An unknown gunman in Denmark has shot at a prominent writer and historian who is a critic of Islam. Reports said that Lars Hedegaard was not injured. The perpetrator arrived at Hedegaard’s Copenhagen home today (5 February) pretending to deliver a package, instead firing shots at the Danish writer, missing the intended target. Hedegaard is head of the International Free Press Society, a group claiming that Islam threatens press freedom. He was fined 5,000 Kroner (approximately £575) in 2011 for insulting Muslims in a series of statements.
A woman who claimed she was raped by Somalian authorities and the journalist who interviewed her have today (5 February) been jailed in Mogadishu. Judge Ahmed Adan found the woman guilty of offending the state, who will serve one year in prison after she finishes breastfeeding her baby. Freelance journalist Abdiaziz Abdinuur was charged with offending state institutions through false interviewing and entering a woman’s home without the husband present and is to start his one year sentence immediately. Three other defendants, including the woman’s husband and two others who helped introduce her to Abdinuur were found not guilty and freed. The journalist was detained on 10 January for interviewing the woman who had claimed she was raped by soldiers at a displaced person’s camp where she was living in Mogadishu.
A Singaporean photographer was arrested on 4 February in Tokyo for selling books containing pictures of male genitalia. Leslie Kee was arrested along with two members of staff at a publishing firm on suspicion of obscenity and could be jailed for up to two years and / or fined up to 2.5 million yen if found guilty. The trio were detained for selling seven copies of the book to two customers at Kee’s Tokyo gallery — prompting the fashion community in Japan to jump to their defence. The 41 year-old photographer is well known in Japan and has photographed the likes of Naomi Campbell and Beyonce. Japanese domestic law rules that pictures of genitals must be obscured, a method usually practiced through pixelation.
Donald Trump has filed a legal suit against a comedian after proving he is not the spawn of orangutans
The Eritrean government has blocked access to Al Jazeera inside the country. The Qatari TV news network has been unaccessible since 1 February, after the information ministry issued a decree preventing anyone from providing access to its news service. Restaurants, hotels and cafés were particularly targeted and Al Jazeera’s English-language channels were blocked. Eritrean authorities allegedly ordered the ban after Al Jazeera ran stories on demonstrations by Eritrea’s exiles outside Eritrean diplomatic missions in London, Frankfurt, Stockholm, Rome and Cairo in opposition of the government and support of soldiers who staged a mutiny after they stormed the information ministry in Asmara on 21 January. Eritrea holds the highest number of imprisoned journalists in Africa.
Andrew Mitchell, the cabinet minister who resigned following the “plebgate” scandal is to sue The Sun for libel for its reporting of the case. The former government chief whip swore at police officers after they refused him to exit his office through Downing Street’s main gates on 19 September 2012, allegedly saying: “you’re all plebs”. The Conservative MP stepped down from his role a month later. It wasn’t until December that evidence was taken into doubt after CCTV seemed to question the police log and witness reliability. Scotland Yard arrested three police officers in connection with the affair. Mitchell admitted to swearing at the officers but denied using the term “plebs”. He is seeking damages, costs, an apology and an undertaking that the words are not repeated in future.
Donald Trump issuing a comedian after he failed to honour a $5million (£3.1m) lost bet that Trump was the descendent of orangutans. Bill Maher had joked on Jay Leno’s Tonight Show that, if Trump presented him with proof that he was not the product of a tryst between his mother and a primate, he would pay $5million to charity. The business tycoon then proceeded to send a copy of his birth certificate to Maher, along with a note saying “cough up”. Trump said that there was no evidence that the comedian had offered the money as a joke, citing his “pathetic delivery”. Trump then released his birth certificate publicly along with a letter from his lawyer, confirming that he was in fact, entirely human. Maher has failed to offer the cash, prompting Trump to file legal documents in the Superior Court of California on 4 February. Trump has been a prominent voice in the “birther” movement, which claims that Barack Obama was not born in the United States and hence is not eligible to be president.
Gordon Brown has denied that his wife Sarah gave consent to the Sun to run a 2006 story about their son suffering from cystic fibrosis, contesting the evidence given to the Leveson Inquiry by the paper’s then-editor Rebekah Brooks.
The former prime minister told the Leveson Inquiry this morning that there was “no question ever of explicit permission” given to the tabloid, denying Brooks’ claim that the Browns had given her permission to run the front-page story in November 2006, which revealed the couple’s four-month-old son was suffering from the disease.
Brown revealed he had received a letter of apology from the Fife health board, which stated it believed it was “highly likely” that there was unauthorised information given by a staff member that “allowed the Sun in end through this middleman to publish the story”.
