Atlético Paranaense from Curitiba, one of Brazil’s top flight teams and Brazilian champions in 2001, banned press conferences and independent media work during their weekly activities and on match days.

On top of that, no staff member — including players and managers — of Atlético is officially allowed to speak to the media. The club says that radio stations and newspapers should pay for the right to report on the club, along the lines of fees television stations pay to broadcast matches.

However, a 2011 federal law forbids football clubs from charging money for radio broadcasts.

The club’s policy is that all information about the team will be funneled through official channels ike the team’s website, online radio and TV. Independent journalists will be limited to background information and off-the-record statements.

It’s a common practice in Brazil’s football industry to have at least two press conferences a week with players and managers and regular media activity on match days. It’s also usual in the country to have people from clubs on sport shows airing on TV and radio, which makes Atlético’s move a rare one in Brazilian football.

“The content we offer is not of a primary importance to the audience, it’s pure entertainment. So we don’t feel obliged to let anyone enter the club’s premises and profit from our business without paying for it, like radio stations do”, says Mauro Holzmann, Atlético’s director of communications and marketing.

“Less than thirty years ago it was OK for televisions to broadcast football matches without paying for it, but now it’s unthinkable to do so. So why don’t the other media pay for it? We know it’s a paradigm shift, but maybe other clubs will do this too”, Holzmann told Index on Censorship.

Broadcasting of matches became another problematic issue. Atlético did not reach an agreement for Paraná’s State Championship with TV rights holders RPC  – a local affiliate of national media giant Rede Globo. Because of that, fans were not be able to watch the games unless they bought tickets and went to the pitch.

“This is a complete enclosure that ends up damaging everybody”, says Leonardo Bonasolli, reporter at Gazeta do Povo, Curitiba’s biggest newspaper.

“The club loses exposure at the media, and exposure means more sponsorship money. The press loses the chance of providing a different, independent point of view and, of course, fans also lose because they are not interested only on the team’s monolithic media work”, Bonasolli told Index on Censorship.

Atlético’s chairman Mário Celso Petraglia said the State Championship – which runs from January until early May – is not profitable, so he would not only deny TV broadcasting but would also put the Under-23 team on the pitch, while the main squad would have an extended pre-season in Europe until the start of the Brazilian Championship.

About the media ban, Petraglia said in a rare interview that the club “reached a limit” in its relationship with the press, and that journalists “should be neutral and conduct [their work] in an ethical and moral way”, something he believes does not happen in Paraná.

Petraglia’s disturbed relationship with the press has a long history – it started in the late 1990s, when he was involved in a bribery scheme with referees to fix match results. He was neither convicted nor banned because of the episode.

Atlético first tried to charge money from radios to broadcast its games in 2008. However, a judge ruled the fees were illegal and radio stations have since been given stadium access on match days.

Atlético’s media ban was effectively shut down in early May, during the State Championship finals against historic rivals Coritiba. Rede Globo, which also owns the TV rights of the Brazilian Championship, made a deal with Atlético to allow both matches to be aired. It also closed an agreement for broadcasting the State Championship in 2014 and 2015.

After the game, Atlético’s players gave interviews normally, even to outlets other than Globo, as if there was no ban.

Paraná’s Sports Journalists Association believes Atlético’s attitude towards general media won’t change much, even with the upcoming Brazilian Championship, which draws national attention to all clubs.

“When the Brazilian championship starts, Atlético will be forced to speak to Globo, and they will also feel pressed to hold conferences after matches, because there will be so many journalists from the whole country. But I doubt they will allow other radio or TV stations inside the club during the week, so Globo will do all interviews and share their material to the other outlets”, says the Association’s president, Isaías Bessa.

Local journalists also say the club’s lack of transparency damages Curitiba’s position as one of the host cities of the 2014 World Cup – Atlético’s stadium will a venue. Renovations on the stadium are said to be the most behind schedule of any of the 12 World Cup venues, but independent media was never allowed inside after the works began.

Atlético’s Mauro Holzmann firmly says the stadium will be ready by the end of 2013, like FIFA demands, and blames all delays on “Brazil’s bureaucracy” to deal with public financing.

The post Brazil loves football, but Atlético Paranaense doesn’t have the hots for the press appeared first on Index on Censorship.

The firm in question, Saradha Group, had risen to become a financial empire over the past eight years under boss and owner Sudipta Sen. The company has business interests ranging from construction to travel to exports and agriculture. When the “chit fund” scandal came to light — with an estimated loss of $4-6 billion (US) to investors — Sen fled to Jammu and Kashmir, where he was ultimately arrested.

