The £1.8 million plan — known as “the Snooper’s Charter” by opponents — would require that all telecommunications companies monitor the phone, e-mail, and web usage of citizens. Index has previously called the draft bill “unacceptable”, and said last year that “the decisions the UK Parliament takes on this bill will impact on human rights both in the UK and beyond, not least in authoritarian states.”

Write to your MP to and let them know that the bill should be dropped.

Plus read Index on Censorship on the Communications Data Bill

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Against a backdrop of heavy austerity measures in Greece, free speech and the right to protest are being both challenged and undermined. The policies are the result of agreements between the government and the so-called troika, made up of the European Commission, the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank. Since 2010, steps taken to restore fiscal balance have led to the impoverishment of large segments of society and unemployment has reached new highs: 26.8 per cent in October 2012. At the same time, the rise of the neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn, with an agenda of targeting immigrants, homosexuals and “dissidents” of all kinds, has created palpable social tensions. Police repress protests and political activity by a range of groups, including anarchists and leftists, a fact that has been widely documented. These tactics have been regarded by many as evidence that the government is adopting an authoritarian stance when it comes to criticism and dissent.

The current government, run by Prime Minister Antonis Samaras’s conservative New Democracy Party, took office in June 2012. In a report published in July 2012, Police Violence in Greece: Not just “Isolated Incidents”, Amnesty International stated:

The failure of the Greek authorities to effectively address violations of human rights by police has made victims of such violations reluctant to report them. … Between 2009 and the first months of 2012, numerous allegations have been received regarding excessive use of force, including the use of chemical irritants against peaceful or largely peaceful demonstrators, and the use of stun grenades in a manner that violates international standards.

In the report, Amnesty made “urgent recommendations to the Greek authorities”, urging them to ensure that police “exercise restraint and identify themselves clearly during demonstrations” and calling for them to improve “safeguards for those in custody and creating a truly independent and effective police complaints mechanism”. The mainstream media — owned mainly by business leaders seen as having a cosy relationship with politicians — have censored or fired journalists who have attempted to speak out about the costly bailout agreements with the troika.

Those who have reported on allegations of police brutality, such as Kostas Arvanitis and Marilena Katsimi of the Greek state-owned public radio and television broadcasting corporation ERT have also been targeted. On 9 October 2012, Thanos Dimadis, a correspondent for Greek TV and radio station SKAI, reported that bailout payments had been only “partial” and carried out “under a regime of strict economic surveillance”. Later that day, he received instructions from SKAI TV news director Christos Panagopoulos not to include that information in the afternoon and evening news reports. The text of his story was removed from SKAI TV’s website. Dimadis’s report was annoying for the government, which was keen to prevent details about the bailout from becoming public. Payments from the troika had been suspended since June, after a partial tranche was released. The authorities were worried that the public would believe that payments were conditional on even more stringent austerity measures. Dimadis complained to SKAI’s news directors, threatening to resign if they did not back up his report. He eventually quit.

Dimadis told me that senior management at SKAI argued that the reason they withdrew his report was that the prime minister’s office had dismissed it as false. Moreover, Dimadis’s reactionwas described by SKAI as “over the top”.

Censoring the news

The government’s modus operandi is best illustrated by the Kostas Vaxevanis case. Vaxevanis, an investigative journalist and publisher of Hot Doc magazine, was arrested on 28 October 2012 for publishing the names of over 2000 Greek citizens who held Swiss bank accounts, dubbed the “Lagarde list”. The story focused on alleged tax evasion by wealthy Greeks during a time of economic crisis.

“A few months ago, before the release of the ‘Lagarde list’ and my aggressive arrest, there was an organised attempt to destroy my professional reputation: a publication presenting a fake receipt attempted to incriminate me as being on the payroll of the National Intelligence Service (EYP). I realised I was under heavy surveillance and one night I was ambushed by strangers at my home,”Vaxevanis told me in an interview.

During our discussion, on 26 December 2012, Vaxevanis said free speech in Greece was coming under attack yet again: “It’s not something new. When you have ongoing dealings between politicians and businessmen who own media groups, then it comes as no surprise that journalists are driven to self-censorship. Take a look, for example, at the non-existent coverage of the Reuters story on the Piraeus Bank case. You have such a big story, but what you see in the newspapers instead is an advertisement by the bank.”

