10 Jan 19 | Events
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”104613″ img_size=”full”][vc_column_text]The Holocaust never happened. The planet isn’t warming. Vaccines cause autism. All of us deny inconvenient truths sometimes, but what happens when denial becomes ‘denialism’, a systematic attempt to overturn established scholarly findings? And how do we relate to this phenomenon in a ‘post-truth’ age?
Our panellists, whose expertise covers history, contemporary culture, the law and psychotherapy, discuss the significance of phenomena such as Holocaust denial and climate change denial, and how they relate to ‘everyday’ denial.
Speakers[/vc_column_text][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”104622″ img_size=”full”][vc_column_text]Jane Haynes is a psychotherapist who works through dialogue and relationship. She was part of a team responsible for contributing to the training syllabus in Russia after President Yeltsin permitted analytic psychotherapy to be returned to the academe. She has written several books of which the latest are Doctors Dissected (With Dr Martin Scurr) and her memoir: If I Chance to Talk A Little Wild(2018) both published by Quartet Books.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”104621″ img_size=”full”][vc_column_text]Dr Keith Kahn-Harris is a writer and sociologist. He teaches at Leo Baeck College and Birkbeck College and runs the European Jewish Research Archive at the Institute for Jewish Policy Research.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”104623″ img_size=”full”][vc_column_text]Mark Levene has been an environmental-cum-peace activist, an academic, and an unsuccessful advocate of their merger. He writes, mostly about genocide and climate change. He also runs study tours to the once multicultural city of Salonika (The Greek Project).[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”104620″ img_size=”full”][vc_column_text]James Libson is a partner at Mishcon de Reya, solicitors, where he has been for 27 years. He has acted in many high profile cases including for Deborah Lipstadt in her case against David Irving, Gina Miller in her challenge to the government over Article 50, and most recently on behalf of Margaret Hodge MP resisting her expulsion from the Labour Party. He chaired World Jewish Relief from 2011-16 and currently chairs Prism, the Gift Fund. He has an Honorary Ph.D. from the University of Law.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”104619″ img_size=”full”][vc_column_text]Lucy Siegle is a writer and TV presenter specialising in environmental issues, ethical shopping and lifestyles. She is an authority on the environmental and social footprint of the global fashion industry. She co-founded the Green Carpet Challenge with Livia Firth and she was The Observer and The Guardian’s eco agony aunt. She is known on TV as a reporter and presenter on BBC1’s The One Show and has been reporting on the problem of single use plastic since the show began. Her book, Turning the Tide on Plastic: How Humanity (and you) Can Make Our Globe Clean Again will ignite the plastic activist in all of us.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”80210″ img_size=”full”][vc_column_text]Jodie Ginsberg is chief executive of global freedom of expression organisation, Index on Censorship. She is a passionate believer in the power of words and the importance of good heels.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]
When: Thursday 7 March, 8:30pm
Where: Hall One, Kings Place, 90 York Way, London, N1 9AG
Tickets: £16.50 via Jewish Books Week
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03 Oct 18 | Event Reports, News and features
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”103062″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes”][vc_column_text]“Critical thinking is important, but we should also be teaching scientific literacy and political literacy so we know what knowledge claims to trust,” said Keith Kahn-Harris, author of Denial: The Unspeakable Truth, at a panel debate during the launch of the autumn 2018 edition of Index on Censorship.
The theme of this quarter’s magazine, The Age of Unreason, looks at censorship in scientific research and whether our emotions are blurring the lines between fact and fiction. From Mexico to Turkey, Hungary to China, a whole range of countries from around the globe were covered for this special report, featuring articles from the likes of Julian Baggini and David Ulin. For the launch, a selection of journalists, authors and academics shared their thoughts on how to have better arguments when emotions are high, while exploring concerns surrounding science and censorship in the current global climate.
Aptly taking place at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, the historical home of scientific research for 14 Nobel Prize winners, Kahn-Harris was joined by BBC Radio 4 presenter Timandra Harkness and New Scientist writer Graham Lawton. The discussion was chaired by Rachael Jolley, editor of Index on Censorship magazine.
