3 May 2017 | Campaigns -- Featured, Media Freedom, media freedom featured, Statements
London, 3 May 2017. On World Press Freedom Day, Reporters Without Borders – known internationally as Reporters Sans Frontières (RSF) – English PEN, and Index on Censorship have published their joint submission to the Law Commission’s Consultation on the Protection of Official Data. The free speech and press freedom groups welcome the opportunity to review legislation that is long overdue for reform, following the significant changes in the collection, retention and sharing of data over the past 20 years and the challenges facing both privacy and freedom of expression in the digital age.
In the joint submission, RSF, English PEN, and Index on Censorship emphasise the importance of ensuring that official secrets legislation is fit for purpose. They argue that any reform must take account of the potential impact on legitimate activities pursued in the public interest, including the activities of investigative journalists and the sources upon whom they rely. They consider that the Law Commission’s provisional conclusions with respect to protection of public interest disclosures are inadequate and reject the proposal for a statutory commissioner as an ineffective mechanism for safeguarding the public interest.
The groups disagree with the Law Commission’s conclusion that the problems associated with the introduction of a statutory public interest defence outweigh the benefits and do not support the view that there are already sufficient existing safeguards for journalists. They submit that there should be no category of protected information created for sensitive economic information.
“The Law Commission’s proposal is nothing short of alarming, particularly when viewed in the context of a broader trend of worrying moves against press freedom in the UK over the past year, resulting in the UK dropping to a ranking of 40th out of 180 countries in RSF’s 2017 World Press Freedom Index. The prospect of journalists being labelled as ‘spies’ and facing the threat of serious jail time for simply doing their jobs in the public interest is outrageous. This proposal must be revised with respect for press freedom at its core,” said Rebecca Vincent, UK Bureau Director for RSF.
“This is an important opportunity to reform official secrets legislation and make it fit for the 21st century. Our response to the consultation demonstrates that it is both viable and necessary to include a public interest defence. Some of the most important news stories of the past seven years have been based on leaks of classified information that are squarely in the public interest and have resulted in critical public debate about foreign policy, privacy and freedom of expression. These laws go back to the Edwardian era and it’s vital that we now have legislation for our times,” said Jo Glanville, Director of English PEN.
“It makes sense to update outmoded laws but no sense whatsoever to update them in such a way that they undermine the very liberties and freedoms on which our rule of law is based. The proposals laid out by the Law Commission threaten free expression and in particular a free media in the UK and should not be implemented in their current form,” said Jodie Ginsberg, CEO of Index on Censorship.
Notes:
- Reporters Without Borders, English PEN, and Index on Censorship would like to thank barristers Can Yeginsu and Anthony Jones of 4 New Square Chambers, as well as Tom Francis of Joseph Hage Aaronson LLP, for their assistance in preparing this submission.
- Press contact: Rebecca Vincent, [email protected] or +44 (0)7583 137751
2 May 2017 | Campaigns -- Featured, Macedonia, Statements
Index on Censorship signed a joint statement by issued after a ECPMF-EFJ-SEEMO-OBCT fact-finding mission to Macedonia, on 25th-28th April regarding rising violence against journalists in Macedonia:
We hereby express our deep concerns about the yesterday‘s violent attacks against journalists in the parliament of the Republic of Macedonia.
From the beginning of 2016 until yesterday at least 21 attacks against journalists in Macedonia have been registered by the Association of Journalists of Macedonia (ZNM), out of a total of several dozens within the last years. All this clearly demonstrates a rising trend in violence against journalists.
The state of media freedom in the country is very worrying. Attacks on journalists are a direct threat to democracy.
On invitation of ZNM and the Western Balkan´s Regional Platform for Advocating Media Freedom and Journalists Safety the European Centre for Press and Media Freedom (ECPMF) conducted a fact-finding mission to Skopje from 25 to 28 April 2017. The delegation, including the European Federation of Journalists (EFJ), South East Europe Media Organisation (SEEMO) and Osservatorio Balcani e Caucaso Transeuropa (OBCT) examined the increased violence against journalists in Macedonia and listened to their experiences.