On 1 November, Vaxevanis was acquitted and cleared on changes of violating privacy laws. But two weeks later, the prosecutor’s office ordered a retrial, claiming the original verdict was “legally flawed”. He could face up to two years’ imprisonment if he is sentenced. In April 2012, Reuters reported on an investigation into documents, including financial statements and property records, relating to Michalis Sallas, executive chairman of Piraeus Bank, and his wife, Sophia Staikou. The press report said “the couple may also be emblematic of the lack of transparency and weak corporate governance that have fuelled Greece’s financial problems”.

But according to journalist Apostolis Fotiadis, no major national or international media outlet reported on the lawsuit filed by Piraeus Bank against Reuters, though the New York Times anda couple of independent journalists attended the trial, including Fotiadis. The ruling is still pending.

On 29 October 2012, a popular morning talk show on the Greek state broadcasting corporation, ERT, was suddenly suspended, following a decision by ERT’s general director of news, Aimilios Liatsos. Shortly before the show was dropped, Kostas Arvanitis, co-presenter of the programme, and his colleague Marilena Katsimi had made comments on air about the minister of public order’s response to an article published in the British newspaper the Guardian written by Helena Smith.

Arvanitis told me:

I’ve been working as a journalist for 25 years. I’ve never experienced anything like this — not to this extent and with such intensity, at least. I consider what happened as aggressive meddling by the political system. It’s becoming more and more clear: every question that is different, every perspective that is different is considered provocative. You can understand what’s happening if you take a careful look at the media coverage of strikes.

Influential columnists and unsigned editorials very often neglect the reasons lower and middle working classes decide to go on strike. Instead of shedding light on their requests, these outlets prefer to present the strikes as instances of “abusing the public space” or “disturbing public peace”. This is the typical official government response as well. In the broader context, of course, this approach fails to report on the growing pressure on workers — on those who still have a job but with reduced salaries, and on those without one.

A Guardian article written by Maria Margaronis was published on 9 October and mentioned allegations of police brutality against protesters. It also referred to and confirmed an earlier article,published on 28 September, written by Helena Smith, that quoted ‘analysts, activists and lawyers’ as saying that the “far-right Golden Dawn party is increasingly assuming the role of law enforcement officers on the streets of the bankrupt country, with mounting evidence that Athenians are being openly directed by police to seek help from the neo-Nazi group”.

Margaronis also wrote:

Fifteen anti-fascist protesters arrested in Athens during a clash with supporters of the neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn have said they were tortured in the Attica General Police Directorate (GADA) — the Athens equivalent of Scotland Yard — and subjected to what their lawyer describes as an Abu Ghraib-style humiliation. If it hadn’t been for the Guardian stories, it is highly unlikely that Golden Dawn’s purported connection with the police would have reached a foreign audience — or the Greek public. The fact that these claims never made the Greek press and that Arvanitis was censored for simply commenting on one of the articles shows just how prevalent censorship is in Greece today.

Dimitris Katsaris is a lawyer for four of the protesters who alleged that they were tortured in GADA after they were arrested during the 30 October protest. He says the way the situation has been handled is a clear “indication of censorship … interviews with the anti-fascists took place in a climate of terror; at the end, the policemen tried to grab me and push me away while I was complaining to them. All of this has been recorded.” However, the censorship didn’t stop there.

Ignoring the truth

Minister of Public Order Nikos Dendias claimed on SKAI TV talk show New Folders on 16 October that the Guardian report on police brutality was false, and threatened to sue the British paper if no proof of torture was found. He questioned the source of the photographs in Margaronis’s article — which showed an injured protester — and claimed that since the anti-fascists hadn’t gone on record with their names and reports, and hadn’t filed a lawsuit against the police, the Guardian was not justified in publishing the story.