“Academics and experts are being undermined all over the world,” said Jolley, setting the stage for a riveting conversation between panellists and the audience. “Is this something new or something that has happened throughout history?”
When Jolley asked why science is often the first target of an authoritarian government, Lawton proposed that the value of science is that it is evidence-based and subsequently “kryptonite” to what rigid establishments want to portray. He added: “They depend extremely heavily on telling people half-truths or lies.”[/vc_column_text][vc_single_image image=”103066″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes”][vc_column_text]Harkness led a workshop highlighting the importance of applying critical thinking skills when deconstructing arguments, using footage of real-life debates, past and present, to investigate such ideas. Whether it was the first televised contest between presidential candidates John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon in 1960, or a dispute between Indian civilians over LGBT rights earlier this year, a wide variety of topics and discussions were analysed.
Examining a debate between 2016 presidential candidates Donald Trump and Hilary Clinton, Harkness asked an audience member his thoughts. Focusing on Trump’s approach, he said: “He’s put up a totally false premise which is quite a conventional tactic; you put up something that is not what the other person said, and then you proceed to knock it down quite reasonably because it’s unreasonable in the first place.” Harkness agreed. “It’s the straw man tactic”, she said, “where you build something up and then attack it.”
Panellists began discussing how to argue with say those who deny climate change, with Kahn-Harris contending that science has become enormously specialised over the past centuries, which means people cannot always debunk uncertain claims since they are not specialists. He said: “There’s something tremendously smug about the post-enlightenment world.”
Harkness said “robust challenges” should be sought-after rather than silencing those who share different views, while Lawton added that “storytelling and appealing to emotions are perfectly valid ways of arguing.”
For more information on the autumn issue, click here. The issue includes an article on how fact and fiction come together in the age of unreason, why Indian journalism is under threat, Nobel prize-winning novelist Herta Müller on censorship in Romania, and an exclusive short story from bestselling crime writer Ian Rankin. Listen to our podcast here. Or, try our quiz that decides how prone to bullshit you are…[/vc_column_text][vc_basic_grid post_type=”post” max_items=”4″ element_width=”6″ grid_id=”vc_gid:1538584887174-432e9410-24f0-4″ taxonomies=”8957″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
24 Aug 18 | Europe and Central Asia, European Union, Media Freedom, media freedom featured, News and features, Sweden
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An image from the website of the right-wing populist Sweden Democrats, who changed their logo from a National Front-esque torch to a flower in an effort to clean up their image.
Sweden baked in record temperatures this summer, matched only by the increasingly heated political climate as it gears up for an unprecedentedly bitter and divisive general election. Front page stories about raging wildfires and drought have given a poll boost to the Swedish Green Party as climate change has leapt up the agenda. For populist media critics, however, the attention given to the fires is part of a conspiracy to keep the Greens in government and to give the governing left-wing bloc a victory in September’s vote.
Edward Riedl, a conservative member of parliament for the opposition Moderate Party accused major newspapers of “agenda setting” by giving such prominent coverage to the environment, with one if his party colleagues calling out newspapers for being pro-Green.
The far right meanwhile maintains a longstanding animosity with Sweden’s established print and public service media, which they accuse of being a cosy cartel.
Marie Grusell, a media researcher at Gothenburg University, has compared the attacks to the ongoing deligitimisation of the press in the USA by the White House.
“It is a tactic to undermine journalism. I think this is beneath contempt,” she said in an interview with the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet.
This bizarre challenging of factual environmental journalism takes place against a backdrop of an increasingly contentious news landscape, in which the fragmentation and polarisation of the Swedish political system has made it increasingly difficult to maintain the balance of the media.
Over the past decade – and in common with other European countries – Sweden has seen the emergence of a powerful populist and anti-immigration party, the Sweden Democrats. The Sweden Democrats have deployed a familiar cocktail of anti-media conspiracism, welfare nationalism and climate scepticism, as well as anti-feminist and anti-Islamic rhetoric, to move from a fringe group to a major parliamentary force with ambitions to form a government. Although they have their roots in the 1990s white power movement, the Sweden Democrats have tried to soften their image by shunning some of their more extreme members and, in 2006, changed their logo from a torch — similar to that once used by the British far-right National Front — to a cartoonish anemone hepatica, a flower in the buttercup family.
