21 Mar 11 | Index Index, minipost
On Thursday, Armenian officials refused to allow four journalists entry to the country. The reporters work for Finnish public broadcaster YLE. Two are from Estonia, one is Finnish and the other is Lithuanian. They were denied visas by the immigration authorities at the Zvarnots international airport, and forced to leave the country. They were offered no explanation.
20 Mar 11 | Uncategorized
You might say it was a brave move for Acting Deputy Commissioner John Yates to ask to be questioned in public again by MPs about the phone hacking scandal. He clearly feels stung by the suggestion — put forward most recently by Chris Bryant MP in Parliament — that he misled the Commons media committee on the subject in 2009.
Yates’s justification then for implying that the News of the World’s hacking was a small-scale affair rests on a legal point — he says the Crown Prosecution Service told the Met to stick to a very narrow definition of the offence, and so officers acted accordingly. The CPS, however, tells the story differently.
No doubt Yates has some answers on all that; he would be a fool if he didn’t. It will be of greater long-term interest, however, to see how he responds to questioning about other aspects of the Met’s conduct in the hacking affair, because he won’t escape without that.
I saw his performance in 2009 and I recall thinking that if I was a serious criminal under investigation I would want Yates to be in charge of my case. For a top detective he seemed astonishingly unsuspicious. Police knew that a News of the World reporter transcribed dozens of voicemails, but they never questioned the reporter or the person whose phone had been hacked. The transcripts were marked “for Neville”, but police never established who that was, even though the paper employed only one person called Neville, and he was the chief reporter. And so on.
Yates insisted there was nothing wrong with all this myopia. I have written before that one of the most remarkable characteristics of the whole phone hacking affair is that people keep saying utterly incredible things and expecting you to believe them. So police officers can’t spot a lead that would have been obvious to an Enid Blyton reader and the entire staff of a national newspaper can’t remember a single thing about a story (about Gordon Taylor) which they fully intended to put on their own front page.
Yates will be questioned in detail this week about why the Met kept insisting there were very few hacking victims. Just as important, however, is the matter of how the police have handled inquiries from possible victims who have asked them about evidence. Lawyers have been lining up to complain that these inquiries were frequently stalled and even obstructed by police, in a way that has benefited one party — Rupert Murdoch’s News International. Why was that?
There is the matter of when the police studied and audited the voluminous hacking information they seized in 2006. Read Yates’s evidence from 2009 and you would probably form the impression that his officers were on top of it, that they had seen every piece of paper and every computer file and they knew its evidential significance. That position, however, is difficult to reconcile with our present knowledge — see for example the case now being made on behalf of Sienna Miller. It is also difficult to reconcile with the fact that the Met has launched a new, “robust” investigation into the whole affair.
There is much more. Why did three years pass before we learned that the princes, William and Harry, were victims? (That delay benefited News International by muting the public outcry.) If the documents offered the slightest hint that John Prescott, then deputy prime minister, had been hacked by a private investigator, why was the matter not pursued with the utmost vigour, as an issue of national security? Why did the Met tiptoe into the News of the World office in August 2006 and seize only the barest minimum of their materials? Why did Met officers dine with News International executives at a time when the company was under investigation? Has the Met investigated whether any police officers helped Glenn Mulcaire gain his industrial-scale access to mobile phone data?
There is a lot to address, besides the matter of the CPS’s legal advice. Yates may need to remind himself, as he sits there facing the music for his force, that he asked for it.
Brian Cathcart teaches journalism at Kingston University London. Follow him on Twitter: @BrianCathcart
19 Mar 11 | Egypt, Middle East and North Africa
Egyptians are expected to turn out to the polls Saturday in mass numbers to vote on a package of proposed constitutional amendments. It’s a national referendum that seems certain to make history on several levels.
For starters, it’s the first Egyptian national vote in living memory with any degree of uncertainty about the outcome.
Under former president Hosni Mubarak (and all of his predecessors) elections tended to be stage-managed affairs bearing the superficial hallmarks of a functioning democratic process. Egyptian citizens (who have always been a politically savvy bunch) sensed decades ago that the game was rigged and stopped even pretending to care.
That whole dynamic ended with Mubarak’s forced resignation last month in the face of a historic 18-day popular uprising. Now, with the country being ruled by the Supreme Armed Forces Council, Egyptians face the task of building a functioning democratic society. That means deciding which elements of the existing political infrastructure can be repaired and reformed and which elements need to be scrapped entirely and rebuilt from scratch.
This question seems to define people’s feelings heading into Saturday’s vote. Opponents of the amendment package have argued passionately that it is insufficient to simply “fix” the existing constitution and demand a full rewrite — even if that means slowing down the country’s transition to civilian rule.
“The 1971 constitution fell in the revolution. It has no legitimacy,” said Mohammed Salah, a young activist speaking this week at a press conference called by a coalition of secular activist groups who were instrumental in the revolution. “The people want a completely new constitution.”
On the surface, the eight amendments formulated by a military-appointed commission of legal scholars, satisfy many of the basic demands of the protesters who brought the old regime down. They would establish presidential limits of two four-year terms, eliminate obstacles to forming political parties and launching independent presidential campaigns, limit the once-dominant powers of the executive branch and make it much harder for future presidents to govern under indefinite martial law, as Mubarak did.
Approval of the package would place the country on a fast track to parliamentary elections as early as September. Rejection would likely mean a disruption of that schedule and an extension of Egypt’s period of military rule.
