11 May 2012 | Leveson Inquiry
Culture secretary Jeremy Hunt faces fresh questions over his involvement with News Corp’s bid for control of satellite broadcaster BSkyB, as emails shown to the Leveson Inquiry today suggest he sought guidance from the company over phone hacking.
The 27 June 2011 email from News Corp PR chief Frédéric Michel to ex-News International CEO Rebekah Brooks — who was today giving evidence at the Inquiry — read:
JH is now starting to looking [sic] to phone hacking/practices more thoroughly and has asked me to advise him privately in the coming weeks and guide his and No 10’s positioning…
Hunt’s spokeswoman has said the claim was “inaccurate”.
The email also revealed that Hunt was due to make an “extremely helpful” statement to Parliament regarding the bid, based on his belief that “phone hacking has nothing to do with the media plurality issues”. On 30 June Hunt announced the bid could go ahead, subject to one further public consultation.
The 27 June message adds heat to Hunt, who has already faced intense pressure in the wake of 160 pages’ worth of emails between Michel and Hunt’s adviser Adam Smith that were released to the Inquiry on 24 April. These revealed that News Corp was being given advance feedback of the government’s scrutiny of the BSkyB bid.
Smith has since resigned, saying that he had acted without Hunt’s authority and that his contact with News Corp “went too far”. Hunt has contended that he himself acted within the ministerial code.
News Corp abandoned the takeover bid in July 2011 in the wake of the phone hacking scandal.
Brooks’ day-long appearance marked the second day of the third module of the Inquiry, which is examining relations between press and politicians. Inquiry counsel Robert Jay QC said these relationships may have been “over-cosy” in his opening remarks yesterday.
Brooks swayed from appearing nervous to restless and was more impassioned towards the end of her evidence. Discussing her contact with David Cameron, Brooks revealed the PM signed off his text messages to her with “LOL”, under the impression it meant “lots of love” rather than “laugh out loud”.
When Brooks clarified the difference to the PM, he then stopped using the acronym, the Inquiry learned.
Brooks’s contact with Cameron has been the focus of attention this week, with reports that the PM had texted her up to 12 times a day. Brooks dismissed the claim as “preposterous”, noting that he would send her messages once or twice a week.
She told the Inquiry she had received messages of commiserations from Cameron, chancellor George Osborne and former prime minister Tony Blair after her July 2011 resignation. She confirmed that she received a message from Cameron, the gist of which was to “keep your head up”, but that it was not a “direct text message”.
She said that she spoke to Cameron “in general terms” after the Guardian published its July 2009 story on phone hacking that had claimed the practice was not limited to a single reporter. She added that they discussed it in more detail the following year as civil cases were brought forward.
The atmosphere between Jay and Brooks turned dour as the afternoon wore on and Jay’s usually mild questioning became more terse. Brooks defended some of the Sun’s more controversial coverage, notably its 2006 story on former prime minister Gordon Brown’s son Fraser suffering from cystic fibrosis.
When pressed over the source of the piece, Brooks refused to budge, asserting that the story came from the father of another cystic fibrosis sufferer. Brown had alleged the paper obtained the information through hacking into his son’s medical records, which the redtop countered was “false” and “a smear”.
For Lord Justice Leveson, the issue was whether it was “part of the culture of the press that attack is the best form of defence”.
Brooks, who said she was friends with Brown’s wife Sarah — whom she called an “amazing woman” — maintained she had the couple’s express permission before publishing the story.
“If the Browns had asked me not to run cystic fibrosis story, I wouldn’t have,” she said.
She also countered Jay’s suggestion that the Sarah’s Law campaign run by the News of the World to “name and shame” known sex offenders was “sensationalised” and “inflammatory”. Brooks maintained the approach taken, arguing she could not predict the reprisals that ensued (a Newport-based paediatrician was mistaken for a paedophile in August 2000, with the word “paedo” being written across the front of her home). However, she conceded that she had some regrets, mentioning the list of convicted paedophiles that had been published in the paper.
Throughout her evidence, Brooks reiterated the power of the Sun was its “readership”, whose voices she had sought to reflect during her editorship from 2003-2009.
“If a journalist ever compromised their readership or their role through friendship then it’s their failing,” she said.
The Inquiry continues on Monday.
Follow Index on Censorship’s coverage of the Leveson Inquiry on Twitter – @IndexLeveson
11 May 2012 | Middle East and North Africa
UPDATE: Yara Bader, Mayada Khalil, Hanadi Zahlout, Sanaa Mehsen, Razan Ghazzawi, Joan Ferso, Ayham Ghazzoui and Bassam Alahmad were released on 12 May. Five members of the Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression remain in prison, including director and founder Mazen Darwish.