Public trust in the Swedish media is still holding up but has diminished among those drifting towards the Sweden Democrats. This section of voters have become resistant to large sections of the established media and have instead turned to social network news groups and fringe sites which claim to expose what is really happening in Swedish society, as well as foreign news sites from the USA and Russia. In an attempt to increase the amount of freely available objective media outlets, the daily Dagens Nyheter recently removed its paywall for the duration of the election campaign, but as with other established media, it may be too late for readers who have already moved on.
Increased extremism
The dangerous situation is compounded by movements operating at the political fringes who have targeted journalists. The Nordic Resistance Movement (NMR), a neo-Nazi white power group, regularly marches in shows of force, intimidating journalists, minority groups and other members of the public. In May Swedish security services raided the home or prominent NMR member Peter Holm and found a suitcase they believed had been adapted for assassinations, along with a hard drive containing details on two journalists.
NMR activists also marched at this year’s Almedalen politics festival, a high point of the political calendar where journalists, civic and business groups and politicians get together to discuss contemporary issues. The investigative anti-fascist magazine EXPO uncovered instructions for NMR activists to attend speeches by politicians and others and to shout “traitor to the people” at politicians, and confront journalists in public. At the previous year’s event, the TV journalist Jan Scherman was called a “disgusting Jew” by an NMR member while filming.
Officially there is no link between the Sweden Democrats and groups like the NMR, but several SD politicians have voiced support for the organisation in the past and the increased support for SD in opinion polls has seemingly emboldened NMR activists to take more direct action on the streets according to data compiled by EXPO.
An uncertain future climate
A glimpse into what might happen should Sweden elect a government that includes the far right is provided by Denmark, where the hardline Danish People’s Party have cut state support to public broadcasting and consistently attacked its content as being leftist and unpatriotic. If a Sweden Democrat supported government becomes a reality, journalists could find themselves pressed by an increasingly powerful and emboldened populist movement that sees journalists as scapegoats for deeper seated problems, and where objective reporting of social challenges such as the environment and integration are dismissed as politically correct opinion rather than society-wide issues of critical importance.
It now falls to the press to fight its corner as a foundational part of the country’s democracy. Sweden, long considered a uniquely stable and tolerant democracy, is about to find out whether it really is safe from anti-democratic populism.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_basic_grid post_type=”post” max_items=”4″ element_width=”6″ grid_id=”vc_gid:1535101855192-df766193-d628-5″ taxonomies=”9008, 507″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
18 Jun 18 | News and features
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]By Nicole Ntim-Addae and Long Dang. With additional reporting by Shreya Parjan and Sandra Oseifri.[/vc_column_text][vc_single_image image=”100888″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes”][vc_column_text]“What do we do next? We are losing our point of reference. The loss of the United States and the United Kingdom as democratic beacons for the rights of journalists and the freedom of information is a bad omen for the rest of the world.”
The question was raised by Javier Garza of Article 19, a British human rights organisation, at the discussion about the growing threats to press freedom in the United States that took place at the Free Word Centre on Thursday 14 June. The panel was held to explore the findings of the unprecedented mission to the USA undertaken by six press freedom groups — Index on Censorship, Article 19, Committee to Protect Journalists, IFEX, International Press Institute, and Reporters Without Borders—in January 2018. Representatives of the groups conducted interviews with journalists in St. Louis, Missouri, Houston, Texas, and Washington DC. Their findings were published in a mission report in May 2018.
Jodie Ginsberg, CEO of Index on Censorship, stated the motivation behind the mission. “It is unusual for press freedom organisations to take a mission to the US”, she said. “According to the findings of the mission, violations of freedom of press and freedom of information may be closer to home.” The mission was carried out in recognition that discussions regarding press freedom are taken for granted in democracies in a way that they are not in authoritarian states.
