21 May 2012 | Leveson Inquiry
The former secretary for culture media and sport told the Leveson Inquiry today that her family had “been destroyed” by intense media harassment.
Tessa Jowell, culture secretary from 2001 to 2007, became emotional as she described the “total” invasion of privacy she and her family had suffered.
Detailing what she called “obsessive curiosity” about her family and private life, Jowell said: “In the months to years after I’d find people sitting outside my house with cameras.”
“Only in the last 18 months do I find myself not looking in cars to see if there is somebody waiting,” she added.
In May 2006 she was told by Operation Caryatid, the original phone hacking investigation, that her voicemail had been intercepted 28 times, and subsequently discovered the activity was more extensive. In December 2011 Jowell settled a civil case for breach of privacy with News International.
“There is no evidence yet shown to me that the hacking of my phone was undertaken for commercial motives, but rather in pursuance of an obsessive interest in my troubled family circumstances at that time,” Jowell wrote in her witness statement.
She added that she was “deeply shocked” when she read Metropolitan police’s DCS Keith Surtees’s evidence, in which he said Jowell had declined to sign a statement to be used in the prosecutions of former News of the World royal reporter Clive Goodman and private investigator Glenn Mulcaire when she was first informed of phone hacking in August 2006.
“It is untrue,” she told the Inquiry. “Had I been asked at that time to provide a witness statement I would have.”
She said she “sought clarification” from the police over how she could contribute but was assured there was nothing further to do, writing in her witness statement that her “offers of further help were declined”.
She also said she did not approach the News of the World over the matter because she believed the perpetrators had been imprisoned, and did not complain to the Press Complaints Commission about the press intrusion she suffered.
During her evidence, Jowell and Lord Justice Leveson collided over whether or not the Press Complaints Commission was in fact a regulator. “Regulatory may be the wrong term,” Jowell said, noting that the Commission oversaw media conduct and provided redress for those who felt they had been wronged by the press.
Asked if the DCMS should have taken a more hands-on role in media monitoring, Jowell said such manoeuvres would have “been seen as a step to undermine self-regulation”.
“There’s no halfway house in this,” she said. “Either the media is regulated on statutory basis or it’s self-regulated.”
The Inquiry continues this afternoon with evidence from Lord Mandelson.
Follow Index on Censorship’s coverage of the Leveson Inquiry on Twitter – @IndexLeveson
21 May 2012 | Middle East and North Africa
Dictators do not like to be ridiculed. They fear bold political cartoonists. Ousted Tunisian President Zeine el-Abidin Ben Ali made sure that the few artworks of political cartoonists who dared to criticise his regime would not reach the masses. He did what any tyrant would do: he censored them.
For more than four years Seif Eddin Nechi, a young Tunisian cartoonist, has been using social media as a platform to mock and criticise various aspects of the Tunisian society and political landscape. It did not take long before the regime’s net censorship machine blocked access to his cartoons.
Nechi said: “During the Ben Ali era I used to criticise everything, but in a roundabout way to get around censorship. Once I started talking about internet censorship through my cartoons, I was censored”.
He added: “After 14 January 2011 [when the Tunisian revolution began], criticising national and political affairs has become a central theme in my cartoons, with a more direct tone”.
With the uprising and the fall of the Ben Ali regime, many of the red lines which once prohibited artists from revealing their talents were scrapped.
“When I was very young, I used to draw everything and anything (especially my professors), and this earned me several punishments! Due to the system, my interest in caricature art had gradually faded away, and I could only share my drawings with my closest friends,” says Adnen Akremi (alias Adenov).
But now, Adenov can make use of his sense of humour, his pencils and his character Le Rasta, who is always smoking a joint, to ridicule and criticise.
Adenov explained: “It is through him [Le Rasta] that I express myself. He is Zen-like and out of touch and this somehow helps him to hit where it hurts. Through him I try to criticise the Tunisian’s situation in a funny way (well not always funny). When my messages are similar to the majority’s, it is good, but I’m not seeking to be the spokesperson of a particular group or a political party”.