Free expression and human rights are under attack in Syria and the regime is fighting to distort the narrative. With the international media limited in its access and the barring of observatory human rights missions, it can be challenging for outsiders to understand what is happening. Brave Syrian civilians, journalists and activists struggle to show that their government, led by Bashar Al Assad has slaughtered thousands.
My own organisation was the victim of an aggressive campaign to discredit it.
I work for the Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression (SCM), as its executive manager. On 16 February 2012, Syrian authorities attacked our Damascus based office, arresting everyone present in the office that day: 14 employees and two visitors. I was the only one to go free after the raid; after locking me inside the office for hours and a lengthy investigation, I was lucky enough to go free. My diplomatic passport kept me safe.
Almost three months on I am now safe and sound, outside of Syria but my colleagues are still in prison. I feel guilty for not being with them, I would love to introduce them to you now, and show how civilised they are — as opposed to the members of a terrorist group that the Syrian regime would like to paint them — us — as. At SCM, I have worked with people who go beyond tweeting news or issuing statements — my colleagues risked their life fighting for real change.
I am not Syrian; it took me quite a long time to understand the situation there and to understand why people were whispering about freedom. I had to listen to stories — like that of journalist and activist Yara Bader, who had to live without her father for 12 years. He was a political prisoner, arrested when she was only two years old. Now, Bader is separated again from not only her father, but also from her mother and husband. Mazen Darwish, her husband, who is the head and founder of the SCM, is also in prison.
She and all my detained colleagues demonstrate courage beyond belief.
Hussein Ghrer, a blogger and activist, and father of two young boys, was also arrested. He risked his family’s life to secure their future.
Activist Abd Rahman Alhamada is the youngest member of our staff, arrested on his 23rd birthday. He was trying to balance being a student and working at the centre, but has now lost both opportunities.
Hani Zateni, a researcher and activist married fellow activist Sanaa Zateni after a courtship that spanned ten years. The couple come from different ethnic backgrounds, the regime pretends if it falls a civil war would break out between Syria’s various religious sects. This couple’s love demonstrates that there is a certain amount of harmony between religious groups.
Sanaa Mehsen ( Sanaa Zitani), is an activist and one of SCM staff’s members. Sanaa has been working with SCM for a long time, alongside her husband, Hani Zateni. She believes that the SCM provides the means by which people across Syria can be empowered with a voice to rise against oppression. She looks forward to helping the centre fulfil its goal of raising awareness about issues of freedom of expression in Syria.
And with the confusion of seeing millions of pro Assad regime supporters on the national Syrian TV, I was wondering why Razan Ghazzawi (blogger and activist) is not one of them? Why is such an educated, secular woman not supporting such a regime? And why was her Facebook campaign awarded the Best Social Activism Campaign award in the Deutsche Welle blog awards? Even after her release following her first arrest in December, the page continued demanding release of other detainees. Ghazzawi hates her own fame, as well as the media attention brought to her, as she believes that others have done more remarkable things than her but she has used it to help others.
The regime is simply anti-human, and this is what motivated Dr Ayham Ghazzoul, a dentist in his third year of his Masters degree, who could not handle watching innocent people, especially children, be killed. On the day he was referred to the judge, he told his mother that he had not taken a shower since the day of his arrest. He was smiling when he told her, as if it was a joke. He did not tell her about the countless nights in which he suffered. By avoiding the big topics, he was sending her a message that it does not matter.
Mayada Alkhalil, Joan Ferso, Bassam Alahmad, and Mansour Al Omarie were all arrested before they could even enjoy receiving their first paycheques. I hope the light inside them allows them to still enjoy themselves inside the darkness of the prison.
Human rights activist and blogger, Hanadi Zahlout, was visiting the centre the day it was attacked, and I wonder why she was even arrested in the first place? What did she witness?
Mazen Darwish, journalist, human rights defender, and founder of SCM, established the centre in 2004 in France because Syrian laws have no provisions for human rights and freedom of expression organisations. He fought for his belief in freedom and humanity, and decided to go back to Syria leaving his two children behind in France. In 2004 and 2007, Syrian authorities closed the office of SCM. Darwish managed to reopen the office in 2010. The centre is the first Syrian organisation to be granted UN consultative status. Darwish was awarded the Human Dignity award by the Roland Berger foundation for his work.
