The spike haunts journalism. For every journalist in the country, legal threats are a persistent concern that can kill stories dead. Stories that are never published leave no imprint on society around them; while the journalist and their editors know of their existence, their readers and society at large are oblivious. We may know that stories are spiked but their true nature, what has been expunged from the public record, is unknown.
But the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ) attempted to change that, to give shape to the stories that have been forced from public attention. On Thursday 21 November, as part of TBIJ’s Silenced Stories project, MPs, protected by parliamentary privilege, presented stories that had been spiked due to legal threats. They came from outlets from across the country, big and small, covering a wide range of topics that the public have a right to know – everything from housing and government contracting to global corruption networks. These are not limited to the big media houses alone. For every national paper that is silenced, a local, independent or community outlet is similarly threatened. While each outlet is different, silence is what they all have in common.
This was an unprecedented view into an erased public record but it only hints at a larger problem. Abusive legal threats are not directed at journalists alone. Anyone who speaks out may be forced into a similar act of erasure – whether on a blog, local Facebook group or online reviewing platform – required to weigh up their desire to speak out against the cost and stress of fighting off legal letters and preparing for court.
Being a target of a strategic lawsuit against public participation (SLAPP) brings with it a cavalcade of emotional, psychological and financial strain. Malachi O’Doherty was sued by the MLA for North Belfast Gerry Kelly and while he was successful in court, the experience left him scarred, “I didn’t get a penny from him, just a lot of sleepless nights and tinnitus.” Paul Radu of OCCRP, who was sued in London by an Azerbaijani MP put it more bluntly: “Even if you win, you lose.” The toll exacted by defending a SLAPP was documented by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg during the well-known McLibel case, where the fast-food goliath McDonalds sued two activists over the content of a campaigning leaflet. Forced to defend themselves due to the lack of financial resources, Helen Steel and David Morris took on a company, whose financial reserves dwarfed many countries. The impact of this inequality on Morris’ and Steel’s defence was noted in the court’s judgement: “All they could hope to do was keep going: on several occasions during the trial they had to seek adjournments because of physical exhaustion.”
But the impact of SLAPPs reaches well beyond the person in the crosshairs. The ripple effect of censored speech runs far and deep. Readers cannot know what was spiked and those who could act on the information are robbed of the opportunity to make a difference. If the victims and journalists who helped expose the shameful Post Office scandal had been threatened or sued into silence – there were attempts, I might add – we would never have known about one of the largest abuses of justice the UK has ever seen. There would have been no ITV drama, no inquiry and no possibility of remedy for those people so cruelly targeted by this “British institution”. When justice is not forthcoming for those who have been sexually assaulted, warning others through online testimony is one of the few avenues open to survivors. Even as successive governments have committed to support survivors of gender-based and domestic violence, how many have been threatened into silence after their abuser turned to the courts to extend their abuse?
Democracies only function when there is enough information in the public domain to sustain an informed electorate. SLAPPs remove it from the public sphere or even prevent it entering in the first instance. How can democracy function without the information needed for everyone to make an informed decision?
The new Labour government – while giving lip service to the importance of stamping out SLAPPs – has done little to realise this goal. They are pushing for greater transparency in public life through enhanced reporting, updates to the Ministerial Code, and changes to government contract awards. These should all be welcomed but will only bring about a partial shift in transparency and accountability. Transparency is not for the public sector alone – private actors can seek to shroud themselves in opacity by threatening legal actions. The goal is simple: if their actions are shielded from view how can they be held to account? Public watchdogs – be they journalists, academics, whistleblowers, Facebook groups or local campaigners – fulfil a vital function in this regard but are the most vulnerable to abuse. Without legislative action, every time they attempt to bring something into the light, they risk their financial security and ability to continue their work free from the harassment and abuse that comes with SLAPP threats or actions.