A chit-fund scandal, or “cheat fund” as some sections of the media are calling it, operates like a ponzi scheme. Sen duped many small and middle class investors into giving him their life savings, with promises of great returns. He managed to evade the regulators by using a nexus of companies to launder the money. The money collected was used to recklessly invest in a range of industries — including a mismanaged media empire. The government of West Bengal has had to set up a $2.5 million fund to ensure that the small investors are not bankrupted.

In a letter to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), Sen claims to have been misled by a group of individuals who cheated investors by using his name, unbeknownst to him. However, the letter also shows how political patronage is obtained through acquiring media houses.

Saradha Group owns 18 newspapers and TV channels in West Bengal and Assam. These include Bengal Post, Sakalbela, Kalam, Paroma, Azad Hind, Prabhat Varta, Seven Sisters Post – and the TV channels, Tara Musik, Tara Newz, South Asia TV, and Channel 10, all under the umbrella of Saradha Printing and Publishing Pvt Ltd.

As Indian media blog the Hoot reports, “many senior journalists then suspected that media ownership was a matter of business strategy to establish the company’s credentials and also a bid to emerge as the mouthpiece of the major political party and perhaps get benefits in return.”

This view is supported by BBC journalist Sudhir Bhowmik, who says he left a job with the Saradha Group after he was told to “go soft on some leaders.”

It appears that Sen bought and built a media empire, allegedly on the behest of politicians of the ruling Trinamool Congress party, to play the part of a proganda-spinning machine for the government. This is no small feat – the net worth requirement of an applicant seeking to launch a news channel had been raised by the government from approximately $555,500 to $3,703,000, ostensibly to keep away “fly by night” operators away. But since Sen had already raised his financial portfolio, by dubious financial practises as we know now, he was able to take this step to becoming a media baron.

The curious case of the Saradha Group media empire gets murkier as the story unravels. In his letter to the CBI, Sen also claims to have been regularly blackmailed by Kunal Ghosh and Srinjoy Bose — two sitting Trinamool Congress members of the Upper House — into setting up his news channels. He also says he paid Ghosh $28,000 USD a month. Ghosh, now on the back foot, claims that he was simply a “salaried employee” and that he had “no authority to sign cheques.”

Sen’s use of the media empire to build political clout and protection is now being outlined by the national media. Influential members of West Bengal’s ruling Trinamool Congress party have been closely aligned with the media group. But some politicians are now distancing themselves from the group, despite having benefited from positive propaganda from its media outlets.

In India, which now has over 800 private satellite channels, media houses often favour particular political parties, and many are actually directed owned by politicians themselves. Amid growing unease, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting has asked all channels to furnish details of their shareholding patterns and equity share. Both the ministry and the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) have been looking to ways to ensure pluralism and diversity in the Indian media, and curbing monopolistic growth. They feel tracking ownership patterns might be one way of finding out which groups and individuals are involved in unethical behaviour like corporate and political lobbying, biased analysis and forecast in the political arena and sensationalism of news. The ministry has made it clear that if it finds any media group in violation of its license agreement – including shareholding patterns – it is ready to cancel licenses.

Meanwhile, another unfortunate result of the scandal is that more than 1,400 journalists are out of jobs, while some of Sen’s Channel 10 employees have filed a complaint with the police over non-payment of salaries by Sen and Ghosh.

The post Saradha Group scandal exposes ties between India’s media, politicians appeared first on Index on Censorship.

– Journalist and human rights activist Sihem Bensedrine From the anthology, Fleeting Words, edited by Naziha Rjiba, published in cooperation with PEN Tunisia and Atlas Publications, with the support of Index on Censorship and IFEX.

Photo: fbioche / Demotix

During the next few months, the National Constituent Assembly (NCA) will present its final draft of Tunisia’s new constitution, a document that has seen many changes of emphasis since the NCA was founded in November 2011. A second draft in December 2012 offered new guarantees for free speech rights and barred prior censorship. Yet the ill-defined and repressive legal framework created by former President Zein el-Abidine Ben Ali to silence dissident voices is still in place, and free speech advocates remain concerned over Islamist vows to criminalise blasphemy.

Although Ben Ali’s autocratic rule ended almost two years ago, his legacy remains on the books. Ben Ali-era laws represent a serious threat to free speech. The public prosecutor’s office used Article 121 (3) of the Tunisian Penal Code to charge Nessma TV boss Nabil Karoui for broadcasting the animated film Persepolis and newspaper director Nasreddine Ben Saida, the publisher of the Arabic-language daily Attounissia, for publishing a photo of German-Tunisian football player Sami Khedira embracing a naked model.

