Coronavirus
Covid,
cash and contracts
Boris
Johnson’s UK government faces multiple
inquiries into the latest scandal over business
lobbying even though it has so far rejected an
Opposition Labour call for a full
Parliamentary inquiry. The Prime Minister himself faces charges
of lying and a growing raft
of questions over his own conduct although he or some of his ministers
have denied any wrongdoing:
- did he break ministerial rules in questionable
contact about Covid ventilators with major Conservative donor and Brexit
supporter James Dyson
- how did he pay for refurbishing his Downing Street residence –
questions reopened in a blistering
public attack by his former chief aide and advisor Dominic Cummings
- did
he really say he’d prefer to see “bodies pile high in their
thousands” in a moment of arguing against a possible third Covid
lockdown.
There are multiple
other questions . And these have
increased since a series
of revelations by the FT and Sunday Times newspapers exposed attempts by
former Prime Minister David Cameron to get access to emergency Covid funding
for his employer Greensill Capital through cabinet
ministers and civil servants. The scandal amplifies already serious questions
about UK government spending on combatting Covid 19. The UK High Court made
another ruling on April 29 ordering
the UK government to disclose documents and correspondence relating to
ministers’ knowledge of a scheme that allowed suppliers with political
links to access multimillion pound contracts for personal protective
equipment (PPE) at the start of the pandemic. Campaign group the Good
Law Project is suing the government over its decision to award contracts
and said it could reveal the names of
four more companies involved. Previously
the court ruled the UK government acted
unlawfully over public contracts in the coronavirus crisis. The High
Court in London ruled on Feb.19 that the government
failed to
publish timely information about billions of pounds worth of public
contracts. The Good Law Project and three opposition MPs brought the legal
challenge over the government’s own strict time limits, which specify
that any state contract award notices must be published within a 30 day
period of the deals being finalised. During the court hearing, the government
accepted that there had been technical breaches of its obligations. Please
see here
for the court judgment. The Opposition Labour party called
on Health Secretary Matt Hancock to “commit to cleaning up
cronyism”.
And a report from
the UK Parliament’s public
accounts committee said on
March 10 there is no evidence to show that the £37 billion being spent
on the privatized test-and-trace program has helped to reduce infection
levels. The cross-party spending
watchdog challenged ministers to justify the “staggering investment
of taxpayers’ money” and criticised the use of expensive private
consultants – 2500 still employed in February paid an estimated
£1100 per day with the highest rate at over £6000 per day. The
MPs' report questioned:
- an over-reliance on consultants
- failure to be ready for a surge in demand for tests in September
- never meeting its time target to turn around tests done face-to-face
- not providing enough work for contact tracers.
An opinion poll showed the public overwhelmingly considered
the system a failure.
The searing Parliamentary report came just a few days after the government
proposed a 1% pay rise for National Health Service nurses –
effectively a pay cut as it’s below the rate of inflation and derided
as “pitiful” by angry nursing organizations which threatened
strike action. The actual pay rise still has to be considered by the NHS
pay review panel and decided by the cabinet but the prime minister and
government faced
a major backlash, especially given they had praised NHS staff as heroes
for the past year of the covid crisis. Two public opinion polls – one for
the Observer newspaper and the other for
inews – showed widespread public support
for larger pay increases.
There have been mounting questions about the government’s awarding of
covid-related contracts especially over issues of transparency and who’s
making money from them – a
question not unique to the UK – as well as questionable
practices in awarding multi-million pound contracts. In November Parliament’s spending watchdog
criticised the government for a series of shortcomings when it awarded more
than £17 billion of contracts to private companies to counter the
Covid-19 pandemic, including deals to supply personal protective equipment to
NHS staff.
UK Police Bill threatens free speech
The UK government is facing widespread
opposition and criticism over proposed
legislation that would allow police to curb the right of protest and
could endanger freedom of expression. AEJ UK Secretary Charles Jenkins writes that
the new laws are a “severe challenge to peaceful freedom of protest
long regarded as one of the fundamental rights of British citizens and indeed
of those of all properly democratic countries” and notes that the
legislation “looks more like the rule book of an authoritarian regime
than a democracy”. The new Police,
Sentencing and Courts Bill would amend the Public Order Act of 1986 on
the regulation of protest marches.