Dendias also denied assertions that the arrested protesters were afraid to go on record because they had been threatened by police or extremist Golden Dawn supporters. According to Katsaris, although SKAI and the New Folders’ presenter Alexis Papahelas were already in possession of the photographs indicating police brutality at the time they interviewed Dendias, they did not report on the evidence or broadcast the photographs; had it not been for SYRIZA MP Dimitris Tsoukalis’s intervention on the show, the photos wouldn’t have been shown on air. “From the moment the Guardian’s report was published,” Katsaris says, “I was in contact with New Folders’ editor-in-chief. A week before the show I was providing him photos and evidence that proved torture by the police.” Katsaris says he called the editor-in-chief and asked him to intervene, but after many calls, he was told there was “‘no sufficient airtime” to provide the other side of the case. “So I could not contrast the ministers’ claims. I even asked them, given the material they had, to question the minister in a fair journalistic manner. They didn’t.”

It seems that every time a story about political actions by anti-fascist protesters unfolds, the censorship machinery of the government and Golden Dawn is set in motion. Niko Ago, an Albanian national who had been working as a journalist in Greece for 20 years, faced deportation after publishing a report about alleged criminal activity by Golden Dawn spokesman Ilias Kasidiaris, who is a member of parliament. Ago revealed that Kasidiaris was facing charges for allegedly participating in a 2007 attack on a postgraduate student and for illegal possession of a firearm .Since then, Ago has been receiving threatening emails containing defamatory and racist comments, some of which he published, including one that said ”Fuck you, Albanian … all you fucking Albanians are going to get what you deserve.”

Muzzling grassroots dissent

A great deal of pressure has also been brought to bear on independent, non-corporate media collectives or individuals who offer grassroots coverage. On 20 December 2012 and on 9 January 2013, police operations were carried out at the Villa Amalias squat in Athens, which has been an important meeting place for alternative political movements for the last 23 years, and at the Radiozones of Subversive Expression, an Athens-based radio station at the University of Economics and Business (ASOEE). Anarchists, leftists and political dissidents used both sites to organise labour, anti-fascist and antiracist rallies. As part of the operations connected with the ASOEE raid, in late December, anti-riot squads and police targeted immigrant street vendors originally from Nigeria, Morocco and Bangladesh who were selling pirated CDs and wooden animal figurines, as well as those who were regarded as supposedly condemning Greece to an economic decline, as the Radiozones website put it. The government, as well as Golden Dawn, tends to regard the economic activities of immigrants as detrimental to the national economy and as a threat to local workers.

Last October, during German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s visit to Greece, nearly 100 arrests took place, as Avgi newspaper reported. During the 6-7 November general strike, a group of parliamentarians from SYRIZA denounced the massive presence of undercover police on the streets of Athens. According to the coalition, they were both acting as provocateurs among peaceful protesters and arresting people who simply looked “suspicious”. The policy of  pre-emptive arrests has been repeatedly called unconstitutional by human rights organisations, including the Hellenic League for Human Rights.

Tomasz Grzyb/Demotix

During the annual Athens’ Polytechnic School rally on 17 November, dozens of pre-emptive arrests were reported on the website of the weekly political newspaper Kontra and activist websites documented many individual complaints. Indymedia Athens, the local collective of the international grassroots and activists network, published two complaints from citizens arrested on the day of the rally. In both cases, individuals were detained before the demonstration and were kept in custody for five hours without being allowed to contact a lawyer.

Mainstream media failed to report the events, while the government officially ignored complaints. Most news on the events came from blogs and free expression activists.

Online censorship

This systematic abuse is also taking place in the online environment. After posting a Facebook page that ridiculed a well-known Greek Orthodox monk, in late September 2012, a 27-year-old man was arrested on charges of‘”malicious blasphemy and religious insult”. Many online activists and commentators reflected that the page, called Elder Pastitsios the Pastafarian (which intentionally combines the name of the monk with a popular Greek food), angered members of Golden Dawn, who called for the man’s arrest under Greece’s anti-blasphemy laws. Free expression advocates responded, with the hashtag #FreeGeronPastitios trending on Twitter, and a petition addressed to parliament calling for the immediate release of the Facebook user was circulated online Vassilis Sotiropoulos, a lawyer and blogger specialising in internet legislation, writes:

“The legislature refuses to address the issue of internet censorship, thereby allowing law enforcers (prosecutors, police officers, judges and lawyers) to freely interpret and utilise the existing legal tools. This phenomenon has sometimes led to misunderstandings, which restrict individual rights of freedom of expression and privacy. Sotiropoulos added that the case of Elder Pastitsios provided perhaps the first example in Greece of an internet company disclosing information to the government in order to identify an individual accused of ‘alleged offences relating to religious satire’.