The debate yesterday was striking in the consensus that emerged across the house. MPs from six parties across the political spectrum spoke powerfully about the curdling impact of legal threats on the public record and our fundamental rights, including the Green Party’s Siân Berry (pictured). They were united in calling for action but the government’s support for an anti-SLAPP law, evidenced by their backing of Wayne David’s Private Members’ Bill before the election, has seemingly evaporated. Heidi Alexander MP, speaking on behalf of the government, stated that “we do not currently intend to legislate in this parliamentary session but we are continuing our work to consider how best to tackle wider abuses of the system in the longer term.” Without the necessary urgency, we have no idea what to expect from the government. This is why the UK Anti-SLAPP Coalition has launched a petition, allowing the public to stand up for free expression.
Yesterday, many of the gaps in the public record were exposed, but for every story shielded by parliamentary privilege too many remain on the spike. Only when the public can access the information they need to make an informed decision can we ensure democracy is protected.
On 14 February, as the upper echelons of Germany’s Green Party prepared to descend on the south-western town of Biberach for their annual meeting, demonstrators blocked access to the town hall with tractors, paving stones, sandbags and manure.
Things took a more aggressive turn when three police officers were injured by protesters hurling objects. Police intervened with pepper spray and a protester smashed a window of federal minister of agriculture Cem Özdemir’s car. The Green Party cancelled the meeting because of safety concerns.
In the state of Thüringen, 200 farmers and demonstrators attempted to block roads to stop a company visit by vice-chancellor Robert Habeck. They insulted the company’s employees and threatened to hang journalists. A week later, an angry crowd followed and heckled party leader Ricarda Lang in Schorndorf, in the southern state of Baden-Württemberg, until police stepped in – then the crowd attacked the officers, injuring some of them.
These attacks were far from isolated incidents. In 2021, the party was the most successful of its kind in Europe and the poster child of the continent’s hopeful environmentalist movement, having joined a government coalition for the first time.
Today, it is coming under attack – verbally and violently – unlike any other party.
According to German parliament figures, 44% of the politically motivated attacks recorded in 2023 targeted Green Party representatives, three times as many as their coalition partners or the opposition.
Early this year, another angry mob prevented Habeck, once one of Germany’s most popular politicians, from getting off a ferry in northern Germany. In September 2023, a man threw a rock at party leaders at a campaign event in Bavaria. And earlier that year, Lang found a gun cartridge in her letterbox.
Violence against MPs and politicians is on the rise across the EU, and in May Slovakia’s Prime Minister Robert Fico was shot in an assassination attempt. But in Germany, this violence disproportionately targets Green Party politicians.
Local party members and supporters have refused to join the electoral campaign out of fear, according to Carolin Renner, a local party speaker in Görlitz, a far-right stronghold where the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party won 32.5% of the vote in the 2021 election.
It’s hard to pin down when the mood began to swing against the Green Party. “I think this hate was always there,” Renner told Index, adding that it might have been when AfD drifted to the far-right around 2015.
But things took a turn for the worse in 2020 and 2021 when Covid restrictions generated massive anti-lockdown movements in Germany. At the end of 2021, the Green Party formed a government coalition with the centre-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP).
“That’s when it really got out of hand,” Renner said. “We had people calling to say they were coming into our office and going to kill us and our families.” People slapped stickers on the doors, others spat on the windows and others glued the building’s doors so members couldn’t get in. “I was handling all the reporting to the police at the time, and I had to file at least one report per week,” she said. “It was pretty bad.”
Since the 2021 election, several political parties have tried to portray the Green Party as an urban elitist movement out of touch with the population. It is a favourite target of the far-right AfD, and its representatives have recently said it was “not surprising” that it was coming under attack.
But other parties have joined in attacking them, too. “It seems that the Greens were identified as the main political opponent by several, very different parties,” said Hannah Schwander, a professor of political sociology and social policy at the Humboldt University of Berlin.
Markus Söder, the leader of the centre-right Christian Social Union in Bavaria, said the Greens were “the number one party of prohibition”, falsely claiming it planned to ban meat, firecrackers, car washing and balloons. And the far-left party leader Sahra Wagenknecht has branded the Greens “the most dangerous party in the Bundestag”.
Even Olaf Scholz, the German chancellor from coalition partner the SPD, said it “remains a party that likes bans”.
“When you have politicians or the media who take up these narratives, that creates an atmosphere in which it seems legitimate to attack politicians – verbally, at first,” said Schwander. “But as we see now, that translates into action as well.”