- More than 700 legal
scholars have sent
an open letter urging the Prime Minister Boris Johnson to ditch the
“draconian” restrictions.
- 245 charities,
community groups and campaigners have joined a campaign by human rights
group Liberty and environmental group Friends of the Earth to stop the
legislation.
- Prominent members
of Johnson’s own Conservative party have raised serious concerns – former Prime
Minister Theresa
May, former attorney general Dominic Grieve (about 19:18 minutes into this BBC interview),
and joining with him in
a joint letter even pro Brexit and Covid lockdown opponent Steve Baker.
- Even senior police
and crime commissioners across England and Wales have said the proposed
law goes too far.
The government’s new police bill
with its potential for long lasting restrictions to public protest is facing
detailed scrutiny in Parliament. Perhaps illustrative of the complexities of
its implementation – people’s rights, public order, public
safety, political agendas - is the government’s own role in controversial police handling
of a vigil
on March 13 for Sarah Everard, abducted, raped and murdered after walking
through a park in Clapham south London. Late in the vigil police forcibly
arrested several people in an intervention
many said was misjudged. It appears from a memo
leaked to The Guardian newspaper that the government supported and
encouraged the police action even though it later criticized it in the wake
of criticism. Please see here
for Charles Jenkins’ article on the new bill.
Police
Bill Protests
Objections to the proposed UK Police Bill that could restrict
protest and freedom of expression for a long time into the future are also in
danger of being confused and hijacked by anti-Covid lockdown campaigners and
others. A protest in Bristol organised against the new
bill on March 21 turned violent - local Avon and Somerset Police said
what started "as a peaceful protest" had been "turned by a
small minority into a violent disorder". The city’s
mayor Marvin Rees warned that the “lawlessness on show” will
be “used as evidence and promote the need for the bill”. A London
demonstration the previous day against lockdown restrictions –
including prominent anti-vaccine and conspiracy theorists - similarly
ended in arrests. Meanwhile there were genuine demonstrations against the
new police bill across
the country on the weekend.
Perhaps it’s not surprising that opponents of the new police bill are
confused with anti-lockdown protesters as well as others – in many
cases the issue is portrayed as the same, the right to protest. Much
mainstream media coverage has not clearly distinguished between the two and
even Members
of Parliament and Liberty have conflated them. For
the past year multiple groups of people – far right figures,
long-time conspiracy theorists, Covid deniers, anti-vaxxers opposed to the
Covid vaccines, anti-lockdown protesters - have been brought together in a
long-running and shadowy
campaign to oppose the UK government’s temporary Covid safety
regulations – which allow restrictions on public gatherings. Such
protests are by
no means restricted to the UK and have spread
around the world on both a large and small scale. Even a seemingly innocent Hokey Cokey display in a Hastings park turns out to
be connected to a global campaign by A Stand in the Park,
which appears to have been started in Australia and claims to stand
“for unity, for truth & for freedom”.
In Bristol two
subsequent protests on March 23 and 26 exposed
an added mosaic of different protesters – pro-women's rights, anti-police
bill, "van dwellers"and travellers'
supporters, left-wing anti-establishment protesters from Extinction Rebellion
and Black Lives Matter – combined with questionable
policing and police
tactics. In the wake of violence between protesters and police, leading
politicians, including Prime
Minister Boris Johnson, Home Secretary Priti
Patel and Opposition Labour leader Sir
Keir Starmer, predictably
expressed outrage and alarm at the danger to public safety, further amplifying
the media storm. There are alternative interpretations of events in Bristol
– for instance here
in the FT (Financial Times), local
co-operative newspaper and website the Bristol Cable, left
wing website The Canary and from
the Anarchist Federation. And it may take a while to clarify and decipher
the various forces involved:
How and why does peaceful protest turn into violence?