At the same time, Trump’s hostile rhetoric directed against the US press is problematic for press worldwide. Rebecca Vincent, UK bureau director of Reporters Without Borders, noted that the Trumpian denunciation of the press as “fake news” and “enemies of the people” is gradually becoming a global phenomenon.
Vincent, Ginsberg, and Dave Banisar, senior legal counsel of Article 19 were moderated by Paddy Coulter, director of communications at Oxford Poverty & Human Development Initiative and member of the Article 19 board, to review the mission.
According to the US Press Freedom Tracker, there were 34 arrests of journalists made by the authorities in 2017 alone. Along with that, there has been a noticeable uptick in border controls since 2017, with journalists being searched, forced to hand over their phones for inspection, and denied entry into the U.S. This kind of problematic border control renders it extremely difficult for journalists to travel for work. Moreover, the excessive phone screening not only poses a violation of journalists’ right to privacy, but also a risk to the safety of their sources.
“The US office [of RSF] now puts out a weekly violations report because there are so many of them” said Vincent. The UK is currently ranked 40th out of 180 countries in terms of press freedom, according to the 2018 World Press Freedom Index. The US is faring worse, ranking at 45th. Since the beginning of 2018 alone, two journalists have been arrested and 12 have been attacked. The panelists noted that these problems did not start with the Trump administration. “Don’t get complacent. The beautiful [Clinton-Bush-Obama] administration’s era when nothing went wrong hasn’t existed for a long time.” said Banisar.
Banisar explained how little protection there is for whistleblowers and their sources under the Espionage Act of 1917. It is important to note that the improper use of the act had started before the Trump administration: under the Obama administration, the act was used to prosecute more whistleblowers than ever before. Banisar highlighted the case of Reality Winner, the former NSA contractor who was incarcerated only a few days after she released information that the Russians had hacked the 2016 presidential election. Jen Robinson from Article 19, an Australian human rights lawyer and barrister with Doughty Street Chambers in London and advisor to Julian Assange WikiLeaks founder noted that Wikileaks’ 2010 investigation was unprecedented. Never before has the Espionage Act been used in a civil lawsuit as that would have set the stage for larger news agencies such as The New York Times.
How could we do better?
Ginsberg stressed the importance of “reverse education” – that is, showing people how to navigate the negative environments. Border stops, according to her, are “a deeply concerning intrusion on the confidentiality of a reporter’s sources”. Accordingly, when journalists travel to the US to work, they should be aware of the situation and take steps to protect themselves and their sources. In that vein, Index has provided a journalist tool kit drawing from the experience of journalists who have had to deal with problems first hand. It has also corroborated with the Missouri School of Journalism in Project Exile, which documents the experience of journalists forced to live in exile because of their work.
Vincent reaffirmed that the hostile rhetoric directed at journalists needs to stop, since “the line between hateful, hostile terms and violence against journalists is blurring”. Bainsar emphasized that legal changes needs to be made to facilitate the free flow of information. He also stated that the US government needs to strive to improve its laws on source protection, protection for whistleblowers and statutory rights. Banisar calls for the Espionage Act of 1917 to be “ceremonially buried”.
But it is not all doom and gloom. Ginsberg, pointing to the demonstrations taking place around the world, commented that there is “still a huge appetite to assemble freely”. Banisar reported that the influx of cash flow into organisations such as the ACLU and HRW shows citizens are aware that press freedom violations are not problems they want to see coming back. He also reminded the audience that the president could just serve four years, and there are rules and regulations that would keep him in check. Despite Trump’s adamant dismissal of climate change, 10,000 documents— obtained through the US’s landmark Freedom of Information Laws—from the Environmental Protect Agency were published in The New York Times this past week, demonstrating that there is still professionalism in the use of laws.
“There are still those with liberal values.” said Rebecca Vincent. “There is a younger generation of journalists who care about issues. It’s also about making people realize that this is not just the happening in the ‘world’. This is happening in our borders. We must stand up to our own standards.” [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_basic_grid post_type=”post” max_items=”12″ style=”load-more” items_per_page=”4″ element_width=”6″ grid_id=”vc_gid:1529312741775-6402968b-d0c0-9″ taxonomies=”9044″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