The article prohibits the distribution of publications “liable to cause harm to the public order or public morals”. Supporters of free expression in Tunisia will have to wait until a third and final draft of the constitution, due in Spring 2013, to see if the NCA can find the will to amend or abolish this article and other anti-free speech laws, journalists, bloggers and artists risk facing more “public disorder” and “morality” charges.

The revolution raised urgent need to fundamentally reform the media sector in Tunisia and accordingly the interim government prepared new, progressive, if imperfect, media legislation in 2011 to replace the restrictive laws inherited from the Ben Ali regime. However the proposed legal guarantees were stonewalled by the government of Prime Minister Hamadi Jebali, Ennahda’s Secretary General.

Decree-law 116 requires the creation of an independent high authority to regulate broadcast media. But this decree has been resisted by the interim government which instead has continued to make its own political appointments to senior media management posts.
To date the government has declined to implement the decree, or a parallel decree-law, 115-2011, on the print media. Months after the ousting of Ben Ali, distrust remains deep in the media sector, while resistance to reform prevails.

“The failure to abide by decrees passed under the former transitional government and run by the official gazette thus far is alarming,” said Kamel Labidi, a veteran journalist and human rights defender, who led the National Authority to Reform Information and Communication (INRIC), an independent body tasked with reforming the media sector after the revolution.

“It is shocking to see the government inclined to yield to pressure groups which were close to the country’s fugitive dictator and unwilling to conform to international standards for media broadcasting regulation.”

Attacks on the media and the rise of ‘Sacred Values’

Over 2012, street attacks on free speech in the name of religion increased dramatically, a trend that can only increase, given the apparent indifference of police and level of impunity enjoyed by the attackers. Tunisia’s current government routinely expresses condemnation of violence and its commitment to free speech. Yet the seriousness of that commitment is constantly questioned as officials turn a blind eye to the perpetrators and blame the victims.

Police brutality against journalists did not take long to resume after the fall of the regime either. As early as May 2011, journalists, bloggers and photographers were targeted while covering demonstrations and this pattern of abuse by law enforcement has continued to this date. On 24 March, Al-Jazeera journalist Lotfi Hajji was attacked while reporting from a meeting organised by supporters of the former Interim Prime Minister Béji Caid Essebsi.

Many observers saw the April 2012 statement by Ennahda leader Ghannouchi raising the possibility of “taking radical measures in the news media domain including, possibly, privatising the public media,” as giving tacit sympathy to the violent anti-media protests.

When Islamist ‘salafist’ extremists attacked the Tunis Printemps des Arts (Spring of Arts), a modern contemporary art fair in June, Tunisian Minister of Culture, Mehdi Mabrouk, was quicker to condemn the targeted artists before the attackers and vowed to take legal action against the fair’s organisers.

Previously three Islamists accompanied by a bailiff and a lawyer had toured the Palais El-Abdellia gallery and demanded that two artworks they deemed “un-Islamic” be taken down. It was the last day of the ten day event, but after the gallery closed the salafists came back in larger numbers, broke in and destroyed a number of artworks.

Two exhibitors were charged: Nadia Jelassi for her sculpture depicting a veiled woman surrounded by a pile of rocks and Ben Slama over a work showing a line of ants streaming out of a child’s schoolbag to spell ‘Allah’. Prosecutors used Article 121.3 of the Tunisian penal code which makes it an offence to ‘distribute, offer for sale, publicly display, or possess, with the intent to distribute, sell, display for the purpose of propaganda, tracts, bulletins, and fliers, whether of foreign origin or not, that are liable to cause harm to the public order or public morals’.

Bloggers Ghazi Ben Mohamed Beji and Jaber Ben Abdallah Majri were also jailed under Article 121.3 for publishing online satirical writings about Islam. Majri was detained and tried, while Beji, who fled to Europe, was convicted in absentia. During an appeals hearing on 25 June 2012, the court upheld Majri’s prison sentence, while Beji’s case was not heard on appeal.

The attacks echoed violence in the preceding year, when protesters forced their way into the Afrikart Cinema in downtown Tunis in June 2011 to protest its screening of a documentary entitled Laïcité Inshallah (“Secularism, if God wills”). And in April 2011, an unknown assailant hit film director Nouri Bouzid with a metal bar, shortly after he told a Tunisian radio station that he supported a secular constitution for Tunisia and that his next film would defend civil liberties and criticised religious fundamentalism.

Other attacks carried out by Salafists have targeted artists, including a theatre group performing on Habib Bourguiba Avenue in Tunis in March and academics, notably from Manouba University in north-eastern Tunisia, and journalists as well as media personnel and institutions. The targets included Nessma TV after the showing of Persepolis, for which station boss Karoui was later arrested, tried and fined. Karoui’s home was also firebombed. The film had earlier appeared in Tunisian cinemas with few complaints but when broadcast in October it was dubbed into a Tunisian Arabic dialect, which enraged the Salafists.