Egyptian media has been dominated for the past week by extensive back-and-forth debate over the amendments. Despite a near-universal desire to get the country in civilian hands as soon as possible, an impressive array of political actors has called for a rejection of proposed changes. This includes many of the youth groups who first sparked the rebellion, as well as future presidential contenders Mohammed ElBaradei and Amr Moussa, the outgoing head of the Arab League.
The only significant political player that has endorsed the changes is the Muslim Brotherhood—a development that essentially turns the referendum into a test of the venerable Islamist group’s street power. Flyers distributed throughout Egypt by the Brotherhood are notably short on the usual religious references, but urge its followers to vote yes “for the sake of Egypt’s stability.”
More cynical observers view the Brotherhood’s enthusiasm as a bit of a power play. They charge that the group is trying to speed the path towards early parliamentary elections where its existing grassroots machine would give it a significant advantage before newer political forces have a chance to solidify and organize themselves.
Whatever the outcome, perhaps the most encouraging aspect of the feisty amendment debate is that nobody is pushing for a boycott.
Watching Egyptians peacefully and passionately disagree about the future of their country can’t possibly be a bad thing.
18 Mar 11 | Uncategorized
American publishers who’ve long felt constrained by British libel law saw the publication Tuesday of the UK’s draft defamation bill as a crucial step to reforming a system that can’t be addressed by protective US measures alone.
“It’s a huge milestone, because it had seemed that for years the discussion of libel law reform was one that only expert barristers and soliticitors who are steeped in that area of practice were engaged in,” said David Heller, a senior staff lawyer for the Media Law Resource Center in New York.
The MLRC has for about six or seven years been advocating on behalf of US newspapers, magazines, book publishers and broadcasters for reform of British libel law, as its impact beyond the UK has intensified in the age of the Internet.
“In a global publishing world, with the web — where you can if you want speak to a global audience, and if you don’t want to, your material on the web is generally accessible anyway — there was a growing clash of defamation laws between countries,” Heller said.
The draft released Tuesday still doesn’t include everything the MLRC would like to see. Heller pointed in particular to the burden of proof, which still lies heavily on the side of the defendant. The MLRC is also eager to see included specific protections for Internet service providers and limitations on the rights of corporations to sue. Heller was pleased, however, that the draft law addresses a requirement for establishing substantial harm — a standard more in keeping with US libel law — and provisions to curb libel tourism and to create a single publication rule.
American publishers and writers earned a degree of protection last year, when the US passed a federal law shielding citizens from foreign libel judgments inconsistent with the free-speech protections in the U.S. constitution. (A Florida-based website sued for libel in Canadian court has in fact just invoked the new U.S. law for the first time.) But the US SPEECH Act alone — without systemic reform of the British system — doesn’t entirely address the problem.
“There are American publishers and American authors with interests in the UK, and there are probably publishers who would like to be able to publish in the UK without a sword of Damocles hanging over their head,” said Judith Platt, who directs the Freedom to Read and International Freedom to Publish committees with the Association of America Publishers.
Her fear is not simply that US writers and publications have been sued in the UK, but that in many cases writers and publications have simply chosen not to publish at all for fear of being sued.
“It’s not quantifiable because it’s very hard to say what hasn’t been published because of the fear,” she said. “But that’s another incredible reason for reforming libel laws: things that are not published, things that are not said, information that’s not made available to the public because of fear of abusive defamation laws.”
Platt also appealed — as did author Rachel Ehrenfeld this week — to the notion that two countries so closely allied in many other ways should better align their protections for the shared value of free expression.
“George Bernard Shaw said we’re two countries divided by a common language,” Platt said, laughing. “But in point of fact, we are united, we are very interested [in each others’ work]. I read Booker Prize winners all the time, and American bestsellers are very popular in England. So just in the interest of the free flow of information, it’s an important part of it.”
Platt and Heller’s enthusiasm for the new bill — with a few qualified reservations — was shared this week by several other US organisations.
The US Center for Inquiry, which promotes a secular society based on science, reason, freedom of inquiry, and humanist values, has been particularly concerned by the impact of British libel law on scientific inquiry. Derek Araujo, the center’s vice president and general counsel, sent Index this statement on the draft bill:
“Scientists, scholars and journalists everywhere should welcome the UK government’s willingness to reform its draconian libel laws. The ill effects of these harsh laws extend far beyond the UK’s borders. The [English] legal system’s infamous “libel tourism” has stifled freedom of speech, freedom of inquiry and scientific research across the globe. At the very least, Parliament must ensure that any reform package contain a strong public interest defense. Doctors, scientists and journalists should not be intimidated into suppressing their findings out of fear of ruinous UK libel suits.”
Freedom House, another US-based free expression organisation, has been closely following the reform movement as well because, according to Chris Walker, its director of studies, the law’s “multiplier effect in globally suppressing information on corruption and international security issues has far more dangerous implications.”
“The proposed reform in England is therefore an important step because it signals seriousness on the part of decision makers there to pursue reform,” Walker wrote in an email from the Czech Republic. “The proposed draft contains a host of important measures, ranging from restrictions on jury trials to statutory defenses against libel claims. At the same time, it is essential that in the end this reform initiative gets it right in ensuring that wealthy individuals can no longer succeed in muzzling free speech on major international issues by using English libel laws as a legal weapon to silence or cow those who criticise them.”
Heller also offered one more caution as advocates on both sides of the Atlantic await the next steps in the process.
“There’s factor here, which is also that some of these changes in the law will in the end have to be interpreted and applied by the judges in London who hear libel cases,” he said. “It also depends a little bit on that, whether they will apply any libel reform laws in the spirit in which they were intended.”