During the mission, the international delegation so far conducted a total of 13 interviews with 15 representatives of several media outlets, NGO´s, the Agency for Audio and Audiovisual Media Services and the Media Ethics Council. Additionally, the delegation met the Minister of the Interior, Mr Agim Nuhiu.
According to our findings among the main reasons for the increased violence are the following:
- The political climate, anti-media rhetoric and polarisation lead to a highly unsafe environment for journalists.
- There is no political will to ensure conditions for free and independent journalism. State institutions and political stakeholders undertake no responsibility for the protection of journalists.
- The criminal and civil justice systems do not deal effectively with threats and violence against journalists. No implementation of media protection laws and no prosecution of the perpetrators make journalists an easy target.
The signees of this statement condemn any aggression on journalists in Macedonia.
We want to strongly urge the political parties and all related bodies and authorities to prevent further attacks and ensure a safe environment for journalism and freedom of expression. We call on the judiciary and all responsible authorities to stop the ongoing impunity.
- Macedonian authorities must conduct swift and efficient investigations on any single case of attack on physical safety and integrity of journalists. Politicians should refrain from spreading hateful rhetoric that serves violence.
- International conventions protecting human rights and freedom of expression shall be respected.
- The coming ruling coalition and the opposition must comply with Macedonia’s commitment to protect journalism and to guarantee internet freedom. Macedonian authorities must implement without any delay the recommendations of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe on safety of journalists (Recommendation 2016-4) and on Internet freedom (Recommendation 2016-5), adopted on 13 April 2016. Following these standards, any kind of additional state regulation on media content is unacceptable.
- Macedonian authorities must consult for any coming reform in the media sector the legitimate national organisations promoting media freedom and independent journalism: the Council of Media Ethics of Macedonia (SEMM), the Association of Journalists (ZNM), the Trade Union of Journalists (SSNM).
We also call on all journalists to take their role as watchdogs seriously. We encourage them to report and file complaints if they are attacked, intimidated or harassed. They should stand in solidarity with their colleagues, cooperate and support each other.
We, as European media freedom and journalists organisations within the freedom of expression community, stand with our colleagues in Macedonia. We will further observe their situation and raise our voices to support them. There will be a full report on the fact-finding mission in May.
Skopje, 28 April 2017
Signing organisations:
- European Centre for Press and Media Freedom (ECPMF)
- European Federation of Journalists (EFJ)
- Osservatorio Balcani e Caucaso Transeuropa (OBCT)
- South East Europe Media Organisation (SEEMO)
- Association of Journalists of Macedonia (ZNM)
- Western Balkan´s Regional Platform for Advocating Media Freedom and Journalists Safety
This statement is endorsed by the following organisations:
- Ethical Journalism Network
- Index on Censorship
- Journalismfund.eu
- Reporters Sans Frontières / Reporters Without Borders
- SCOOP Macedonia
27 Apr 2017 | Digital Freedom, Index Reports, Press Releases
Threats to media freedom in the United States go far beyond the high-profile attacks on news outlets made by President Donald Trump, a new study shows.
The study – by international freedom of expression organization Index on Censorship – examined a range of threats to the independence and standing of the media in the period leading up to the US presidential election and in the months following.
It found that journalists are increasingly targeted by police, public authorities and the public at large, making it increasingly hard for the press and broadcasters to properly investigate and expose corruption and wrongdoing and hold those in power to account.
“Freedom of the press is the cornerstone of democracy,” Index on Censorship chief executive Jodie Ginsberg said. “Yet even in the United States, where this freedom is enshrined in the constitution, that freedom is under threat.”
Examples of attacks on the press include the arrest and detention of journalists covering protests, online harassment, physical assaults, and the branding of factual reporting by media outlets that high-ranking officials – including the President – do not like as “fake news”.
This survey reviewed over 150 publicly reported incidents of media freedom violations that occurred in the United States between 30 June 2016 and 28 February 2017.
The report is available on the web and in PDF format.
For further information, please contact Sean Gallagher at [email protected]
Notes for editors
Index on Censorship is a UK-based non-profit organisation that publishes the work of censored writers and artists and campaigns against censorship worldwide.