The increasing violence surrounding artistic and cultural expression deemed ‘blasphemous’ came as the ruling Islamist Ennahda Movement, which controls 40 per cent of the NCA’s seats, vowed to “legally protect the sacred” and filed a blasphemy bill. Though Ennahda later agreed in principle to drop an anti-blasphemy clause from the draft constitution after negotiations with the other two parties in the ruling coalition, the Congress for the Republic and the Democratic Forum for Work and Liberties, it is by not likely that Islamists will give up their efforts to seek legal authority to criminally ‘punish’ the blasphemous.

The discussion surrounding the proposed amendment of Tunisia’s Penal Code to criminalise violations of sacred values, would impose broad restrictions on freedom of expression far beyond that permitted under international conventions in particular by seeking to protect “sacred values” and “symbols” that do not enjoy their protection.

The draft was vague, according to an Article 19 study, leaving the law, if adopted, open to overly broad interpretation and possible abuse. “What are sacred values?” asked the organisation. “Who determines them and how? What constitutes a violation?” The proposed law also ran counter to the view of UN human rights bodies that laws criminalising defamation of religions and protection of symbols and beliefs contradict rights to freedom of expression. The UN also concluded such laws can be counter-productive in that they are prone to abuse, sometimes at the expense of the religious minorities that they purport to protect.

State attempts to influence the media condemned

Meanwhile, the government continued to appoint the directors of major public media unilaterally, without consulting media professionals, and in the absence of transparent employment processes. The appointments brought the objectivity of the process and the appointees’ own merit and competence into question.

Amidst strong protest, the government had made its own choice of staff to lead the national news agency TAP, Tunisian TV and the country’s leading press house, Société nouvelle d’impression, de presse et d’édition (SNIPE) on 7 January 2012. Though most of these appointments were later revoked after protests organised by the National Union for Tunisian Journalists (SNJT), the trick was repeated in July and August with the appointment of new directors of public radio and a new CEO of Tunisian Television.

On August 21, the government fired Samari Kamel, a well-known human rights activist, as director-general of the influential newspaper group Dar Assabah. He was replaced by Lotfi Touati, a former regime-era police commissioner and government sympathiser. In 2009, Touati was identified as the prime architect of a Ben Ali regime inspired takeover of the leadership of the country’s National Union of Journalists. The Dar Assabah media group is the oldest media house in the country, established in 1951, and Touati’s appointment stirred much controversy.

The SNTJ denounced the government’s move. And Labidi said the government had made the appointments, not based on any media experience or criteria, but because of their alignment with the ruling Ennahda party.

Days after his appointment, Touati withdrew an article due to be published one of the group’s dailies that was critical of his approach. He also fired one of the three top editors at the Arabic-language daily Assabah and published a short list of people authorised to write editorials, the reports said. The chairman of the board of Dar Assabah, Mustapha Ben Letaief and another board member, Fethi Sellaouti both resigned in protest and on September 11, Dar Assabah staff went on strike to protest his appointment.

Touati continued to draw controversy. On September 13 his speeding car injured one of his own reporters, Khalil Hannachi, as he waited outside the group offices to interview him. The journalist lost consciousness and was taken to a local hospital with head and ear injuries.

In general the state of both printing and distribution of independent newspapers is still highly problematic. While many new titles emerged when restrictions were lifted in 2011, few were sustainable, as no proactive policy promoting the emergence of a professional, free, independent and pluralistic press was put in place.

Newspapers also have been facing turmoil and hardships, with individuals close to the old regime still active in the industry. “Rather than transform the public media into free, independent and professional institutions after it had served for years as merely a tool in the hands of the Ben Ali regime, the government’s appointments have honoured Ben Ali’s men in the media sector by awarding them key posts in the public service media,” journalist Fahem Boukadous of the Tunisian Centre for Freedom of the Press (CTPJ) told mission members.

“Many have perceived these appointments as the authority’s attempt to instate individuals it can control in its effort to domesticate the media.” Also the allocation of institutional and public service advertising between media still lacks transparency despite the winding down of the Tunisian External Communication Agency (ATCE), which had used its power of advertising budget patronage to bring the Tunisian media to heel during the Ben Ali era.
Reforming the regulation of Tunisian media

Observers both inside and outside Tunisia have concluded that proposals for the regulation of the country’s media do not meet international standards. Draft clauses in the original text of the new constitution called for the establishment of an “independent media regulatory body,” but chosen by the National Constituent Assembly (ANC).

