8 Jul 2010 | Index Index, minipost
CNN sacked their Middle East editor, Octavia Nasr on July 7, after she expressed her admiration for the late Lebanese Cleric Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah on Twittter. On hearing of Ayatollah Fadlallah’s death on Sunday, Nasr tweeted that the senior Shiite cleric, who is said to have inspired Hezbollah, was “one of Hezbollah’s giants I respect a lot”. In a subsequent blog, she apologised claiming that the message was referring to Fadalallah’s progressive views on women’s rights. CNN officials condemned the post as a simplistic error of judgement and stated that Nasr’s position was no longer tenable because her credibility had been “compromised”.
7 Jul 2010 | Uncategorized
The Press Complaints Commission today published its Governance Review. The report was produced by an independent panel commissioned last year by the PCC’s new chairman, Baroness Peta Buscombe. It was designed to rebuild public confidence in the press regulator. The panel, led by Vivien Hepworth makes a number of recommendations including:
- Clarifying the purpose of the PCC.
- Increasing the influence of lay members.
- Making the commission more proactive on issues of public concern.
- Providing greater clarity and transparency on complaints including clearer reporting of statistics.
- Being more open about funding.
- Ensuring apologies are more prominent.
- And toughening punishment by creating a “ladder of sanctions” with six “rungs” of possible penalties.
The report was welcomed by the Media Standards Trust as a substantive response to the trust’s submission to the panel and to their 2009 report A More Accountable Press, which called for urgent reform to the self-regulation system.
Martin Moore, director of the Media Standards Trust said he was pleasantly surprised by today’s report describing it as:
[A] good start. There are substantive recommendations here to ensure some real change — provided the PCC and the industry accept them and make them happen.
He went on to say:
It is now for the industry to decide how much support to give to real change. Without real change the gap between self-regulation and the courts will continue to grow, and the current system will look increasingly anachronistic in a converged media world.
Roy Greenslade in the Evening Standard noted that:
The words transparency and accountability crop up 12 times each in the report, while effectiveness occurs 20 times. There is also an accent on ‘clarity of purpose’. The clear aim is to tell the PCC’s story to the public and to those troublesome opinion-formers.
He seems to doubt the PCC will ever win over its critics. The “lawyers, politicians, academics and even some journalists rule the media space by asserting that the PCC regulates with too light a touch. “
7 Jul 2010 | Middle East and North Africa, News and features
As statements of contempt for free expression, they don’t come much plainer. This week Tunisia told the world that it defines independent journalism as “spreading news likely to harm public order,” and independent media as “criminal organisations”
On 6 July a Tunisian appeals court confirmed the four-year prison sentence handed down to journalist Fahem Boukadous, simply for doing his job and reporting trade union protests in the provincial city of Gafsa in 2008.
For many members of the Tunisian Monitoring Group (TMG) of IFEX free expression network, the verdict is part of a process of institutionalising state censorship in Tunisia with the help of a sympathetic judiciary. It has strongly condemned the charges.
The TMG is urging the Tunisian authorities to end ongoing harassment of critical journalists and to respect free expression in line with its domestic laws and its ratified commitments to international covenant on civil and political rights.
It also lays down a serious challenge to the European Union to condemn the harassment. Brussels is already hesitating in offering Tunis the special trade relationship already offered to its neighbour Morocco.
The charges brought against Boukadous, which include “belonging to a criminal association” and “harming public order”, appear to be yet another political manoeuvre aiming to silence criticism of Tunisian authorities.
To do it, those same authorities are dragging an innocent sick man through hospitals, courts and jails out of sheer maliciousness. Having exposed the state’s failures in Gafsa in 2008 the state is now making Boukadous suffer for it.
Boukaddous was unable to attend the hearing as he was in a hospital in Sousse where he is being treated for respiratory problems. “There are plainclothes police agents in the hospital pressuring medical staff to release me so that they can take me to prison. Hospital staff are refusing to yield to their pressure”, Boukaddous told the TMG.
Radhia Nasraoui, one of his lawyers, denounced the court ruling as “harsh and unfair” and warned against the “dangerous consequences” of denying Boukaddous the “vital medical care he needs.” She added that several political prisoners have died from a “lack of medical care” over the past years.
Boukadous, a journalist with Al-Hiwar Al-Tunisi satellite television station, went into hiding in July 2008 after discovering that he was wanted by the Tunisian authorities. He was sentenced to six years in prison in December 2008.
In November 2009 he emerged to challenge the sentence on the basis that he had been tried in absentia. A court overturned the previous ruling, but said that Boukadous would again be tried on the same charges. In January of this year, the journalist was found guilty and sentenced to four years in prison, which his lawyers appealed, without avail.
Index on Censorship currently chairs the TMG, which is a group of 20 organisations who belong to the International Freedom of Expression Exchange (IFEX) network
7 Jul 2010 | Events
Banned in their native Belarus and renowned for staging uncensored performances underground, Belarus Free Theatre is a rare voice of dissent in Europe’s last dictatorship.
On Tuesday 13 July, Sir Tom Stoppard will introduce Natalia Koliada, and Nikolai Khalezin – directors of Belarus Free Theatre – and leading opposition figure Charter 97’s Andrei Sannikov.
The theatre company’s most recent London performances won widespread acclaim, but their fight for freedom and democracy continues as the situation worsens in Belarus. On 1 July, President Lukashenko brought in restrictive new internet laws intended to criminalise human rights and political activists who use the internet to organise opposition to the regime.
At the event, Index on Censorship will launch a campaign to draw attention to the state of free expression in Belarus. During the event we will ask you to give a 60-second message of support to the people of Belarus, which will be filmed and placed online.
7pm – 9pm, Free Word Centre, 60 Farringdon Road, London, EC1R 3GA
RSVP: bookings[AT]freewordonline.com 0207 324 2570
Reviews for the Belarus Free Theatre company:
“This dazzling production… shows a spiritual resilience that makes dictatorship look even more inflexible and absurd.” The Guardian *****
“As gripping and accomplished a piece of theatre as you’ll find in London this year… this is world class theatre, built on the raw guts of experience” The Telegraph *****