Is peaceful and legitimate objection to specific issues getting hijacked by
people with other agendas?
Who are the different protesters and what are their issues?
Not so hidden agendas
Amidst the
confusion and controversy brought by the coronavirus, Boris Johnson’s
office has kept pushing its key agendas such as revamping
the civil service – replacing a series
of key civil servants including the
top one – and pursuing a hard Brexit, including the appointment of controversial
former Australian prime minister Tony Abbott as a trade adviser.
Please see here for more
on reaction to the UK government’s management of the coronavirus
crisis.
The Covid Future
Prime Minister Boris Johnson has announced his plan for
coming out of a two-month lockdown with a staged series of
measures opening schools, retail and leisure locations, hospitality
venues, sports centres and events, travel, and social distancing.
Unsurprisingly there has been reaction across
multiple sectors along with questions and criticism about the details
particularly from the hospitality
industry, the education
sector, academics
and scientists, and right wing politicians
in his own party's
so-called Covid
Recovery Group. Johnson’s “roadmap” is aimed at easing
the lockdown he imposed
in early January aimed at halting the spread of Covid-19 in England. His nation-wide
television announcement came after mounting concern about continuing
rapid spread of the coronavirus and weeks of criticism about
delays and questionable handling of pupils’ return to school in
the new year. The measures on January 4 – along with similar rules in
Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales, the other nations of the UK - were the
latest in a sequence of increasingly tighter restrictions through December including
adding London and much of the southeast to the highest Tier 4 level just
before Christmas and much of the rest of England right afterwards. They
came along with a burgeoning ray of hope across the world for the success of
the first anti-Covid vaccines – vaccines that the UK had successfully
pre-ordered and allowed it to be the first in the world to
start vaccinating people. Despite that success, the Johnson
government’s later decision to extend the time between two required
inoculations without proper testing raised serious
questions from two major drug regulators – the European
Medicines Agency (EMA) and the U.S. Federal
Drug Administration (FDA) - as well as the first
vaccine developer (Pfizer/BioNTech). The lockdown measures signalled the
end of the Johnson government’s attempts to loosen restrictions through
the holidays and came less than a week before Christmas. That U-turn came
after growing pressure for action from medical experts - in a rare
joint editorial in the British Medical Journal and the Health Service
Journal on December 15 and warnings
of problems from its own scientific advisors a month earlier, warnings echoed
by the Opposition Labour Party. The Prime Minister claimed he made the
decision because new scientific data showed a new strain of the virus was
spreading much faster than the previous one.
Please see here for more on the sequence of previous
covid action by the UK government.
Covid and the Media
The coronavirus pandemic has marked a worrying new wave of serious
threats and attacks on media freedom in Europe said the latest annual report
of the Council of Europe Platform to Promote the Protection of Journalism and
Safety of Journalists. In a report titled “Hands Off Press Freedom:
Attacks on Media in Europe must not become a New Normal” the fourteen
member press freedom organisations including the AEJ documented how several
Council of Europe member states have detained journalists for critical
reporting, vastly expanded surveillance, and passed new laws to punish
“fake news” even as they decide themselves what is allowable and
what is false without the oversight of appropriate independent bodies. The
report – available in full here
– said these threats risk a tipping point in the fight to preserve a
free media in Europe and aggravate an already gloomy outlook.
The AEJ has played an active part with other media freedom organisations to
highlight such attempts as detailed in this
report from William Horsley, AEJ media freedom representative and UK
chairman.
And in
a statement marking World Press Freedom Day on May 3, Council of Europe
Secretary General Marija Pejčinović
Burić urged governments to avoid misusing the
COVID-19 situation to silence or hinder journalists.