When considering freedom of speech as a universal human right, it is important to comprehend the social and economic context of our times. Currently, the political and economic elites, in Greece but elsewhere in Europe as well, are repositioning themselves within a capitalist system that is undergoing a continuous transformation.

Speaking to Al Jazeera, William I Robinson, Professor of Sociology and Global Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, argued that we are currently living through a phase of capitalism where “nation-state constraints” no longer apply. He stated that the “the strength of popular and working class movements around the world, in the wake of the global rebellions of the 1960s and the 1970s”, are now being effectively and successfully undermined.

Historically, during periods when there have been attempts to devalue the working class, there have also been challenges to the fundamental right to voice dissent, which has had a direct impact on efforts to improve living conditions. The current economic crisis, then, fits this model; it can also be used as an effective tool for the far right and those using fascist rhetoric to attack immigrants and workers.

Freedom of speech and protest in Greece must, then, be seen in very specific terms. The right to free expression is being systematically and effectively challenged by formidable political and economic agendas. It is crucial that activists, journalists and those being censored and abused continue to make their voices heard.

Christos Syllas is a freelance journalist in Athens. He tweets from @csyllas

This article appears in Fallout: free speech and the economic crisis. Click here for subscription options and more.

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Index on Censorship – Leveson Report Policy Note – December 2012

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The coalition’s plan to store information on every citizen’s use of email, the web, and phones have been dealt a serious blow by a parliamentary committee report. Padraig Reidy reports

Home Secretary Theresa May’s plan to store information on every citizen’s use of email, the web, and phones have been dealt a severe blow by a parliamentary committee report.

In a report seen by Index on Censorship, the Joint Committee on the Communications Data Bill described the proposed new law as “too sweeping”, and going “further than it need or should”.

The committee was particularly concerned by a clause in the bill that would give the Home Secretary the power to extend the remit of the law at any time, without putting the changes before parliament. The government claimed that this was needed in order to “future proof” the legislation, saying it would otherwise be impossible to keep pace with digital communications innovation.

But critics of the Communications Data Bill, including Index, said the clause was unacceptable, allowing huge levels of surveillance and storage without any democratic oversight. The committee today endorsed that view, while acknowledging the need for governments to be able to carry out limited surveillance.

Currently, communications service providers store data on communications traffic for one year. The government’s proposal would oblige them to hold it indefinitely. The Home Office defines “communications data” as: “[T]he information about a communication. It can include the time and duration of a communication, the number or email address of the originator and recipient and sometimes the location of the device from which the communication was made.”

The cross-party committee of lords and MPs also criticised the government’s consultation on the bill, saying: “Meaningful consultation can take place only once there is clarity as to the real aims of the Home Office, and clarity as to the expected use of the powers under the bill.”

The bill’s proposal for a “request filter”, allowing government agencies to search stored information, also came under fire. While acknowledging the capacity would have certain benefits, the report warns that safeguards should be introduced to minimise the risk of “fishing expeditions”, by restricting search criteria.

Index on Censorship welcomed the report: Head of Advocacy Mike Harris said:

“The Joint Committee report supports what Index has been saying all along: that the draft Communications Data Bill would threaten the privacy and free expression of British citizens, effectively reversing the presumption of innocence and potentially chilling the information that we share. If enacted in its current form, it would mean that the UK had one of the most draconian data laws in the western world, giving justification to surveillance tactics carried out by authoritarian states such as Belarus and Kazakhstan.”

Comms Data Bill Index Submission 22 August 12

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Greek Journalist Kostas Vaxevani after his arrest for exposing alleged tax cheats – Athens – Stathis Kalligeris | Demotix

Index on Censorship and other freedom of expression groups urge the European Union to defend free speech

IFEX signatories are deeply concerned and appalled at the renewed attempts to prosecute Greek editor Kostas Vaxevanis and the wider chilling effects of this effort to silence a journalist acting in the public interest

Vaxevanis was arrested last month, acquitted of breaking data privacy laws on 1 November, and now faces a re-trial, all for having published a leaked list (nicknamed the “Lagarde list”) of over 2,000 names of Greeks allegedly holding bank accounts in Switzerland.