This raised fears that the government’s past bad practice in appointing staff and pressurising the media would simply be enshrined by the new body. All regulatory powers over the media, including the governing bodies of public media, must have guaranteed independence.

In frustration at the practices of government Labidi and his fellow members of INRIC decided to end its activities on 4 July, having waited in vain for a response from the government since 30 April, when it released its final report and recommendations. A commission of human rights experts on the independent Committee for the Achievement of the Revolution, Political Reform and Democratic Transition (HIROR) followed suit on 24 August.

Another reason for Labidi’s resignation was a draft amendment proposed by a minor political party to the Decree 115-2011, designed to act as a new press code. The code, which is supposed to ensure freedom of press, has been approved by parliament but not yet implemented. The proposed amendments would introduce jail time for insulting sacred icons and public figures, among other restrictions.

Meanwhile, the Internet remains partly free in practice but the repressive legal framework governing web usage under Ben Ali remains. In May the Minister for Human Rights and Transitional Justice Samir Dilou told the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva that “the Internet was a partner in the revolution so the government would not punish it.” The reality has been a little less straightforward.

The Tunisian Internet Agency (ATI), the web censor under Ben Ali, was ordered by a military tribunal in 2011 to filter five Facebook pages criticising the army. In early 2012, despite the objections of the new ATI leadership, there were calls for a blanket ban on access to pornographic websites, eventually overruled by Tunisia’s highest court.

The existing 1997 Telecommunications Decree and ‘Internet regulations’, make Internet Service Providers (ISPs) liable for third-party content without exceptions – in breach of international conventions. They also require ISPs to monitor and take down content considered contrary to public order and ‘good morals’.

ISPs were still required to submit a list of subscribers on a monthly basis and ban use of encryption tools without prior state approval. The proposed press code – with its powers to bring criminal defamation charges and overly broad penalties for ‘hate speech’ – can be applied to online publishers as well. However, as the cases of bloggers Ghazi Ben Mohamed Beji and Jaber Ben Abdallah Majri illustrated, ordinary public order law from the Ben Ali era can suffice to silence critical opinion.

Under the former regime, ATI used to use online censorship, but in an interview with ATI CEO Moez Chakchouk, he said the technology, installed in 2006, had not been extended or updated since 2011 and had been essentially abandoned in the face of a 50% increase in online traffic in Tunisia during that year.

“If the state wants to draw red lines for net freedom, it should first establish an independent authority to regulate the internet. Internet legislation should not be drafted without a regulation authority that creates balance, between public and individual interests. The state has the right to protect and eliminate defamation, but citizens have the right to freely express themselves. So we need balance, and if the government cannot create such balance, a conflict of interests will occur.”

Constitutional reform

The Tunisian National Constituent Assembly (NCA) is currently preparing a third version of the draft constitution, expected in the spring of 2013. The current version, published at the end of 2012 carries several articles that threaten human rights in general, raise questions about the Tunisia’s commitment to international conventions long ratified by the country and lack of sufficient guarantees for the independence of the judiciary. It also carries some improvements, such as the removal of articles that threatened freedom of expression by criminalizing “normalization” with Israel and clearer language to preserve equal rights for women in Tunisia.

The draft lacks – and would significantly benefit from – a defined section to serve as a Bill of Rights, and placed at the heart of the new Constitution. The constitution must provide a clear right for people to hold opinions and that right should not be subject to any restrictions.

The bill should define freedom of expression broadly and including the historic international right to seek, receive and impart information and ideas, while ensuring that this guarantee covers all types of expression and all modes of communication. The only legitimate restrictions on free expression must be determined by law and are necessary only when respecting the rights or reputations of others and for the protection of national security, public order or public health.

The constitution also should provide a legal mechanism to ensure that there is a right to freedom of information and there must be clear guarantees for freedom of religion for all people.

The constitution draft also fails to address the worst abuses of the Ben Ali regime in its relations with the judiciary. The guarantees for the independence of the judiciary are too limited; there is lack of clarity over the right for judges’ security of tenure and too much government authority over the definition of the conditions under which a judge can be dismissed.

An independent judiciary is key to institutionalising free expression in Tunisia and preventing people from being harassed or jailed for exercising their right to free expression,” said Riadh Guerfali, a co-founder of the participatory website Nawaat, a partner of Index on Censorship. “Ending impunity for those who attack free expression is critical as well.”

Some observers have raised questions about Article 15, which suggest that international conventions that Tunisia has ratified are only compulsory if they do not “contravene the constitution” in an unspecified way.