Misuse of emergency measures
As many
governments introduced sweeping laws to deal with the Covid-19 pandemic, the AEJ has joined other media freedom groups in
two urgent calls to European leaders to protect media freedom. They have
called for “determined actions” from the Council of Europe, the
47-nation treaty-based human rights organisation, to protect the free flow of
information and journalists’ right to report amid fears of a
potentially dangerous slide towards authoritarianism and police-state
societies. In particular the open letter cites Hungary - where the prime minister
has open-ended powers to rule by decree and journalists and others are
subject to prison sentences for promoting alleged “false
information” or impeding government orders – as well as Slovenia
and the Czech Republic which have suspended usual press conferences open to
questions from journalists.
“The present emergency situation represents a
critical threat both to public health and to the civil and political rights
of people across Europe,” said William Horsley, AEJ media freedom
representative and AEJ UK chairman. “Now is the time for free and
independent media and for all those who believe in basic democratic standards
and open government, to combine forces and to uphold the free flow of
information and the inalienable rights of everyone as guaranteed under the
European Convention on Human Rights.”
Please see the open letter here to the
Secretary General of the Council of Europe, and the current and next
presidents of the Committee of Ministers, the organisation’s executive
decision-making body.
It follows an urgent
warning against misuse of emergency laws from the AEJ and partner
organisations to the presidents of the European Commission, the European
Council, and European Parliament. It emphasizes that the free flow of
independent news is essential both to maintain accurate information to the
public and to ensure public scrutiny and debate on emergency measures, and
notes all such measures must be necessary, proportionate, temporary and
strictly time-limited, and subject to regular scrutiny to ensure excessive
powers do not undermine democratic balances, including the free press.
The urgent letter supports
a joint statement from three global special rapporteurs on freedom of
expression with the UN, OSCE and the OAS and is signed by:
AEJ
ARTICLE 19
European Centre for Press and
Media Freedom (ECPMF)
European Federation of Journalists
Free Press Unlimited (FPU)
Index on Censorship
International Federation of
Journalists
International Press Institute (IPI)
Reporters Without Borders (RSF)
The open letter is also
available here on the International Press Institute website.
Coronavirus coverage
There is a global
study showing a majority of the public around the world get their
information about coronavirus from mainstream media – yet journalists
are their least trusted source. Please see
this report in the UK Press Gazette and here
for more on coronavirus coverage in the UK.
The AEJ International site has interesting links to EU coverage of the
coronavirus story on its home page.
How personal
data could contribute to a cure
EU
response to Covid 19 – every government for itself
Virus cartoons
Five
decisions the EU should make
Brexit
Deal
The UK and the
European Union have approved an agreement
on a trade deal after Brexit. The last-minute
deal allows Britain to continue trading with the EU and may avoid the
massive disruption to the economy and people’s lives expected if there
had been no deal. Exactly how the deal affects business, the economy and
individuals will only become clearer with time with constantly updated
reporting available here:
Associated
Press (AP) - https://apnews.com/hub/brexit
Financial
Times(FT) - https://www.ft.com/brexit
The
Guardian -https://www.theguardian.com/politics/eu-referendum
BBC - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/politics/uk_leaves_the_eu
Details
of the deal are
here and for
some early analysis please see:
FT - https://www.ft.com/content/34dd4cbe-33ef-32f8-9aa2-904339e46bf0
AP - https://apnews.com/article/brexit-europe-global-trade-europe-e0e9914361f0f8975b7f49a834497c5d
Council
on Foreign Relations (U.S. based) - https://www.cfr.org/in-brief/whats-eu-uk-brexit-deal
For questions
about the deal itself and its impact please see:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/55252388
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/explainers-55261711
UK
Prime Minister Boris Johnson unsurprisingly heralded the Christmas
Eve deal as delivering on Brexit by taking back control of UK laws and
destiny. He said the deal will protect jobs, allow UK goods to be sold
without tariffs and quotas in the EU market, and allow companies to do even
more business with Europe. From January 1, the UK will be outside the
European customs union and single market, Johnson said, and British laws will
be made solely by the British parliament, interpreted by UK judges sitting in
UK courts, and no longer subject to the jurisdiction of the European Court of
Justice – all demands of ardent Brexiteers. European Commission
President Ursula von der Leyen said the deal was fair and
balanced and Brussels would "continue cooperating with the UK in all
areas of mutual interest" such as climate change, transport and
security. She said agreement on the highly contentious but symbolic issue of
fishing rights guaranteed 5½ years of "full predictability for
our fishing communities".