Brooks told the Inquiry last month that the story came from a father of another child cystic fibrosis sufferer, and maintained she had the Browns’ express permission before publishing the story.
“If the Browns had asked me not to run cystic fibrosis story, I wouldn’t have,” she told the Inquiry.
But Brown said today that “no parent in the land…would have given explicit permission for this story”, claiming he and his family were presented with a “fait accompli” and had no choice over the story being published.
When asked by counsel Robert Jay QC why Sarah Brown arranged Brooks’s 40th birthday party in June 2008 and attended her wedding the following year, Brown said his wife was “one of the most forgiving people” and that she “finds the good in everyone”.
He also refuted claims made under oath to the Inquiry by News Corp boss Rupert Murdoch that Brown had “declared war” on the Sun during a 2009 conversation with the media mogul, following the tabloid switching its support to the Conservative party ahead of the 2010 general election.
“The conversation never took place,” Brown said, adding that there was “absolutely no evidence”, and that he felt it was “shocking” that the Inquiry had been told under oath that the conversation had occurred. He added that he was not surprised by the allegiance switch, believing it had been planned for “many, many months”.
He also made several digs at the tabloid for what he saw as sensationalised reporting of the war in Afghanistan, accusing its coverage of suggesting the Labour party “didn’t care about what was happening to our troops”. Brown said he still felt damage had been done to the war effort by such claims.
Discussing his dealings with media barons, Brown said he had a “duty” to engage with the press but that there was a “line in the sand” that he could not cross.
“You can serve dinner but don’t have to serve up BSkyB as part of that dinner,” he said, alluding to the recent storm over links between the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and News Corp over the bid for the takeover of the satellite broadcaster.
During his time as prime minister from 2007 to 2010, Brown said he “rarely” read newspapers, quipping: “I’m so obsessed by the newspapers I rarely read them”.
Elsewhere in his morning of evidence, Brown stressed his concerns for the future of “quality journalism” at one point suggesting a BBC licence fee model ought to be looked at for funding journalism in the future.
The Inquiry continues this afternoon with evidence from chancellor George Osborne.
Follow Index on Censorship’s coverage of the Leveson Inquiry on Twitter – @IndexLeveson
Twenty-first century politicians have been “obsessed” with newspapers, the Leveson Inquiry heard this afternoon.
“Politics is now a mass media-dominated activity”, justice secretary Ken Clarke said, arguing that the press was now far more powerful than parliament and that many were put off by politics due to the level of exposure.
Clarke singled out former prime minister Gordon Brown as having been “utterly obsessed” by his relations with the media, adding that it “didn’t do him any good at all”. He said Margaret Thatcher “never read a newspaper from one week to the next” and implored his colleagues to pay no attention to the papers if they were upset by their content.
During his calm and measured session at the Inquiry, Clarke said newspaper editors and proprietors “can drive a weak government like a flock of sheep before them” when lobbying on certain topics, and he slammed the idea of currying favour with the press as a “waste of time”.
The politics of the last 15 years had been “dominated” by competition for support from the Sun newspaper, he added. “I don’t think the Sun ever had a significant effect on any election in my lifetime, though it was obviously thought by some to be important.”
He said he held the “more jaundiced view” that the paper and its proprietor, Rupert Murdoch, were “good at changing sides when it’s obvious the horse they’re riding is about to collapse”.
He described New Labour as having introduced a level of “control-freakery”, adding that he knew of one journalist who was barred from the Treasury and told she would not be let in again because of stories she had written.
On the topic of criminal justice legislation, Clarke pointed the finger at the popular press, emphasising that newspaper campaigns were often based on partial accounts of high-profile cases. “If the tone of newspapers had been different in the last 20 years, we’d have 30,000 fewer prisoners,” he said, though he stressed this was not a “scientific” estimation.
He and Lord Justice Leveson discussed at length the future of press regulation, with Clarke admitting he was “deeply suspicious” of government control in a new system. Yet he added he did not have confidence in letting the press regulate itself, stressing that a regulator should be independent of both the industry and the government.
“I always thought PCC was a joke,” Clarke quipped. “I had some friends on it who tried to convince me otherwise. Completely useless.”
“I do think 99 per cent of people in this country genuinely believe in a free press,” he added, suggesting journalists were becoming “almost as sensitive as politicians” who thought no-one loved them anymore.
The Inquiry continues tomorrow with evidence from culture secretary Jeremy Hunt.
Follow Index on Censorship’s coverage of the Leveson Inquiry on Twitter – @IndexLeveson
What should the Inquiry do? As little as possible, suggests Trevor Kavanagh. The press does not need licences like dogs and gun owners