The politicians’ rhetoric was accompanied by an onslaught of online campaigns. According to Raquel Miguel, a senior researcher with EU Disinfo Lab – an independent non-profit that gathers intelligence on disinformation campaigns in Europe – Green Party members were the most targeted by hoaxes during the 2021 election year. She said that they exaggerated the party’s inexperience and proposals, falsely claiming the party planned to ban fireworks or family barbecues, for example.
“Online campaigns contributed to stirring up hatred against individuals but also to discrediting and undermining trust in politicians, dehumanising them and making them more susceptible to attacks,” Miguel told Index. “And dehumanising contributes to accepting violence.”
In conspiracy-minded far-right groups congregating on the social messaging platform Telegram, the party was depicted as an enemy trying to “take away your way of life, your steak, the sugar from your coffee”, said Lea Frühwirth, a senior researcher with the non-profit Centre for Monitoring, Analysis and Strategy. “What that does psychologically is [make it feel] like an invasion of your personal space.”
The media have reported that the attacks on the Green Party’s annual meeting in Biberach and the heckling of the party’s leader in February originated from conspiratorial Telegram channels.
Violence against the party is on the rise, just as green parties faced the worst losses in the 2024 European Parliament elections. The party’s share in Germany appears to have plummeted since the last elections. However, researchers say that the population has not turned against climate issues. “The data shows that there hasn’t really been a widespread backlash against green policies,” said Jannik Jansen, a policy fellow focusing on social cohesion and just transition policies at the Jacques Delors Centre think-tank within Berlin’s Hertie School, which focuses on governance. Jansen co-authored a recent study of attitudes to climate policy among 15,000 voters in France, Germany and Poland. “The political mainstream hasn’t really shifted in this sense,” he said.
But polarisation and extremism have risen. Schwander said some climate issues had become more politicised, and society in general has become more polarised – although in a peculiar way. “People don’t seem to be more polarised on issues than they were before, but they dislike people who think differently more,” she said.
Political violence has risen considerably. Police recorded 2,790 incidents of physical or verbal violence against elected politicians in 2023 – and the figure has nearly doubled in the last five years. Attacks resulting in physical injury also appear to be on the rise.
Twenty-two politicians have been attacked so far in 2024, compared with 27 for all of 2023, according to federal police.
The number of politically motivated crimes has also risen to record-high levels, driven by a rise in right-wing extremism. According to government figures, the country recorded 60,028 offences in 2023 – the highest level since records began in 2001.
But things appear to be going better in the far-right stronghold of Görlitz. “This year, we only had maybe two or three direct attacks,” said Renner. She said the biggest incident happened during the farmers’ protests that shook Europe in late 2023 and early 2024.
“Shortly before Christmas, someone dumped a big load of horse shit right in front of our door at the Zittau office,” she said, adding that the decrease in attacks might be due to the police being more actively involved.
She said the party had also put in place a safety plan ahead of the European elections, requiring members to move in groups of at least three and sharing the list of party events and members’ whereabouts with the police at all times.
Attacks seem to have spilled over to other parties. In early May, European MP Matthias Ecke, from the SPD, was seriously injured when four young men assaulted him while he put up campaign posters in Dresden. He had to be taken to hospital and required surgery. That same evening, a Green Party campaigner was assaulted in the same area, allegedly by the same group. And a few days later, it was the turn of AfD politician Mario Kumpf, who was attacked in a supermarket.
Renner told Index that someone tore down nearly every party’s electoral posters in the northern part of the Görlitz district. “There’s not one poster left except for the far-right,” she said. “It’s not just the Greens anymore – it’s democracy itself that’s being attacked.
Ofcom’s decision to declare the UK Independence Party a ‘major party’ for the purposes of this month’s European elections has led to questions about who should be allowed to address the public. Behind the scenes, broadcasters have asked why their right to editorial freedom is restricted at all.
UKIP’s leader, Nigel Farage, responded: “This ruling does not cover the local elections, despite UKIP making a major breakthrough in the county elections last year. This strikes me as wrong.”