Following our letter sent to the European Union on 5 November, Index and other IFEX members call on the EU — which has in the past been quick to denounce threats to media freedom — to defend free speech and to condemn this unwarranted harassment and prosecution.

Letter on the renewed attempts to imprison Greek journalist Kostas Vaxevanis – 23 November 2012

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The more we live our lives online, the greater the temptation for governments and private companies to spy on us. Padraig Reidy highlights the dark side of our increasing dependence on digital communications

While the internet offers opportunities for mass communication and social interaction unprecedented in human history, the chances for governments to monitor and control how we communicate are also ample

The simplest way to control usage is to block sites. This is widespread practice, in democracies this technique is often used to block child pornography.  However, more authoritarian regimes will block sites carrying sensitive political content, and increasingly, sites will be blocked to prevent religiously “offensive” material from being viewed. YouTube remains inaccessible in Pakistan, having been blocked in September after it failed to remove the controversial anti-Islam film, The Innocence of Muslims. In Turkey, the site was blocked in its entirety between 2007 and 2010 to prevent the viewing of “sensitive material”. The Russian government recently pushed through a bill that will allow websites classified as “extremist” (often a catch-all term in Russia) to be blacklisted without judicial oversight. The amendments, reportedly in place to “protect minors from all ‘dangerous content’”, will take effect on 1 November.

The Great Firewall of China

Perhaps the most infamous example of web policing is the complex system broadly known as the Great Firewall of China. China will not only block sites, but also search terms (such as “Tiananmen”). But the Chinese model goes far beyond algorithms blocking an established set of forbidden terms. Thousands are employed to monitor social media, immediately pouncing on sensitive terms and stories which could expose the governing class to scorn or ridicule. When a (true) rumour of a party official’s relation crashing a Ferrari sports car spread on the web, the term “Ferrari” was banned from searches on Weibo, China’s internal equivalent of Twitter. Many more are employed to intervene in message boards and discussion groups, monitoring threads and steering any displaying signs of dissent back to a more pro-regime view.

China’s cartoon police officers, Jingjing and Chacha, who appear when users attempt to visit censored sites

China has even gone so far as to introduce cartoon police officers which appear on web portals, reminding users of internet laws.

The national intranet is the ultimate web blocking tool. The Islamic Republic of Iran claims to be building a “halal internet” which would limit content to topics and terms deemed acceptable by the regime in Tehran. Meanwhile, users in cybercafés are obliged to provide ID before logging on to a computer, thereby making it easier for authorities to later track the online activities of individuals. In Belarus, commercial websites are forced to register domestically, with a .by domain name. This not only restricts commerce, but severely impairs the functioning of the “world” wide web.

Data retention & preservation

But it is not only authoritarian regimes that police the web. In the UK, the government is currently attempting to push through the Communications Data Bill, which would oblige internet service providers (ISPs) to hold information on users web and email usage for 12 months. ISPs would then have to hand over information to government agencies on request, highlighting the huge potential for the surveillance that is a by-product of our increasing dependence on digital communications.

This dependence can provide governments with apparently easy solutions to dissent. In Cuba, for example, online connections are deliberately kept slow, making communication with the outside world, even via proxies, frustrating.  At the height of the protests against Hosni Mubarak in Egypt in 2011, authorities even tried turning off the internet entirely, costing the country millions, but only temporarily hindering the progress of the uprising that eventually toppled the president.

Living our lives in public

Our increasing tendency to live our lives online, particularly via social networks, provides easy ways for authorities to pursue people. In the wake of the Iranian “green revolution” in 2009, many who had used Twitter to mobilise and share information were rounded up by the authorities. In the democratic world, the UK has seen prosecutions for public order and “menacing communications” after postings on Facebook and Twitter. Several young people were arrested for incitement after posting about the riots of 2011 on Facebook, and Prime Minister David Cameron even suggested shutting down social networks during the disturbances.

Much of what causes governments to seek to control the web are old, familiar themes: dissent, blasphemy etc. Some, such as the controversies over copyright and online “trolling”, have emerged because of the technology. But whatever the issue — new or traditional — the web is now the battleground in the 21st century fight against censorship.