Under the Vienna Convention, when an international treaty had been ratified or approved it will become binding in domestic law. But the language as it stands may tempt judges and legislators to disregard these treaties on the pretext that they contradict the new constitution, Human Rights Watch said.

The importance of an independent judiciary was underlined by Guerfali, himself a lawyer. “Beyond formal guarantees of the right to freedom of expression and information in the Constitution and international instruments, what is key in today’s democracies is the case law.

“Indeed, in front of notions as vague as public morals, national security and public order, precedents established over decades have enabled the protection of fundamental rights. Yet, in Tunisia, such positive case law is lacking. There is no doubt that legal instruments should be set to prevent vague notions to undermine otherwise protected fundamental rights, including that to freedom of expression.”

– Reported by Rohan Jayasekera, Ghias Aljundi and Yousef Ahmed

World Press Freedom Day

European Union: Is the European Union faltering on media freedom?
Egypt: Post-revolution media vibrant but partisan
Brazil: Press confronts old foes and new violence

The post Tunisia’s press faces repressive laws, uncertain future appeared first on Index on Censorship.

Egypt’s post-revolution mediascape is vibrant but partisan and fraught with uncertainty. Photo: Shutterstock

With Egypt divided into two camps: liberal and Islamist, the media is also split, aligning itself with one side or the other. Most private TV channels and publications have taken an anti-government stance, routinely vilifying President Mohamed Morsi and his ruling Muslim Brotherhood. Meanwhile, as calls grow on the streets for a return to military rule, the private media has reverted back to glorifying the military, portraying the armed forces as the “guardians of the revolution.”

Continuing a longstanding tradition of idolizing those in power., the media have put the military — perceived as being more powerful than the Islamist Morsi — above criticism. One striking example is when presenter Iman Ezzeldine on a recent live show on the independent ONTV channel, accused Morsi of paying the Guardian to publish excerpts from a leaked report on military abuses during and after the 2011 uprising. She claimed that Morsi was trying to “tarnish the image of our noble armed forces”.

On the other hand, the Islamist media has sided with the president, singing his praises and persistently defaming the liberal opposition. Meanwhile, state-controlled media especially State TV –long a propaganda tool for the Mubarak regime—continues to be used by the government as an instrument of political manipulation , dashing hopes for a major breakthrough in media freedom in post-Mubarak Egypt . Many of the journalists working for state-run newspapers or TV channels have fallen back into the old habit of self censorship.

Despite airing diverse views, the state broadcaster has adopted the familiar state line that “the opposition activists are foreign-backed troublemakers” and has repeatedly warned that “the anti regime protests would harm the economy”. Editors and presenters meanwhile continue to complain of interference by senior management in editorial content. Despite the backsliding, a handful of presenters are resisting manipulation and have taken a stand against censorship. Anchor Hala Fahmy was taken off the air after she appeared on her show carrying a white shroud symbolizing what she described as “the demise of free expression.” Bothaina Kamel, another prominent anchor has faced interrogation after asking viewers to “stay tuned for the Muslim Brotherhood news bulletin”.

State TV employees have meanwhile staged a series of protests outside the State TV building in Maspiro calling for a purge of the media and demanding that the Islamist Minister of Information step down. Among the demands of opposition activists who led the calls for reform during the 2011 uprising was “an end to state control of the media”. Critics argue that the appointment of a Minister of Information can only mean a return to censorship and government propaganda.

A wave of criminal investigations of journalists critical of Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood in recent months has raised concern over a return to Mubarak-era policies to silence voices of dissent. After a public outcry over the interrogation of popular TV satirist Bassem Youssef by the public prosecutor on charges of insulting religion and the president, Morsi has sought to allay fears of a government crackdown on the media, promising that no further charges will be pressed by the presidency against critical journalists.

While there’s still cautious optimism on the possibility of a free and open media in the “new” Egypt, social media has undergone a revolution of its own, giving bloggers and activists an alternative platform to share information among themselves and with the world and to openly debate the way forward for their country. While the lively debate on social media networks like Facebook and Twitter has allowed Egypt’s internet activists to steadily deepen their imprint on Egyptian society and politics, the impact of the online revolution has been limited, falling well short of the aspirations of the Tahrir opposition activists for serious reform of the media. In a country where the illiteracy rate is more than 40 percent, there needs to be a revolution in state controlled media — especially television — for the effects to be far reaching.

European Union: Is the European Union faltering on media freedom?
Tunisia: Press faces repressive laws, uncertain future
Brazil: Press confronts old foes and new violence

The post Egypt’s post-revolution media vibrant but partisan appeared first on Index on Censorship.

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.