In one drawing, Mustapha Ben Jaafar, Tunisia’s constituent assembly President, is depicted as extremely angry, asking Le Rasta about the efficiency of joints: “Is your thing efficient?” he asks. Le Rasta answers:” I can guarantee that it is 100 per cent efficient. Take one before each assembly session”.
In another cartoon, Le Rasta sarcastically comments on the increase in gas prices and the trend of self-immolations: “Is this within the framework of fighting self immolation suicides?”
Like Adenov, Nechi also created his own character, Bakounawar. “Bakounawar almost always ridicules reality, laughs at everything, he rarely gets angry,” Nechi told Index. “I created him to express myself and to try to say what is on my mind in a quasi-ludic manner, while remaining serious at the same time. Bakounawar has adopted a more popular discourse (and not a populist one) to be more than ever by the side of average and poor Tunisians. Bakounawar chose Tunisian dialect as language, and popular humour. I’m aware that my caricatures are still far from those I want to reach because the platform that I chose (the web) is not accessible to everyone,” he explained.
Via Bakounawar, Nechi has expressed his support to Al-Oula, a weekly newspaper whose director spent seven days on hunger strike protesting at government policies of state advertisements distribution among newspaper. “It [Al-Oula] is not a newspaper worth five cents”, says Bakounawar in one caricature.
But why did these two young artists chose the art of caricature? An art which cost Naji al-Ali’s life, and almost cost Syrian political cartoonist and Index Award winner Ali Fezrat his fingers.
“The message of a caricature is more direct than any other drawing genres”, answered Adenov.
“It is the most ludicrous tool capable of popularising complex situations. Caricatures allow us to laugh at our own flaws…” replied Nechi.
“This art has a primordial role in the construction of the future of a freer Tunisia”, said Amine Lamine, founder of Graphik Island, a platform which seeks to promote the artworks of Tunisian artists at both national and international levels. “Popularising art and culture to make them more accessible, so as many people as possible have interest in them and take part in the building of a better Tunisia”, he added.
The booming of caricature art was crowned by the publishing of Koumik (Tunisian for “Cartoon”), a collective book of comics which brought together 14 rising Tunisian caricaturists. The first issue was published in October 2011, and other issues are expected and anticipated.
21 May 2012 | Digital Freedom, News and features
A number of British mobile networks are blocking the far-right British National Party’s website, it has been revealed.
Following a report by LSE Media Policy Project and Open Rights Group (ORG) on mobile internet censorship, a number of web-users alerted ORG that the BNP’s website is blocked on a variety of mobile networks if child protection filters are active, once again raising the question of the efficacy of online filtering systems.
Though these sites are blocked through child protection systems, ORG argues that often filters such as these are “on by default” and can block too much content through “mistaken categorisations”.
ORG also raise the question of whether internet service providers (ISP’s) should be blocking the website of a political party at all, citing political speech as “the core of the activities protected by freedom of expression rights”.
Upon further investigation of the alleged blocking, Index found it was blocked on Tmobile, Orange and Vodafone. We also noted with particular interest that the site was restricted to over 18s on 02, and subject to a charge of £1 to clarify you were of age to access the controversial political party’s website, and any other age restricted sites. Is this perhaps some kind of “porn tax” from the mobile networks? Why should a customer pay to verify their age?
In her response to the Mobile Censorship report on the LSE Media Policy Project’s blog, Index’s editor Jo Glanville said: “It has long been demonstrated that filtering systems are a blunt tool that censor content beyond the sites that are targeted”.
Glanville added that the criteria for blocking content on mobile phones are “alarmingly opaque” and explains that companies do not inform their customers that their phones “are blocked by default”. Glanville also describes “alarming evidence” detailed in the report, that phone companies failed to act when they were informed that a site had been wrongly blocked.
There is a particular concern that sites which are being blocked by child protection filters cover broader categories than adult sexual content, and that mobile networks are making decisions about what under 18s should be exposed to. ORG argues that the scope of content blocked on the mobile phones of young people should be determined by parents, in a discussion with their children.
“The current panic around protection of children has introduced the mistaken belief that filtering is a solution,” explains Glanville. “ORG and LSE have provided the timely evidence to show that it is, on the contrary damaging.”