Rejoining the EU?
Even as the ink
dries on the Brexit trade deal and at least early problems with it surface,
there are of course questions about Britain’s future relationship with
the EU – including the possibility of rejoining. AEJ member Nick Hopkinson predicts
future British governments will eventually seek closer relations again and
may even want to rejoin. The former director of
Wilton Park, the international policy forum, and a long-time supporter of
close relations with the EU, Hopkinson examines how and when that might be in
this
article in The New European.
Brexit
– January 2020
The
United Kingdom officially left the European Union at midnight Central
European Time on January 31, 2020. For a range of news coverage and what it
meant please see these links:
https://apnews.com/e48bf51838ced94e2d92adba189b4944
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-51333314
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/10858199/brexit-news-uk-live-eu-latest/
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2020/feb/01/brexit-britain-wakes-up-to-uncertain-future-after-uk-leaves-eu-live-news-and-updates
https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/brexit/what-happens-after-brexit-day-uk-transition-period-when-leaving-eu-date-explained-1373410
https://edition.cnn.com/europe/live-news/brexit-day-uk-leaves-eu-gbr-intl/index.html
https://www.foxnews.com/category/world/world-regions/europe/brexit
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/01/brexit-uk-officially-leaves-european-union-200131211418625.html
https://www.gov.uk/transition
https://www.gov.uk/staying-uk-eu-citizen
The
course of Brexit was set when UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson won his bet on
the future of Britain in a snap election on December 12 2019. Voters woke up
on Friday the 13th December 2019 to a thumping
Conservative majority, the resignations of both main opposition party
leaders – Labour’s
Jeremy Corbyn and the Liberal
Democrats’ Jo Swinson, and a resurgent Scottish
National Party seeking the independence of Scotland. Please also see here
for:
Election result
numbers
And
here for how Johnson’s Conservatives won:
https://www.ft.com/content/ab3692b0-2317-11ea-92da-f0c92e957a96
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/uk/how-boris-johnson-became-britain-s-most-powerful-prime-minister-since-tony-blair-1.4120281
See here for more Brexit news
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Jonathan Fryer
1950-2021
It is with great sadness we note the death of Jonathan Fryer, long-time AEJ
UK member, journalist, broadcaster, author and active Liberal Democrat.
Jonathan died peacefully at an east London hospice on April 16 after being
diagnosed with a terminal condition less than a month earlier. With the
Liberal Democrats he was most recently chair of the party’s Federal
International Relations Committee and a major contributor to its
international work for many years. As a journalist he worked for Reuters and
the BBC World Service as well as writing for The Guardian and other
publications and broadcasters. As a colleague and friend to many in the AEJ
and others in multiple other fields he will be greatly missed.
Please see here for more.
Lunchtime meetings
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Covid-19
Impact
The AEJ UK hopes to resume regular in person lunchtime
meetings at Regent’s University after the summer break depending on circumstances related to the Covid
pandemic. Regent’s University – our
regular host - has suspended many physical meetings at their campus
including those with the AEJ.
AEJ UK meetings usually start at 12:30 and are open to
journalists, academics and Europe specialists and guests. Pre-registration
is necessary by email to cas.jenkins@gmail.com. A
fee of £25 is charged to cover the cost of refreshments - £10
for under-25s and free admission may be extended
to students on a discretionary basis.
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Reports on meetings are usually available on this website.
For a list of our recent lunchtime guests see Events.
AEJ UK meetings were kindly hosted at Europe House, the London home of the EU
Commission and European Parliament, for
many years. Please see their UK website
for EU events and information.
Recent AEJ UK guests
Germany
post-Merkel
The era of Angela Merkel and “Germany first” may soon change to
older, more Euro-centric policies predicts leading German columnist Alan
Posener. The former senior editor and now columnist at Die Welt newspaper spoke to an AEJ UK meeting
on May 18 about the outlook for “Germany after Angela Merkel”.