Padraig Reidy is News Editor at Index on Censorship

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The European Union makes great play of its commitment to free expression. All EU countries are signatories to the European Convention on Human Rights, Article 10 of which states:

Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers.

Clause two of the article stipulates several exceptions to this, but citizens of the EU are, broadly speaking, free to criticise their governments and heads of state, to question officials and hold power to account. But this doesn’t mean that there are not real challenges to free speech.

As more and more communication strays into the realm of publication via social media, people in democratic countries find themselves increasingly subjected to restrictions on free speech. In the UK, laws meant to govern different types of communication are now used to bring prosecutions for speech on social media.

Cases such as those of Liam Stacey, Azhar Ahmed and Paul Chambers in the UK have seen prosecution for the posting of “offensive” or “menacing” content on social networks, under laws designed either to prevent the outbreak of violence, or harassment via emails and phonecalls. The question for the democratic world raised by social technology is complex: do we continue with old laws, create new ones governing social media interaction, or accept the idea that the speed with which technology advances will make governing of online communication impractical if not impossible?

Azhar Ahmed was convicted for posting “grossly offensive” material (above) on Facebook

The issue of “extremism” often collides with free speech. In the UK, members of (now-banned) group Al Muhajiroun have faced prosecution for, among other crimes, calling for the death of British soldiers in Afghanistan, and burning poppies on Rememberance Day. Judgments in these cases have essentially found the perpetrators guilty of “offensive” statements and actions which run counter to the general societal consensus, disregarding any notion of protected political speech.Throughout Europe, many countries which experienced the full horrors of Nazism have laws against the denial or belittling of the Holocaust. While the impulse to prevent a repeat of the rise of Nazism, as well as to honour the memories of those who were murdered, is understandable, such laws can only be seen as a direct contravention of the right to free expression, placing a certain topic, however sensitive, beyond the limits of discussion. Far-right figures such as David Irving, Horst Mahler and Jean Marie Le Pen have all been convicted for Holocaust denial.French President Francois Hollande has signalled his intentionto bring in similar laws to criminalise denial of the Armenian massacres of 1915, in a mirror of Turkey’s penal code, which prevents discussion of the same subject.

Privacy and reputation

Privacy and reputation have also proved controversial. English libel laws have been particularly contentious over the last three years, with Index and its partners in the Libel Reform Campaign arguing that they have a chilling effect on free speech in the UK and beyond. Cases such as those brought against science writer Simon Singh and cardiologist Dr Peter Wilmshurst, as well as several infamous “libel tourism” cases, where claimants with little or no reputation in British society used London’s court to silence criticism abroad, demonstrated the need for reform.The campaign has focused on providing a strong public interest defence, allowing journalists, academics and bloggers to write freely and honestly on controversial issues and public figures without fear of long and potentially ruinous defamation cases brought by the rich and powerful. However, a balance must be struck between the right to free expression and the right of redress for people who have been genuinely wronged.

The European Court of Human Rights has seen several controversial cases bringing the press into conflict with individuals’ right to privacy. Cases such as Von Hannover v Germany, MGN v United Kingdom, Mosley v United Kingdom have all been key in the definitions of public sphere, public interest and privacy, seen the pendulum swing back and forth in an area that, it seems, will forever be contentious. In Spain and Germany, reputation issues have led to moves to stop search engines from indexing sites detailing previous bankruptcies etc, as part of the controversial idea of a “right to be forgotten”.

Breaches of privacy via “phone hacking” brought about a crisis in the British media, leading to the establishment of the Leveson Inquiry, due to report in autumn 2012. The Inquiry is expected to make recommendations on the regulation of the press, an issue approached in many different ways throughout Europe. In Britain, “state regulation” is seen by many as having negative conotations for free expression, though many countries, including Ireland have established some kind of “statutory underpinning” of the press. In Hungary, draconian laws severely limiting media ownership and press freedom have been partially withdrawn after an international outcry.

The Leveson Inquiry has also thrown up questions of media ownership, with widespread concern at the dominance of the national newspaper market by Rupert Murdoch’s News International. The most troubling excess of this dominance was seen during Silvio Berlusconi’s rule as prime minister in Italy, when dissenting voices were marginalised bothy by state television and by Berlusconi’s TV stations, which held a huge portion of the market.

