4 Apr 2012 | Index Index, minipost
A Turkish politician has been sentenced to 15 years in prison after delivering speeches in the run up to elections in June 2011. Serafettin Halis, former Deputy of the Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) was convicted of being part of an illegal organisation, and creating propaganda for an illegal organisation following seven speeches he delivered during the run up the the elections. Halis told local press that he is being prosecuted for speaking to his constituents, as the speeches were made in his capacity as an elected official.
2 Mar 2012 | Africa, Index Index, minipost
A number of attacks and threats have been made against journalists covering the Sengalese presidential elections. At least 12 incidents of threats and physical harm have been recorded against journalists in the lead up to and aftermath of the vote. Senegal’s incumbent President Abdoulaye Wade stood against thirteen other candidates in elections for a third term in power on Sunday. No official results have been released.
27 Feb 2012 | Leveson Inquiry, News and features
Former Deputy Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Brian Paddick, has described a culture of cover-up and infighting among senior officers during his time at the force.
Testifying at the Leveson Inquiry today, Paddick called for a change in culture “from the top”, arguing that it was important for there to be a healthy and “above-board” relationship between the police and the press, suggesting that relations between the two should be on the basis of formal, minuted meetings, “not on gossiping over dinners or booze”.
“We have to draw a line when it comes to police officers being paid for information,” Paddick added. “I do not accept (…) that if a story is in the public interest you can pay a public official to disclose information,” he said.
He told the Inquiry that the Met’s commissioners had “conducted charm offensives with mixed success” and wrote in his witness statement that the efforts made to get positive stories into the media “distorted” senior officers’ judgments.
“The difficulty comes when the police have to prosecute their ‘friends’” his statement read.
Paddick wrote that the culture at the Met went from being “very open to almost paranoid” during Sir Ian Blair’s Commissionership. He cited a “clampdown on anyone having contact with the media”, and unsuccessful investigations being launched to look into unauthorised leaks of information. He added that “good relationships” with UK newspaper editors were “seen as being more important than ever”.
He added that the Met sought to prevent certain stories from getting into the public domain in order to protect its reputation. He told the Inquiry he was ordered to “tone down” criticisms made of a review into rape investigations by the Met that had found “serious shortcomings” and made recommendations. The press officer involved said her job was to “make sure report got no publicity”, Paddick added, arguing that the interests of rape victims were sacrificed to protect the Met.
He opined that the “desire of the MPS to avoid public embarrassment and reputational damage may have led them not to pursue evidence of possible police corruption and to mislead the public about the ambit and scale of phone-hacking.”
He noted that within six days of the arrests of Clive Goodman and Glenn Mulcaire in August 2006, 418 potential hacking victims had been identified, but “only a tiny fraction of those people were actually told”.
Paddick also told the Inquiry his name appeared on a printout from private investigator Glenn Mulcaire’s computer, listed as a “project”, which he said meant it was “reasonable [that] there was a prima facie case I was a target for phone hacking.”
He also revealed that a printout from Mulcaire’s computer that was shown to a police officer appeared to contain details of people who had been given new identities after being put on the Witness Protection Programme.
“It would have included people like the people convicted of James Bulger’s murder,” he said. “People are only put into the witness protection programme when their lives are potentially at risk or in serious danger. For this to be in the hands of Mulcaire and potentially the News of the World is clearly worrying.”
He stressed he had the “utmost respect” for current DAC Sue Akers, the officer leading the investigations into illegal behaviour of journalists, but added that it was “difficult to see how everybody can have complete confidence we are going to get to the bottom of what is going on” He suggested it would be better for public perception if current investigations were being conducted by an outside force not connected to the Met.
Last year Paddick and the former deputy Prime Minister Lord John Prescott successfully argued at a judicial review that the Metropolitan Police failed to notify them about potential hacking.
Prescott, who also appeared before the court this afternoon expressed his unease about the relationship between politicians and the press.
“I’m not the best person to ask about relationships with the press because mine has never been good but with regards to the Murdoch press, I always thought it was wrong that politicians at the highest level were too close to Murdoch…There is always a price. It’s not exactly corruption and I’m not accusing them of that…I thought it gave a corrupting influence that they had too much influence and power.”
