catch 22: the press council fails if anyone chooses voluntarily not to join; but if the body fails, compulsory backstop regulation steps in. Joseph Heller would be proud of him — but it’s no way to protect press freedom.

Kirsty Hughes is Chief Executive of Index on Censorship. She tweets at @Kirsty_Index

Background

Press Release: Index on Censorship’s response to the Leveson report

Index Policy Note: Freedom of the Press, Governance and Press Standards: Key Challenges for the Leveson Inquiry

Index Magazine: Leveson must protect press freedom

The post Why journalism and politics should remain independent appeared first on Index on Censorship.

Kirsty Hughes outlines Index’s issues with the press inquiry’s recommendations

Lord Justice Leveson’s report could determine the path of the press in Britain for years to come.

There will be many more days of picking over the minutiae of the 2,000 page report, but some key elements are clear — and have already split the coalition and the House of Commons.

Statutory regulation threatens press freedom

Statutory regulation, or underpinning in the jargon, of an “independent” press regulator is Leveson’s core recommendation. If it happened, this would mean a specific law would set out aspects of control of the press for the first time in over 300 years. Index is strongly opposed to any such statutory involvement in press regulation.

In his brief remarks presenting the report today, Leveson attempted to pre-empt such criticism asserting: “This is not, and cannot be characterised as, statutory regulation of the press.” But the Prime Minister David Cameron disagreed in his statement to the House of Commons saying he had “serious concerns and misgivings” and that statutory underpinning of an “independent” regulator would be an “enormous” step.

Leveson’s report sets out in great detail the characteristics and criteria that the new regulator should meet. It also suggests that a “recognition body” would assess and “certify” that the regulator met these criteria — with Ofcom suggested as the best organisation to be this recognition body. MPs would vote into law these criteria, and would vote into law the process by which an “independent” appointments panel would select the chair and board of the regulator (which would exclude any current editor).

Politicians must not control the press

This politicisation of press control would be a major breach of the principles of freedom of expression and a free press. There are fundamental reasons why politicians and media should be distinct from and independent of each other. The cronyism between media, police and politicians, exposed in part in the Leveson Inquiry, is not a reason to establish a sort of “reverse cronyism” whereby media would risk being pressurised by government and other politicians.

The media has a vital role to play — as Leveson himself indicated — in monitoring and reporting the political scene, challenging and criticising and holding to account those in power; if journalists cannot do this robustly and without fear of interference or other political consequences, press freedom is constrained. Beyond this, even “light” statutory regulation could easily be revisited, toughened and potentially abused once the principle of no government control of the press is breached.

The fact that, in Leveson’s recommendations, it is left as “voluntary” for news publishers to decide to join, does not mitigate the fact that all those who do join are part of a statutorily-established process. And there is also a Catch-22 here since the Report states that the press regulator should only be recognised as effective if “all significant news publishers” join. So if one major news outfit doesn’t join, the regulator is deemed unacceptable. In that case, all “significant” news publishers would be part of the statutorily-established system.

The system Leveson proposes is very similar to that operating in Ireland since 2009. The Irish system does not however demand that all significant news outfits join. And, on the other hand, the Irish model is somewhat more intrusive in that the Justice Minister there essentially plays the role that Leveson suggests Ofcom would play in the UK system. While Ofcom is somewhat more arms-length than a UK minister acting as the “recognition body”, this does not solve the central problem of statute, which must be created by politicians.

Leveson goes to some lengths to set out criteria for an independent appointments panel to appoint the independent chair and board of the “independent” regulator. But if MPs first vote on the detailed statute that sets up the panel and the criteria for the regulator, then this proposal threatens press freedom in the UK and Cameron must remain resolute in his opposition to this.

Other key proposals

Leveson’s proposal for a cheap, effective arbitration service is one that Index welcomes — this can benefit both complainants and publishers in ensuring complaints can be dealt with swiftly, fairly, and without great costs. Swift, fair arbitration in this way can deal with those cases where the media is, or is felt to be, impervious to complaints. A much stronger standards arm, fines, and more independent figures on the regulator’s board can all act — as Leveson and the party leaders agree — to transform the behaviour of those parts of the press whose behaviour Leveson castigates in his report.

Leveson calls for much greater transparency in media relations with politicians and the police especially at senior level. Ending cronyism and inappropriate relationships between some journalists, some politicians and some police is important. But insisting all contact between senior police officers and journalists must be transparent risks throwing the baby out with the bathwater — deterring whistle-blowers and inhibiting legitimate journalism.

Leveson insisted today that it was wrong to say that the phone-hacking scandal and other examples of damaging and inappropriate press behaviour and intrusion into individuals’ privacy were due to failure to apply the law. But the criminal law does apply to the media, as to other organisations and individuals. And a combination of effective application of existing laws with a stronger independent regulator – set up without any statute or parliamentary vote — can provide the framework for genuine press freedom to be upheld in the UK and to ensure there are higher media standards, better governance, and greater protection for individuals’ from criminal, in appropriate and unjustified media behaviour. A statutory route will undermine the free press that Leveson — and Clegg and Miliband — claim they want to keep.