Natalie Bennett, leader of the Green Party – which Ofcom decided was not a major party – pointed out that, unlike UKIP, her party has an MP, and is also “part of the fourth-largest group in the European Parliament”.
Both sides pounced on the Liberal Democrats, whose dwindling position in the polls, they hinted, should see it demoted to minor party status.
The decision means commercial TV channels that show party election broadcasts must allow UKIP the same number of broadcasts as the Conservatives, Labour and the Liberal Democrats. They will also be given equal weight in relevant news and current affairs programming. However, for content focusing on, or broadcasting solely to, Scotland, UKIP’s lower levels of support there mean it will remain a minor player.
This of course gives UKIP a certain level of legitimacy, and the scope to influence even more voters. For those campaigning against them, the move is grossly unfair.
The Green Party in particular feels hard done by. From the House of Lords to local councils it has representatives at every level, but Ofcom still claims it hasn’t achieved enough. Yet in its report the regulator said that it could not make UKIP a major party in Scotland without granting the same status to the Scottish Green Party, due to their comparable performance.
Ofcom has promised to review the list periodically, so things could change in future. But for now it believes the list represents political realities. UKIP’s focus on getting Britain out of Europe has helped it to do well at the past few European elections. In 2009 it came second in terms of vote share, up from third place in 2004, and this year a number of polls indicate that it could win. In more recent local elections UKIP has done well, achieving 19.9 per cent of the total vote in 2013. But this has leapt up from 4.6 per cent in 2009’s local elections, which for Ofcom is not consistent enough to justify extra coverage for its prospective councillors.
So it seems fair enough that UKIP counts as an important party for Britain in the European Parliament. The Greens are yet to win enough votes in enough elections for their inclusion to make sense. And the Liberal Democrats appear to be clinging on only because of their level of support in past general elections, which was also taken into account.
But the real question is why a list is necessary at all. After all a “regulated free press” sounds something like “freedom in moderation” – ultimately a nonsense. Ofcom’s control over which parties receive coverage puts a dampener on broadcasters’ right to freedom of expression and makes it more difficult for newer parties to break through.
Responding to a previous consultation on whether the list of major parties should be reviewed, Channel 4 said the regulator’s rules should “ensure that political messages are conveyed in a democracy… [but] such regulation should be as narrow as possible to restrict… any interference with the broadcaster’s right to editorial independence and its rights to freedom of expression”. Channel 5, meanwhile, said the concept of major parties did not have “continuing relevance at a time of increasing political flux and fragmentation within the electorate”.
Ofcom appears to be prioritising the need of the electorate to be informed. So it could be argued that, for the purposes of allocating party election broadcasts, the list is useful to prevent any channel from steadfastly omitting information on a party that is likely to appear on most voters’ ballot papers.
But in terms of news and current affairs programming, there seems little reason that broadcasters shouldn’t have the freedom to say what they please – particularly because newspapers are faced with no such restrictions.
As the dominance of mass media fades, and the internet provides access to alternative points of view, the restrictions on the news you receive through your TV will only become more obvious.
Nov 5, 2012 (Index) The United States two-party system leaves little room for third party candidates in the presidential race. Green Party nominee Jill Stein has faced numerous obstacles throughout her run — including being arrested outside of one of the presidential debate between President Obama and Mitt Romney.
Index’s Sara Yasin spoke to the candidate about free speech in America, and the challenges she’s faced as a third party candidate in the Presidential race
Index: What are the biggest barriers faced by alternative candidates in the Presidential race?
Jill Stein: Its almost as if third parties have been outlawed. There is not a specific law, but they have just made it incredibly difficult and complicated to get on the ballot, to be heard, it is as if [third parties] have been virtually outlawed.
To start with we don’t have ballot status, the big parties are “grandfathered” in. Other parties have to collect anywhere from ten to twenty to thirty to forty times as many signatures to get on the ballot. We spend 80 per cent of the campaign jumping through hoops in order to get on the ballot. It really makes it almost impossible to run.
It takes money in this country. You have to buy your way onto TV. The press will not cover third parties, challengers, alternatives. The press is consolidated into the hands of a few corporate media conglomerates, and they’re not interested and they also don’t have the time because their staff has been cut. So they’re basically, you know, covering the horse race. Not looking at new voices, new choices, the kinds of things that the American public is really clamouring for, and also not looking not the issues. And so you get this really dumbed down coverage that excludes third party candidates.