The study is based on a non-exhaustive survey of press freedom incidents recorded publicly between 30 June 2016 and 28 February 2017. It uses criteria developed and employed by Index’s European media freedom monitoring project: Mapping Media Freedom. Launched in May 2014, Mapping Media Freedom monitors the media landscape in 42 European and neighbouring countries.
Index on Censorship is part of a coalition of organisations who will later this year launch a news site to track press freedom violations in the United States. The coalition includes Index, the Committee to Protect Journalists, the Freedom of the Press Foundation, the Reporters Committee for the Freedom of the Press, the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University and Reporters Without Borders
1 Dec 2016 | European Union, News and features
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Social media is all atwitter these days with the unremarkable discovery that people lie.
So much so that Oxford Dictionaries has designated “post-truth” as its international word of the year. For those of you not hip to the jargon, it means “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.”
In other words, facts don’t count.
Perhaps spawned by the spate of alleged news stories made up out of whole cloth during the recent presidential election in the United States, people of all stripes are weighing in on the issue du jour: How can we ensure that what we read on Facebook or Twitter is real?
I ask, “Why bother?”
Consider the Ninth Commandment (or Eighth, at least as interpreted by Catholics and Lutherans): “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.”
That sounds like a dire warning against lying, which was something that must have been quite popular during the day, and still is. Besides going to hell, most every country in the world has libel laws designed to compensate people whose reputations have been damaged by lies.
But today the allegation of lying seems to be taking on more sinister effects. There have been some allegations that false news stories actually swung votes in the US presidential election. If so, why is “fake news” so effective? I believe we can go back to Lord Mansfield’s 18th century dictum “the greater the truth, the greater the libel” for some insight. Whether we just want to believe something is true or we pick and choose our truths to match our political cloth, we find ourselves in an era where we can scan a headline, read the lede and say, “That seems believable enough.”
Thus, manufacturing stories out of thin air has become a cottage industry and an apparently successful one.
Trying to get on the perceived “right side” of the issue, it comes as little surprise that social media companies such as Facebook are engaged in damage control, saying they are trying out new versions of their algorithms to weed out postings that are simply made up.
And to that I again ask, “Why bother?”
For in fact, doing so may just cause greater harm to free expression than any lie, no matter how damaging.
Because besides the difficulty in determining truth from opinion to a bald-faced lie, the inherent limiting of ideas, including criminalising them, makes us all suffer a little bit.
Today we are seeing criminal and administrative prosecution for activities on social media platforms that involve responding to existing content (i.e. sharing, re-posting, uploading, liking, quoting and commenting) and that contributes to an environment of fear.
Combine this with the growing tendency for nations to apply anti-extremism and anti-terrorism laws to content on social media platforms and the result is social media users, including members of the media, are being fined, arrested and imprisoned for interacting or reacting to content produced by third parties or for expressing their opinions on it.
This is censorship and can lead to self-censorship.
Instead, issues related to social media activities should be addressed exclusively through self-regulation, education and literacy, not through new restrictions.
As the Representative on Freedom of the Media for the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, I recently recommended that the participating states that comprise the body to recognize the following:
- That no one should be penalised for social media activities that come as a reaction or interaction with existing content;
- That no one should be penalised for the social media activities such as posting and direct messaging unless they can be directly connected to violent actions and satisfy the test of an “imminent lawless action”;
- That no one should be held liable for content on social media platforms and on the internet of which they are not the author, as long as they do not specifically intervene in that content or refuse to comply with court orders to remove that content, where that have the capacity to do so (“mere conduit principle”);
- The necessity to decriminalise defamation, insult and blasphemy;
- That any imposition of any sanctions imposed by courts of law, especially when it comes to social media activities, should be in strict conformity with the principle of proportionality;
- The need for education and literacy on freedom of expression on the internet.
Let’s not overreact to the wave of fake news by building another wall around the internet.
Dunja Mijatović is the Representative on Freedom of the Media for the OSCE, based in Vienna.[/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:1480348630223-46408dc4-0b68-7″ taxonomies=”6380″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