Kirsty Hughes is Chief Executive of Index on Censorship. She tweets at @Kirsty_Index

Background

Press Release: Index on Censorship’s response to the Leveson report

Index Policy Note: Freedom of the Press, Governance and Press Standards: Key Challenges for the Leveson Inquiry

 

The post Index: Leveson goes too far appeared first on Index on Censorship.

Index on Censorship condemns the sentencing in Bahrain today of human rights defender and Index award winner Nabeel Rajab to three years in prison for charges related to “illegal gathering”.

Kirsty Hughes, Chief Executive of Index on Censorship, said:

“We strongly condemn the imprisonment of Nabeel Rajab for speaking out against human rights violations. It shows the lengths Bahrain’s government will go to silence activists — and exposes their token statements in favour of reform as phoney. Index calls for the immediate release of Rajab, and for the Bahrain government to respect fully universal human rights, and to implement a serious reform process as promised since last year.”

Prominent human rights defender and president of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights (BCHR) Nabeel Rajab, was today sentenced to three years in prison for charges related to “illegal gathering”. Rajab, who was awarded an Index on Censorship Free Expression Award this year, has spoken out internationally against the human rights violations committed by the Bahrain’s government following a brutal crackdown on pro-democracy protests on 14 February 2011. Despite promises of reform, including commissioning an independent inquiry into the country’s crackdown following February last year, unrest continues in the troubled Gulf Kingdom.

Rajab still faces defamation charges for allegedly insulting the Sunni residents of Muharraq on Twitter. The verdict in that case has been postponed until 23 August.

The post Bahrain activist Nabeel Rajab sentenced to three years in prison appeared first on Index on Censorship.

This post originally appeared on the Independent Blogs

As the often theatrical spectacle of the Leveson hearings — with its mix of posturing, jousting, inquisition and exposé — draws to a close, the big question is what Leveson will recommend this autumn. Will we see proposals that defend press freedom and promote high professional standards, or do we risk facing proposals that limit press freedom and serious investigative journalism?

Given the range of unethical and illegal behaviour exposed in the phone-hacking scandal, and the tawdry tales of political-media cronyism under the spotlight at the Inquiry, there may be a risk that Lord Justice Leveson will prioritise standards and regulation over our sometimes riotous press freedom.

Calling for independent, self-regulation in the face of the excesses of some in News International and elsewhere cuts little ice with many. But it is worth recalling the most basic elements of our democracy that underpin the need to keep the state well out of our press. Our universal and fundamental right to free speech, to hold opinions, share information (across borders and different types of media), and express views is enshrined in international charters and laws for good reason, not least given governments’ proclivity to interfere in that right.

The governments that most go in for controlling the press, bugging their own citizens, snooping on the net, or criminalising speech tend to be the authoritarian or totalitarian ones, whether we are thinking China, Azerbaijan, Iran or North Korea. But intrusions into press freedom in Italy and Hungary show the problem is closer to home and within democracies too. Without a free press — both online and off — we would lose a big element of our free speech, our ability to hold government and other power-holders (including big business) to account, to investigate wrongdoing, lies, and other cock-ups and conspiracies.

So higher press standards cannot come from statutory government control or regulation. But if the excesses of phone-hacking, and over-close cronyism between some in the media, police and politics, are to be tackled, then we need a new deal. That must include a new self-regulatory body with greater teeth to tackle unwarranted invasions of privacy, false allegations and unethical behaviour. It must be a body that can set and monitor standards. And one that can offer rapid, effective and fair resolution of complaints — including a quick, fair voluntary mediation service as an alternative to lengthy, expensive court cases.

One solution propounded by some given the inadequacies of our current set-up is that press outsiders and retired editors should run the new body. But a press regulator that does not include current senior representatives of the press — not least at a time of rapid change in the technology and business model — will not get buy-in.  Nor do we need to reinvent the wheel. Where appropriate laws exist we don’t need to give those powers to a statutory regulator: current laws can tackle most unwarranted invasions of privacy and can deal with bribery of public officials.

One big challenge for a new self-regulating body — and for Leveson in his report — will be how to balance the right to privacy with the need for serious journalism in the public interest. Journalists need to know that if they are digging deep into questions of misleading or false statements by politicians, or investigating public health or security risks, or tracking potentially criminal behaviour, that they have a public interest defence. At the moment, some UK laws allow such a defence, others don’t. Journalists are operating in an ad hoc and unclear legal framework that can lead them to draw their horns in and shift towards self-censorship.

And last but not least, while the tales of texts, lunches and cosy chats between some leading media figures, politicians and police may encourage an ever downward trend in trust for these groups, regulating such contacts, beyond existing law, is not the way to go either. Whether it’s the whistle-blower, or just a good source in a government department tipping a journalist off in the right direction, serious probing journalism depends on informal interaction with politicians and officials.

Some of our senior figures have shown they have little idea of where to draw the line in such relationships, so clear professional standards need setting out.  But the state will over-regulate given a chance. Voluntary and professional standards combined with good corporate governance remain the only route to go if we still credit press freedom and democracy as inextricable. That is the challenge for Leveson.