It’s not just party political sites which are being blocked by these networks. Users also alerted ORG to a number of “anti-feminism” sites which were being blocked, including www.antimisandry.com, www.exposingfeminism.wordpress.com and www.angryharry.com, are all blocked on o2 and Vodafone, while www.manwomanmyth.com is blocked on Three and Orange. They also detail a number of reports that “lifestyle” sites have been blocked by mobile network providers, along with a number of technology-related news sites and some discussion forums.
And this problem seems to be fairly widespread. A Twitter user today alerted The F Word, a UK feminist site, that access to their website was blocked on o2.
Following their report, ORG and LSE called on mobile networks to offer an “opt in” system for filtering, rather than having to “opt out”, and for further clarity on the source of filtering technology. The report also recommends regular reviews of filtering systems and their efficacy.
Alice Purkiss is an editorial assistant at Index. She tweets at @alicemaypurkiss
21 May 2012 | News and features
Crossposted at alicemaypurkiss.wordpress.com
The name of footballer Ched Evan’s rape victim was thrust into the public domain via Twitter once again this week.
In April, the Wales and Sheffield United Striker was found guilty of rape of a 19 year old woman believed to be “too drunk to consent” and jailed for five years. Since the trial, North Wales Police and South Yorkshire Police have arrested 16 people in connection with comments allegedly made via the internet.
Last week, Sky News were referred to the Crown Prosecution Service and the attorney general after an on-air mistake meant they accidentally broadcast the name of Evans’ victim.
On Thursday (17 May), a Twitter user named the rape victim again and a clearly disgusted Louise Mensch, Conservative MP for Corby, requested that followers report the user to Twitter and North Wales Police.
Though Mensch was clearly acting in good faith, I believe her execution was shortsighted and foolish. By linking through to the Twitter user who had published the name, the MP had drawn the attention of her 57,000+ followers to this, further damaging the already delicate legal anonymity the victim is entitled to.
When it was suggested that Mensch had simply widened the attention drawn to the breach (by the Guardian’s Josh Halliday and Jonathan Haynes), she declared that there was “no point pretending her [the victim] name was not already completely exposed as Twitter made it a trending topic.”
Previously exposed or not, previous Twitter trending topic or not, Mensch’s reaction was still knee-jerk, and presented the victim’s name in the public domain and to an entirely different audience. The Corby MP had no way of knowing which of her followers had already seen the trending topic, and which of her followers would have recognised the trending topic as the name of the victim. I consider it irresponsible to assume that all of her followers knew, and recognised, the name already.
Though the problem obviously needed addressing, it seemed that Mensch hadn’t considered her actions thoroughly. After she felt that the case had been brought to the attention of Twitter, she deleted the tweet, considering that justice had been done.
The increase of news dissemination on Twitter is both a wonderful and terrifying thing. In instances such as this, it is hugely concerning. Rape victims are granted anonymity under the Sexual Offences (Amendment) Act 1992 as a protection tool, in the hopes that the fear felt by those reporting crimes such as this will be reduced.
Government Whip Shailesh Vara told the House of Commons that the naming of victims on social media needed to be closely monitored. Vara warned: “I want to make it absolutely clear that the anonymity of rape victims for life is there. When there is a breach of that, then the full force of the law must take its place.”
Labour MP Kerry McCarthy added that cases such as this could deter rape victims from coming forward, for the fear of being subjected to the identification and abuse faced by Evans’ victim.
As we move further into the Digital Age, it is evident that education and understanding of the relationship between social media and the law needs to be addressed. Though ignorance is not an excuse, perhaps those who initially named Evans’ victim were not aware of the legal life anonymity granted to those in affected by rape. But the law is there for a reason.
How do we educate the masses on this crucial issue to prevent further suffering of rape victims? And how do the government respond if cases such as this do deter victims from reporting crimes? Maybe the IT lessons young people undertake at school need to cover issues such as this – but that’s a minefield, and a large proportion of Twitter users will already have left education, missing out on that crucial knowledge.
Whatever the solution, the problem needs to be tackled head on, before it has a detrimental effect on the reporting of rape crimes, and the victims who have already experienced enough trauma to last them a lifetime.
Alice Purkiss is an editorial assistant at Index. She tweets at @alicemaypurkiss