After 16 years in power Mrs Merkel will stand down
as Chancellor of Germany at
September’s elections. In his iconoclastic assessment, Posener says
that despite her reputation as a rock of political stability and a committed
European, Angela Merkel took a ‘Germany-first’ approach to
important policy decisions, leaving deep divisions within German society and
antagonizing many of Germany’s neighbours.
Please see here for an edited
text of his remarks and here for an audio record
of the meeting.
Life after
Brexit
Adjustment, adaptation,
acceptance: three words from the EU's ambassador to the United Kingdom sum up
the challenges facing Brexit Britain. João Vale de Almeida told the
AEJ UK on April 26 that all three are needed to meet the opportunities
and challenges of future relations between the EU and the UK. By contrast,
the ambassador has needed stoicism and patience during his first 15 turbulent
months in office since taking up his post on February 1 2020, the first full
day of Brexit after the UK's departure from the European Union. Even his
title is in dispute as the UK government has so far refused to grant him the
same diplomatic status as it gives to envoys of nation states. In those 15 months, tensions have
flared between London and Brussels over the Brexit agreement's Northern
Ireland Protocol, its effects on trade between the British mainland and
Northern Ireland, fishing rights, and over the supply of Covid 19 vaccines
between manufacturing sites in the UK and the EU. João Vale de Almeida
brings a wealth of diplomatic experience to his role at this crucial time in
UK-EU relations. He has occupied a succession of senior EU posts since
joining the European Commission in 1982 in Lisbon, including EU ambassador to
the UN and to the USA, director general of the EU's External Action Service,
and head of the EU Commission president’s office when fellow Portuguese
national Jose Manuel Barroso was president. For more on his presentation
please see this report from
former FT economics editor Peter Norman and here for an audio record.
Global Britain
What is the
future for Britain post Brexit? That’s the question Ed Balls would like the UK to
debate, publicly and sensibly. The former Labour
Chancellor argues that it needs to steer a middle course, truly accepting
that Britain has left the EU and making the right choices to prosper
domestically and internationally. And he says failure to get Global Britain
right could endanger the very existence of a “United Kingdom”. Speaking
at the AEJ UK on March 26, the former politician – and celebrity
dancer, champion cook, and documentary maker – warned that the
“Global Britain” slogan poses major challenges for the UK’s
two main political parties and their leaders who will have to “start
building an answer about what a modern forward looking Global Britain looks
like outside the EU”. Now professor of political economy at
King’s College London and a research fellow at the Harvard Kennedy
School, Balls co-authored “Finding
Global Britain”, a vision of how to turn what was a Brexiteer
slogan into policies for “a pragmatic but ambitiously outward-looking
and progressive country”. The Harvard University paper focused on five
themes: trade policy, regulation,
migration, domestic inequalities, and the need for a new national narrative.
At the AEJ, Balls detailed some of the challenges and opportunities inherent
in that. For more please see this
report by Peter Norman, AEJ meetings secretary and former economics
editor of the Financial Times, and click here for an audio record.
Russian politics
in election year
As Russian Opposition leader Alexei Navalny remained in jail, the AEJ UK
linked to Moscow live to speak with Dr. Ekaterina Schulmann,
Moscow-based political scientist and associate fellow at the Chatham House
Russia and Eurasia Program. The meeting on February 8 2021 came against the
background of Navalny’s tumultuous return to Russia after a failed
attempt by Russian secret security agents to assassinate him with a Novichok
nerve agent, sparking a Russia-wide wave of anti-government protests echoing
those still going on in neighbouring Belarus. Dr. Schulmann noted that after 22 years in power, Russian
President Vladimir Putin this year faces enormous political challenges as the
Russian political system enters a turbulent transition phase. Parliamentary
elections due in autumn 2021 and a presidential election due in 2024 come
amid increasing expectations of change among younger generations of Russians.