The shifting nature of public discourse in democratic societies means that the debate over free expression can take on many different forms. But the crucial point is that any restriction on free speech must be reasonable, proportionate, and limited. An assumption in favour of free expression should be the norm.

Padraig Reidy is News Editor at Index on Censorship. He tweets at @mepadraigreidy

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With power comes responsibility, warns Martin Moore of the Hacked Off campaign 

There is no shortage of quotes or aphorisms about the corrupting nature of too much power. From Thomas Bailey’s warning that “The possession of unlimited power will make a despot of almost any man” to Lord Acton’s ”absolute power corrupts absolutely”. Why does this happen? Empathy, as readers of Machiavelli’s The Prince will know, can be detrimental to the pursuit of power. “It is much safer,” Machiavelli wrote, “to be feared than to be loved.” Powerful people, in other words, can cease to see other people as human.

This appears to be what happened at parts of News International, where the subjects of stories — whether they were politicians, celebrities, public figures or the victims of a tragedy — were harassed, hounded, intimidated and discarded. It reached such a scale — the victims of phone hacking number in the thousands — because News International accumulated enormous power, and this power went almost entirely unchecked.

The Leveson Inquiry has laid out the consequences of such unchecked power. Individuals’ lives turned over, scarred, and — in the case of some victims — irreparably damaged. Swathes of public life corrupted. The political process distorted and prostituted. The most important result of the inquiry therefore has to be checks on this power. Sensible and proportionate ways of making these big media corporations responsible for their actions.

The media corporations will argue — indeed already have — that any checks on their power equate to constraints on their freedom of expression. This is disingenuous and misleadingly blurs the line between a corporation’s power to say and do what it likes, and an individual’s right to free speech.

Individual speech and corporate speech are not the same thing. As Professor Onora O’Neill said in her 2011 Reuters Institute lecture at Oxford:

Powerful institutions, including media organisations, are not in the business of self-expression, and should not go into that business. An argument that speech should be free because it generally does not affect, a fortiori can’t harm, others can’t stretch to cover the speech of governments or large corporations, of News International or the BBC.

Big media corporations have voices far louder than individuals or small publishers. They are watched, listened to and read by millions. Their capacity to do harm is disproportionately greater for this reason. They are also able to drown out smaller voices, to deprive individuals and groups of the opportunity to speak for themselves. And, should someone try to get some redress if they have been “monstered”, demonised or unjustifiably intruded upon, the corporation has the legal firepower to prevent all but the richest and most powerful from taking action.

Reforms should, for this reason, focus on these large corporations. Individuals, bloggers, tweeters, independent news sites, small magazines and newspapers should not be Leveson’s focus. They should be free to publish whatever they like within the law. They should be excluded from any regulatory obligations that might risk constraining their free speech.

Large corporations should still be free to publish what they like — they have a right to free speech too — but require a regulatory obligation to take responsibility for what they publish. In other words, they should have the mechanisms in place to justify their decisions to intrude on someone’s privacy.

Equally, they should provide a decent opportunity for the subject of a story to respond, ensuring a fair hearing and potentially fair redress if an individual believes what was written to be misrepresentative or inaccurate. These accountability mechanisms should be both internal and external.

In the 60 years before the Leveson Inquiry was set up, there were three Royal Commissions on the Press, two inquiries into privacy, and countless calls for press reform. All were pleas for powerful press barons to take some responsibility. Each time these large organisations failed to respond adequately.

Lord Justice Leveson says he does not want his recommendations to gather dust on some academic’s shelf. Nor does he want his inquiry succeeded by yet another in a decade’s time. If that is the case, then he should focus reforms on big media organisations and oblige them, for the first time, to take proper responsibility for what they do.

Martin Moore is director of the Media Standards Trust and a founder of the Hacked Off campaign. The Media Standards Trust report, A Free and Accountable Media, can be found here

Exclusive extracts from our magazine:

The Lawyer | Mark Lewis | Do we need a free press?
The Blogger | Guido Fawkes | Where will this all end?
The Journalist | Trevor Kavanagh | The Leveson effect
The Editor | Alan Rusbridger | Striking a balance

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