Prescott added that that he was opposed to a statutory regulation, even though he believes he has “as much reason as anyone to have a go at the press”. The former MP suggested a regulatory framework, to be decided on by a judge, adding: “You have to find a balance that people think is fair. What’s made the difference is no-win no-cost. I just think if you can’t get redress, you’ve got to have a sanction.”
Describing the stories regarding his social life, the politician told the court he had wondered where stories came from, but never imagined that his phone had been hacked. In December 2009, Prescott was told by police that there was no evidence that Glenn Mulcaire had intercepted his voicemail, but police said there were two tax invoices and a piece of paper with “Prescott” written on it.
“That should be a good clue to a policeman that there is something there. I did suspect at first they meant my son because the Murdoch press and the Times had done a number of stories on him but I’ve since been assured not,” Prescott told the court.
He added that misleading statements and the failure of the police to provide him with the information he believed he was entitled to, led him to take legal action.
19 Aug 2011 | Uncategorized
During one of the first major Republican debates in the presidential primary earlier this month in Iowa, Byron York, a journalist for the conservative Washington Examiner, asked Michele Bachmann a question that’s been on many minds but few tongues this summer.
In 2006, when you were running for Congress, you described a moment in your life when your husband said you should study for a degree in tax law. You said you hated the idea, and then you explained: ‘But the Lord said, be submissive. Wives, you are to be submissive to your husband.’ As president, would you be submissive to your husband?
The question drew gasps and boos from the mostly conservative audience, and Bachmann herself at first seemed taken aback by it. She nimbly turned the query into an opportunity to talk about how much she and her husband of almost 33 years love each other. And, in the end, the exchange did more damage to York than to her.
In the week since then, a perennially uncomfortable public debate has emerged over the role of religion and the US presidency, accompanied by a meta-debate over whether Americans — and, in particular, journalists — should even be asking questions about the relationship between the two.
Conventional wisdom says the Republican primary has crystalised over the last week into a race between three candidates who come with intriguing religious story lines: Bachmann, whose particularly Evangelical form of Christianity was the subject of a lengthy (and, to many, alarming) New Yorker profile last week; Mitt Romney, whose Mormon heritage elicited much suspicion during his last run for the job in 2008; and Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who angered atheists by hosting an 8,000-person strong Christian prayer revival two weeks ago in which he asked God to help guide a “nation in crisis” when its politicians have proven unable to do that alone.
NPR characterised Perry’s event as sparking a “holy war” among critics “who claim it [was] Jesus-exclusive and political.” The New Yorker profile of Bachmann, which followed shortly thereafter, upped the ante on the religious alarmism. And then Byron York asked Bachmann, a Tea Party favorite, about her Biblically based beliefs on the “submissive” role of women to their husbands.
Since John F. Kennedy, the first Catholic in the White House, Americans have prided themselves on holding no religious litmus test for the office. The separation of church and state — as central to the American political identity as protections for free speech also enshrined in the First Amendment — means elected officials can’t impose their beliefs on others but also have a right to believe in whatever they want themselves.
Bachmann and Perry, though, have touched a nerve among voters and commentators who aren’t convinced they share that same interpretation of the establishment clause. And in that context, York’s query was extremely relevant.
As the discussion on one popular legal blog put it:
“Rep. Bachmann’s religious beliefs are a mandatory topic for thorough examination and public debate. Why? Because she espouses a brand of Christianity that seeks not merely to transform the institutions of government, but to absorb them into a reconstructed society build upon a foundation of Old Testament law, a goal which implicates the Constitution and which strikes at the heart of the idea of secular government.”
York’s many critics since last week of course will disagree with this. But to suggest that all queries along these lines should be off-limits for the next year — particularly as they relate to politicians who have willingly made such a public show of their private faith — is disingenuous. Yes, Perry and Bachmann have a right guaranteed by the Constitution to follow any faith they chose. But voters and journalists have a right, too, to ask about how that faith will impact a candidate’s positions in office when the evidence thus far suggests that it might. Critics who want to shout down those questioners, claiming offense, stifle an important election-year debate.
Emily Badger is Index on Censorship’s US Editor
