22 Jul 2019 | Campaigns -- Featured, Media Freedom, media freedom featured, Statements
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”108086″ img_size=”full”][vc_column_text]European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen
European Commission
Rue de la Loi 200
1049 Brussels
Belgium
19 July 2019
Dear President von der Leyen,
We are writing as members of the press freedom community to congratulate you on your appointment as President of the European Commission, and to urge you to ensure that media freedom, the protection of journalists, and EU citizens’ access to information are top political priorities over the coming term of your Commission.
The last Commission took important steps to address media freedom. But given the rapidly changing media environment, increasingly severe threats and restrictions to press freedom, and the recent murders of journalists, more must be done. We, the undersigned organizations, strongly urge you to appoint a Vice-President of the new Commission with a clear and robust mandate to use all available EU mechanisms, including policy, legislation, and budget, to defend press freedom and the safety of journalists. In particular, we urge you to explicitly list this mandate in your mission letter to one of the Vice-Presidents establishing it as a political priority over the next five-year term.
We ask that the Vice-President have a sufficiently robust and far-ranging mandate to address the following areas of reform:
- Creating an enabling legal and regulatory environment for free, independent, pluralistic, and diverse media and the safety of journalists, whether staff, freelancers, or bloggers. Journalists need to be protected from judicial harassment, arbitrary surveillance, defamation, overly broad national security and anti-terrorist legislation, as well as SLAPP and tax laws.
- Protecting journalists, freelancers, and bloggers from physical, legal, psychological, and digital threats, and ensuring access to effective protection and prevention measures and mechanisms, with specific attention to the risks facing female journalists.
- Combating impunity for all attacks against journalists, freelancers, and bloggers, including support and capacity-building for law enforcement, prosecutors, and the judiciary and the development of specialized protocols for investigations.
- Continuing to combat disinformation through robust public defense of independent journalism and its critical importance in democracy. This should accompany efforts to increase public understanding of media freedoms, supporting social media self-regulation, and building media literacy.
- Supporting sustainable models for independent journalism in promoting media independence, pluralism, and diversity, as well as allowing for effective self-regulation, capacity building, and training.
Media freedom and pluralism are pillars of modern democracy. For the next Commission to guarantee European citizens their right to access to information, it must use the coming term to address the numerous threats to journalism. We hope you will take steps to ensure it does.
We would welcome the opportunity to meet with you and thank you in advance for taking our concerns into consideration. We look forward to receiving your response.
Sincerely,
Alliance Internationale de Journalistes
Article 19
Association of European Journalists
Committee to Protect Journalists
English PEN
European Federation of Journalists
European Journalism Centre
European Media Initiative
European Centre for Press and Media Freedom
Free Press Unlimited
Global Forum for Media Development
IFEX
Index on Censorship
International Press Institute
Media Diversity Institute
PEN International
Reporters Without Borders
Rory Peck Trust
South East Europe Media Organisation (SEEMO)
World Association of News Publishers (WAN-IFRA)[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]
10 Jul 2019 | Campaigns -- Featured, Media Freedom, media freedom featured, Statements
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Index on Censorship condemns the decision by the UK Foreign Office to deny accreditation to Russia’s RT and Sputnik news agencies.
The BBC reported on Monday that RT and Sputnik had been banned from attending a major global conference on media freedom currently being held in London. The FCO said the news groups were not granted accreditation because of their “active role” in spreading disinformation.
Jodie Ginsberg, Index chief executive, called on the foreign office to reconsider its decision. “Cherry-picking only the media that one government considers acceptable is the precisely the kind of action we condemn from authoritarian states. If media organisations spread lies and misinformation it is the job of a vibrant, pluralistic and independent media to challenge and expose those lies, not the job of governments to stifle the news outlets it dislikes.”
“We are extremely concerned about the message this decision sends about the UK’s genuine commitment to a free and independent media worldwide.”
Index on Censorship is attending the Global Media Freedom conference, which takes place July 10-11. Index currently monitors media freedom in five countries: Azerbaijan, Belarus, Russia, Turkey and Ukraine, where it often calls out governments that block access to media representatives to control the narrative.