Poverty can be a very powerful barrier to accessing the abilities and tools to communicate your interests, ideas and needs, and as such, your rights to fully participate in society. This lack of access to freedom of expression manifests itself in a number of different areas, including in education, online and in the arts.

Poverty remains the biggest block to access to education, with young people from the poorest households globally being three times as likely to be out of school compared to the richest households. Direct costs connected to education, such as tuition fees, school materials, uniforms and transportation can constitute huge barriers to education. In addition to this, many poor people live in rural areas with fewer schools. For poor families there can also be significant opportunity costs connected to sending children to school rather than work. Among other things, this explains the higher levels of illiteracy among the poor globally. The damaging effect illiteracy has on your ability to express yourself, and subsequently fully participate in civil society, cannot be overstated.  If you can’t read newspapers, write to your politicians or even fill out the necessary paperwork to apply for national identification documents to vote, your voice is severely limited.  This is without even considering the many costs connected to the above.

But poverty doesn’t only block participation offline. The internet, mobile phones and other modern communication tools provide some of the biggest potential platforms to freedom of expression. New technology can be used to take part in debates, organise large-scale campaigns, monitor elections and hold those in power to account. However, the gap between rich and poor in this sector is big enough to warrant its own term — the digital divide. While developed states can boast 71.6 internet users per 100 inhabitants, the corresponding figure for developing states is only 21.1. On the African continent it drops 9.6/100. This phenomenon also exists within states, along gender, geographical social, and significantly, financial lines. The latest figures from the UK show that 15 per cent of the population has never used the Internet. Of those, 15 per cent cite equipment costs as a reason; while 14 per cent cite access costs. Tellingly, 5.7 per cent of those earning less than £200 per week had never used the internet, while the corresponding figures for those earning £600 and above is less than 1 per cent.

Less has been said about access to artistic freedom of expression among poor people in development terms. However, the Millennium Development Goal Achievement Fund has recognised access to culture and arts as a significant factor in combating poverty. A study by the European Commission also concluded that cultural activities can be instrumental in helping people overcome poverty and social exclusion, through “building skills and self-confidence” and “enhancing self-esteem and identity”. The same study stated the groups like the long-term unemployed and poor families are often excluded from access to and participation in arts and cultural activities. Barriers include basic costs, as well as the daily struggle of surviving leaving little spare time to participate in cultural activities.

This example cuts to the core of the problem. As explained above, poverty often means that you generally have fewer channels through which to communicate your interests on international, national or even local levels. While lack of freedom of expression is a violation of human rights in itself, this inability to raise your voice and speak for yourself can have devastating spill-over effects. As the UN Communication for Development UN Communication for Development  panel pointed out in 2004, “challenges of poverty alleviation (…) must be designed and implemented with active participation of the communities in question”. How can the programmes meant to help the poor hope to effectively do that, if the poor themselves do not have a say in them? The lack of participation in policies that affect them and their communities means poor people are made vulnerable to misguided policy-making misguided policy-making . Or, as the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights  put it in a recent statement: “Lack of participation in decision-making is thus a defining feature and cause of poverty, rather than just its consequence.” The outcome is that the people with potentially the most to gain from freedom of expression are the ones who lack the access to it.

The idea that freedom of expression can help lift people out of poverty is has been recognised in development circles for decades, often masked in less politically charged development jargon like “voice”, “empowerment” and “participation”. But action based on this idea has left much to be desired.  The Millennium Development Goals, widely recognised as the biggest global push to eradicate poverty, have thus far put very little focus on freedom of expression. The term isn’t included once in the MDG progress reports from 2005 to 2012.

However, there are reasons to be cautiously positive about recent progress on the matter. In 2012, the UN appointed a high-level panel to determine a new development agenda to take over from the MDGs when they “run out” in 2015. A number of actors involved in this process have signalled they would like an increased focus on human rights human rights, among other things calling for media freedom to be included in the agenda. The Institute of Development Studies also recently launched their Participate project which aims to “put cameras in the hands of the poor”, to have their own stories be part of the post-2015 development agenda. DFID, USAID and the Swedish government are launching Making All Voices Count, a project to help the global poor access new technology to help them participate in society and the political process.  These are important steps, but the momentum must be maintained.

The post Poverty and freedom of expression: How the poor are being silenced appeared first on Index on Censorship.

Opposition protesters in Minsk in 2010. Kseniya Avimova | Demotix

Europe’s last dictatorship plans even tighter controls over citizens’ access to the digital world, Index shows in a new report

Belarus has one of the most hostile media environments in the world and one of the worst records on freedom of expression. New digital technologies, in particular the internet, have provided new opportunities for freedom of expression but have also given the authoritarian regime new tools to silence free voices and track down dissent. As the internet has become an increasingly important source of information, the Belarus authorities have used a variety of different means to control it. Keeping a tight rein on information remains at the core of their policy of self-preservation.