And then you have the debates, which are a mockery of democracy. Which are really sham debates held and organised by the Commission on the Presidential Debates, which is a private corporation led by Democratic and Republican parties. They sound like a public interest organisation; they’re not. They’re simply a front group to censor the debate. And to fool the American voter into thinking that is the only choice that Americans have. And in fact, by locking out third party candidates, we’ve effectively locked out voters.
According to a study in USA Today a couple weeks ago, roughly one out of every two eligible voters was predicted to be staying home in this election. That is an incredible indictment of the candidates.
Index: What are your thoughts on how multinational companies are using lobbying, lawsuits and advertisements to chill free speech around environmental issues?
This is certainly being challenged. Fossil fuels are an example. The fossil fuel industry has bought itself scientists — pseudo scientists I must say — and think tanks to churn out climate denial. That whole area of climate denial has been sufficiently disproven now, to the point where they don’t rear their ugly head anymore. Now there’s just climate silence, which Obama and Romney really share. Romney is not denying the reality of climate change, he’s just not acting on it. Unfortunately, Obama has seized that agenda as well in competing for money.
I think we are seeing enormous pushback against this, in the climate movement, in the healthy food movement, in the effort to pass the referendum in California (37) that would require the labeling of food which the GMO industry is deathly afraid of, because people are rightly skeptical. So for them, free speech, informed consumers, informed voters, are anthema, it’s deadly for them. They require the supression of democracy and the suppression of free speech. And the buying of the political parties is all about silencing voices like our campaign. which stands up on all of these issues.
There are huge social movements on the ground now for sustainable, healthy organic agriculture. For really concerted climate action, for green energy, for public transportation. These are thriving movements right now. Our campaign represents the political voice of those movements. There is also a strong movement now to amend the constitution to stop these abuses, to stop this suppression of free speech.
Index: Do you think that the two-party system allows for topics viewed as inconvenient to both Republicans and Democrats to remain untouched?
JS: That’s their agreement really. And the commission on presidential debates makes it so very clear. They have a written agreement that was leakeda couple of weeks ago. That agreement includes very carefully selected moderators who agree about what kinds of questions they will ask and they will go through…until they find the candidate for a moderator that will agree basically not to rock the boat. The moderators have to agree to not only exclude third parties, but not to participate in any other format with candidates whose issues can’t be controlled. This has everything to do with why they make the agreements that they do and why they will only talk to each other, because they’re both bought and paid for by the same industries responsible for the parties.
When I got arrested protesting the censorship of the debate, my running mate and I were both tightly handcuffed with these painful plastic restraints, and taken to a secret, dark site. Run by some combination of secret service, and police, and homeland security. Who knows who it really belongs to, but it was supposed to be top secret and no one was supposed to know and we were then handcuffed to metal chairs and sat there for almost eight hours. And there were sixteen cops watching the two of us, and we were in a facility decked out for 100 people to be arrested, but it was only the two of us and one other person brought in towards the end of the evening who was actually a Bradley Manning supporter who had been arrested just for taking photographs of someone who was photographing the protesters.
Index: What does freedom of expression mean to you?
JS: It means having a democracy, having a political system that actually allows the voices of everyday people to be heard. Not just, you know, the economic elite which has bought out our establishment political parties. So free expression, for me, is the life blood of a political system. I was not a political animal until rather late in life. I was shocked to learn we don’t have a political system based on free expression. We have a political system based on campaign contributions and the biggest spender, and they buy out the policies that they want, so to me, that is where free expression goes. And if we don’t have it we don’t have politics based on free expression —- it’s not just our health that is being thrown under the bus, it’s our economy, it is our climate, it is our environment. We don’t have a future if we don’t have free expression. If we don’t get our first amendment and free speech back, and that means liberating it from money.
Sara Yasin is an editorial assistant at Index on Censorship. She tweets at @missyasin
Index’s Sara Yasin spoke to the candidate about free speech in America, and the challenges she’s faced as a third party candidate in the Presidential race