Kirsty Hughes is Index on Censorship’s Chief Executive.

Index is co-hosting a panel discussion, What will Lord Justice Leveson conclude about the future of the British press? at the Frontline Club on 19 July. Details and tickets are available here.

The post Leveson, politics and the press appeared first on Index on Censorship.

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While the internet and social media facilitate democratic instant global discourse, they are also tools of control, says Kirsty Hughes

PLUS: Read our Storify of the Dublin Internet Freedom Conference

At first glance, it seems self-evident that the exponential increase in the way millions of us communicate through email, mobile phones, Twitter, Facebook or myriad other websites must have hugely extended our freedom of speech.

We can now comment, receive, share, send and publish information around the world to an extent unimaginable a few decades ago. The Arab Spring unfolded in part through the power of social media as protesters used Facebook, Twitter and mobiles to organise.

Much of our public debate is now concerned with whether children are safe in this digital world or how to deal with abusive “trolls” online rather than worries about constraints on our digital freedoms.

While few would be surprised that authoritarian countries like China or Iran monitor and censor information and criticism online at least as much as they ever did (and still do) offline, many are complacent about their internet rights in democracies such as Ireland or Britain. However, we are sanguine about our internet freedoms at our peril — they are already under increasing attack and constraint. If we are not to wake up one day and find that our internet is constrained and under surveillance — our freedom of speech and our privacy compromised — then we must actively defend those rights now.

One of the biggest threats to our digital freedom comes about because of the amount of easily collected information about what we do online, on our mobile phones and through Twitter and Facebook accounts. Controlling how, and how much, companies like Facebook and Google can gather and use information on their users is one challenge, but a much bigger one is stopping governments snooping on all our activities and contacts.

In a democracy, we probably accept that to tackle crime or terrorism, police may, within strict limits, sometimes have the right to monitor phone calls, track who is calling whom or even who is visiting someone’s house. However we don’t expect that to apply to the vast majority of citizens going about their daily business, nor do we expect phone companies to be told to track all of our calls.

The Chinese government demands that companies who provide internet services track and monitor all their users — a huge and chilling intrusion on free speech and privacy. Just last week, the British government published the Communications Data Bill, a “snoopers’ charter”, which will give police and other authorities unprecedented access to information on everyone’s emails, phone calls and internet usage.

If it becomes law, it will demand that internet service providers and mobile phone companies collect even more data than they do today for their own commercial purposes – and hand it over when asked. Imagine the outcry, in the days before the internet, if a record was taken of whomever you sent a letter to, whoever you called and whoever you met.

Another big threat to internet freedom comes through governments blocking access to sites or even to the web as a whole. At first glance this seems a problem in authoritarian and totalitarian regimes. China has increasingly sophisticated technology to block access to sites and ensure that ordinary users do not come across web pages and debates on democracy or the Chinese government itself.

This March, Pakistan put out a multimillion-dollar tender for a national-level filtering and blocking system. Apart from the outcry this caused in Pakistan and beyond, it raises the question of who supplies and exports the technology. Corporations should not be complicit in human rights abuses but where are the controls on exports of this kind?

In Britain, there has been a lot of debate about child protection online. While few would deny that parents should pay careful attention to what their children access online, the Daily Mail has been demanding nationwide network filters be set by all internet service providers so that users would have to opt in to view legal adult content.

This would be censorship of legal material, yet who decides which sites are on a “blocked” list? Research on blocking and filters has shown they frequently catch sites that are not the intended target — “overblock” in the jargon. Getting unblocked once you are on a list is not easy, yet the British government is now consulting on child protection filters.

The internet has freed many of us to be our own publishers and commentators without needing to go through the gateway of a publishing company or the comment and letters pages of a newspaper. This has increased our ability to criticise politicians, powerful businesses and others. There is a strong backlash against this — governments and large businesses are active in monitoring comments they don’t like and demanding websites take offending words down, often trying to hold the website, not the author, responsible.

“Takedown” requests are increasing in many countries — Spain has seen a big rise, while India, the largest democracy, is proving a challenge for websites which face large numbers of takedown requests on religious and political grounds.

Many countries have “hate speech” laws and libel laws for offline publications and it may be straightforward to apply these laws equally to online publication — although the online world also makes it very easy to rapidly publish rebuttals. However the evidence suggests many takedown requests are not made because comment is illegal or libellous but simply because it is critical. Web hosts often go along with such requests, even without a court order, to be on the safe side and avoid any possible legal costs and actions.

We are starting to see the privatisation of censorship — private web companies deciding whether to take something down, not a judge or a court — and it is mostly invisible. Google publishes a “transparency report” of all the takedown requests it receives — but where are the British or Irish governments’ own transparency reports showing all the requests they make and on what grounds?

Surveillance, blocking and censorship across our digital world sounds like a nightmare in another country. It risks being the reality at home too, though, unless governments and businesses are challenged to respect and defend our fundamental human right to free expression online as much as off.

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