This report explores the main challenges to digital free speech in Belarus, concentrating in particular on the ways the state authorities restrict freedom of expression online.

Firstly, it is done by applying a repressive legal framework, including draconian laws such as criminal libel, legal prosecution and the misapplication of the administrative code. Secondly, free speech is restricted by the use of new techniques, such as online surveillance, website blocking and filtering, and cyber-attacks against independent websites and content manipulation.

Our research indicates that the authorities now plan even tighter controls over citizens’ access to the digital world.

New legislation gives the authorities wide powers to censor online content, in particular on the catch-all grounds of “distribution of illegal information”, and to implement mass surveillance of citizens’ activities online. The government is spending heavily on the development of software that will allow the tracking of nearly all the activities of every internet user in the country. Western firms have been instrumental in providing equipment that has facilitated state surveillance. Since the growth in use of social networks, there have been several waves of arrests of moderators of popular online opposition groups and communities. Journalists and activists who express their opinions online have found themselves subject to criminal prosecutions for libel. Denial of service attacks have been used frequently against independent online media and opposition websites, especially on the occasion of elections and other major political events.

Protesters at the Revolution through Social Networks demonstration in Minsk, summer 2011. Photo by Siarhei Balai.

Index on Censorship calls on the government of Belarus to stop all disproportionate and unnecessary legal and extrajudicial practices, online and offline, that compromise freedom of expression. We call for immediate reforms to be launched to ensure free speech, as outlined in the conclusions and recommendations chapter of the report.

The European Union (EU), its member states and other European bodies, such as the Council of Europe and the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), should further push the Belarus government to respect human rights in general and freedom of expression in particular and call for immediate reforms to facilitate the development of Belarus as a democratic state.

You can read the report in full in English here.

Доклад о цензуре интернета в Беларуси можно прочитать здесь.

Даклад аб цэнзуры інтэрнэта ў Беларусі магчыма прачытаць тут

More on this story:

Press Release - Internet explosion backfires for Europe’s last dictator

The post Belarus: Pulling the plug 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.

The post Iran court finds Reuters bureau chief guilty of “spreading lies” appeared first on Index on Censorship.

As the London Conference on Cyberspace begins, Index on Censorship has joined leading media freedom groups and activists in calling on Foreign Secretary William Hague to reject censorship and surveillance techniques that undermine free expression.

Dear Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs,

World leaders will today converge on London for the London Conference on Cyberspace.

The conference will take place in the shadow of revolutions that have laid bare the relationship between technology, citizens’ freedom and political power. This has created a unique opportunity for the UK government to show leadership in promoting the rights of citizens online.

However, the government’s record on freedom of expression and privacy is less than ideal. Britain’s desire to promote these ideals internationally are being hampered by domestic policy.

The government is currently considering greater controls over what legal material people are allowed to access on the Internet. This is clear from recent public support by the Prime Minister, and through Claire Perry MP’s ongoing inquiry, for plans to filter adult and other legal material on UK Internet connections by default. The new PREVENT counter-terrorism strategy contains similar proposals for the filtering of material that is legal but deemed undesirable. Earlier this year the Prime Minister suggested there should be more powers to block access to social media, a policy that drew praise from China and which the government swiftly backed away from. There are also plans for more pervasive powers to surveil and access people’s personal information online.

The government now has an historic opportunity to support technologies that promote rather than undermine people’s political and social empowerment.

We call for the UK government to seize this opportunity to reject censorship and surveillance that undermines people’s rights to express themselves, organise or communicate freely. That is the only way to both enshrine the rights of citizens in the UK and to support these principles internationally.

This government should be proud to stand up for freedom of expression and privacy off- and online. This conference should herald a new stage in which these principles are upheld in UK policy.

Yours sincerely,

Brett Soloman, Executive Director, Access

Dr Agnes Callamard, Executive Director, Article 19

Cory Doctorow, Fellow, Electronic Frontier Foundation

Jonathan Heawood, Director, English PEN

Evgeny Morozov, author, ‘The Net Delusion’

Andrew Puddephatt, Director, Global Partners

Heather Brooke, author, ‘The Revolution will be Digitised’

Jo Glanville, Editor, Index on Censorship

Tony Curzon Price, Editor-in-Chief, openDemocracy

Simon Davies, Director, Privacy International

Jim Killock, Executive Director, Open Rights Group

The post UK: Letter to foreign secretary on cyberspace appeared first on Index on Censorship.