Dawrish always told us, “ there are not enough prisons for the free word” — let’s hope he is right.
Maha Assabalani is the executive manager of the Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression (SCM).
8 May 2012 | Middle East and North Africa
In its annual report published on World Press Freedom Day (3 May), the National Syndicate for Tunisian Journalists (SNJT) announced that it had registered 60 physical assaults against journalists over the last year.
The syndicate criticised the “passivity and silence of the government” in response to the alarming increase in the number of assaults.
Multiple assaults were recorded in April alone. The most recent act of violence recorded took place on 30 April, when militants belonging to the Ennahda Movement, assaulted a journalist working for the collective blog Nawaat.
Ennahda is the largest party in Tunisia’s governing alliance and Emine M’tiraoui was attacked while he was at the headquarters of the party, after he conducted an interview with a party member.
In testimony published on Nawaat.org, M’tiraoui said:
at the lobby of the party’s headquarters there was a fight and a woman was screaming. I had my camera with me, and it seems that my assaulters thought that I was filming what was going on. Though I had my press card, with my name and the name of Nawaat on it, a young militant in the movement circulated that I was “a leftist dog, and a police officer loyal to one of Tunisia’s leftist figures.
The attack continued outside the party’s headquarters. “Outside I fell to the ground…there were police officers who witnessed the assaults but they did not interfere to stop [it]” he told Index.
In less than a month M’tiraoui has been assaulted twice. On 9 April, militants of another prominent political party in Tunisia, the Progressive Democratic Party (PDP) beat him while he was covering the party’s conference.
According to the estimates from Aymen Rezgui, member of the press syndicate’s executive board, one assault is registered every week. This increase in the number of assaults is due to “police’s laxity, and to the attempts of a number of political parties to incite public opinion against journalists,” Rezgui explains.
Leaders of Ennahda, which heads the three-party coalition government, have often expressed their dissatisfaction with the media’s coverage of the government. In an interview with Radio Express FM on 25 April, Rached Ghannouchi, Ennahda’s president, accused state television station, Wataniya 1 of having “an anti revolutionary and biased editorial line which rejoices at the defeat of the legitimate government”.
“There is a clear hostility towards the government” he added.
The SNJT, on the other hand, accuses the government of seeking to tighten control over the media sector. In its report the SNJT denounced attempts to force “the media sector to follow the political vision of the government”.
1 May 2012 | Russia
One of Russia’s best known television news presenters Alexey Pivovarov revealed the extent of state media censorship during President Dmitry Medvedv’s final interview before he hands power to Vladimir Putin.
During the wide-ranging interview with journalists from a number of the country’s major television channels, NTV host Pivovarov said: “The hand of the state is obviously seen in controlling federal TV channels’ editorial policy.” He added:
I regularly confront certain limitations, stipulated by political suitability. This [control] prevents me from fulfilling my professional duty – informing people of current events.
Medvedev denied censorship exists, pointing out the Russian constitution forbids it. He said that it is “natural that political influence is higher on bigger channels”, adding that “the question of censorship within a channel is a question of chemistry between the management, journalists and audience”.
Media observers believe Pivovarov’s brave expose will cost him his job at NTV. Pivovarov was already notorious for confronting NTV management, after the first mass protest against allegedly fraudulent parliamentary elections on Bolotnaya square. He delivered an ultimatum to his bosses, refusing to host the evening news if the channel did not cover the rally – in the end programmed bosses capitulated.
Last week, Russian Forbes quoted anonymous sources in NTV, who alleged several leading journalists have been forced out after clashing with NTV’s head Vladimir Kulistikov over censorship. Kulistikov denied the conflict, saying he is guided by ratings and not personal attitude in his policy. The journalists involved refused to comment.
Several NTV anchors have left the station in recent weeks: Pavel Lobkov, Nikolay Kartoziya, Anton Krasovsky.
NTV is notorious for censorship. The list of programmes and stories pulled in recent months includes, among others, a broadcast about kidnappings and tortures in Chechnya; news about Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s cellmate who assaulted him in prison; and coverage student arrests during Dmitry Medvedev’s visit to the journalism department of Moscow State University.
The channel also angered Russian opposition activists by airing a documentary claiming that election fraud protesters were paid for attending rallies. The programme is the subject of several defamation lawsuits.
Russian human rights activist Olga Romanova wrote on Facebook that no journalists who confront NTV’s management and fight for the freedom of speech could continue to work at the channel. Romanova emotionally added: “And let the ones who stay there burn in hell”