For more information or for interviews, contact Sean Gallagher on [email protected]
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24 Jun 2019 | China, News and features, United Kingdom, United States, Venezuela, Volume 48.02 Summer 2019, Volume 48.02 Summer 2019 Extras
In the Index on Censorship summer 2019 podcast, we focus on how governments use power to undermine justice and freedom. Lewis Jennings and Rachael Jolley discuss the latest issue of the magazine, revealing their top picks and debating what rating they would be under China’s social credit rating system. Guests include best-selling Chinese author Xinran, who delves into surveillance in China; Italian journalist Stefano Pozzebon, who reveals the dangers of being a foreign journalist in Venezuela; and Steve Levitsky, the co-author of The New York Times best-seller How Democracies Die, discusses political polarisation in the US.
Print copies of the magazine are available on Amazon, or you can take out a digital subscription via Exact Editions. Copies are also available at the BFI, the Serpetine Gallery and MagCulture (all London), News from Nowhere (Liverpool). Red Lion Books (Colchester) and Home (Manchester). Each magazine sale helps Index on Censorship continue its fight for free expression worldwide.
The Summer 2019 podcast can also be found on iTunes.
13 Jun 2019 | Counter Terrorism, Event Reports, Media Freedom, Monitoring and Advocating Coverage, News and features
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In discussing the scope of the recent Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Act 2019, international human rights lawyer Alex Bailin QC called the powers created by the new legislation “breathtakingly broad.”
Joined by Index on Censorship CEO Jodie Ginsberg, former Independent Reviewer on Terrorist Legislation Lord David Anderson, and ITV News journalist Rohit Kachroo, Bailin parsed the new legislation and reflected on the challenges faced by journalists, particularly those reporting on terrorism, when operating within its confines.
The Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Act 2019 builds on previous counter-terrorism legislation like the Counter-Terrorism Act 2000, Counter-Terrorism Act 2008, and the Counter-Terrorism and Security Act 2015. Though it does contain a much lobbied-for carveout for journalists and academics looking at terrorist material on the internet for research purposes, the new legislation expands the range of offenses faced by citizens for viewing or even “expressing an opinion or belief that is supportive of terrorism and being reckless as to whether the audience may thereby be encouraged,” Bailin noted. He continued that to him, “that does seem like thought crime.”
A key problem with the legislation, noted several panellists, was the definition of journalism itself. While all in attendance were grateful that a journalistic carveout to the new legislation exists, each noted that journalism is no longer practiced in such a way that it is easy to discern who is a journalist and who is not.
“Everyone can see that it makes sense to include in some circumstances bloggers or people who reach a big audience through their tweets,” said Lord Anderson. However, he noted that if people who use informal blogs or social media to whistleblow are included in the journalistic carveout, the carveout would essentially include all citizens who are capable of doing so–which would entail it including all citizens. “This diminishes the necessity of a special protection for journalists at all,” he concluded. Bailin brought up famous leaks like the Pentagon Papers or Julian Assange and Wikileaks as moments when the line between private citizens and journalists has become blurred, but when protection of leakers has been essential.
Even in the case of traditional journalism, the new law could be harmful. Whistleblowing organised crime is essential, said Ginsberg, but it puts journalists at risk if police become involved. “If you’re whistleblowing on organised crime and you think the journalist you’re speaking to is not protecting you,” she said, “you might choose to take out that journalist.”
Kachroo explained that journalists refusing to co-operate with law enforcement in order to protect their sources, which sometimes come from deep within organisations like al-Qaeda, does not mean that journalists are pro-terrorism or should be prosecuted as such. Rather, source protection ensures that journalists maintain relationships within crime organisations and not endanger the people who help to undercut them, which could be thwarted by police intervention.
“We’re not on the side of terrorists because we don’t take sides, but that works both ways. We’re not working hand in hand with the state and we cannot be seen to be working hand in hand with the state,” he said. With legislation like the Counter-terrorism and Border Security Act 2019, he said that “there’s a sense of being co-opted into the police’s work, unwillingly, because of the increased use of production orders.”
Not only does this endanger the lives of journalists, but it defeats the purpose of journalism itself. What is investigative journalism if not the quest to uncover corruption wherever it might appear, even and especially if in the government itself? “One of the key roles that journalism plays within a democracy is to expose wrongdoing,” Ginsberg explained. By the end of the discussion, it was unclear if, in the presence of increasingly powerful terrorist legislation, journalism will continue to be able to serve that purpose.[/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:1560431923506-48684960-a6ff-1″ taxonomies=”8996″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