She said the political system has to renew itself and that will not be easy
with the risk for the ruling elite not so much from a popular uprising but
from conflicts within itself in reaction to popular discontent. Please see here for a report on the meeting from
Charles Jenkins, AEJ secretary and former Europe editor/director western Europe at the Economist Intelligence
Unit and this audio
record.
See here
for more AEJ UK guest speakers
AEJ Media Freedom Project
The
AEJ works to protect freedom of expression and independent journalism by
bringing issues to the attention of governments and advising
inter-governmental organisations on behalf of our members. The AEJ’s
Media Freedom Representative and Vice President is William Horsley, a former BBC foreign
correspondent and the current chairman of the UK section.
Since the AEJ
Media Freedom Survey in 2007 (Goodbye to Freedom?), the AEJ has published Europe-wide
surveys and reports that reveal the erosion of press freedom through physical
assaults, wrongful imprisonment, oppressive laws, and unacceptable political
and commercial pressures.
The AEJ is an observer at the Council of Europe. Since 2 April 2015, it has been one of the
eight partners in the Council’s online platform
for early warning of and rapid response to attacks on the
media. For more information, see Media
Freedom.
The AEJ actively supports
the ongoing efforts of UNESCO, the UN Agency with a mandate to safeguard media
freedom, to implement the UN Plan of Action on the Safety of Journalists and the Issue of Impunity. The AEJ
Media Freedom Representative authored the OSCE’s Safety of Journalists Guidebook setting out the obligations of participating states to protect
the security of journalists, including those using the Internet.
Our campaigns and activities can also be tracked on the Media Freedom and News pages of the international AEJ website, www.aej.org
AEJ and the Council of Europe
The
AEJ takes part in the policy work of the Council of Europe (CoE) on key issues of media freedom as a participant in the steering committee on
Media and Information Society and the Platform
to Promote the Protection of Journalism
and the Safety of Journalists. It works on
behalf of its members across Europe to hold the CoE and its 47 member states to
their commitments on media freedom and freedom of expression.
To
read further, please go to Media
Freedom.
Media visits to the European Parliament
The EP’s London Office
has a small budget to offset some of the travel and hotel costs incurred by
journalists when visiting the European Parliament. Only a limited number can
be helped in this way, so you must first be invited by the UK Office before
seeking reimbursement (see EP website).
Briefings
A selection of AEJ-related writings and activities
AEJ member
Rick Thompson’s book Park Life has been published – a diary in
praise of urban parks, detailing a year of the wildlife in his local park by
the Avon and tangential thoughts about legends, folklore, science, climate
change, and the health benefits of regular contact with nature.
AEJ
member Charles Jenkins, former Western Europe editor of the Economist
Intelligence Unit, blogs on Europe at https://eupriorities.ideasoneurope.eu/
Firdevs
Robinson’s writing is now accessible on FirdevsTalkTurkey.com
William Horsley blogs on the Centre
for Freedom of the Media website.
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News
A turning point for media freedom in Europe?
A major conference of European media
ministers has highlighted the actions of European governments accused of
persecuting journalists. Council of Europe ministers responsible for media called
on the Council’s top decision-making body to implement comprehensive
plans for preventing, investigating and sanctioning threats against journalists’
safety in the final declaration of their meetings in Cyprus on June 10 and 11.
But while the ministerial conference on Media and Democracy shone a rare
spotlight on European governments’ actions affecting media freedom,
William Horsley, AEJ media freedom representative, asks if it really will mark a
turning-point for better protections for journalism and the safety of
journalists? Even as the first such major conference in 8 years ended, Russia
disrupted the European show of unity as it objected to a key Council of
Europe mechanism for protecting media freedom, the CoE Platform for the protection
of journalism and the safety of journalists. The Russian delegation declared
its opposition to the Platform’s work in an “interpretive
statement” and also expressed its wider disagreement with significant
parts of the Council of Europe’s strategy for reversing the decline in
the safety of journalists. For more please see this report from William
Horsley and here
for the conference documents.
BBC future
The BBC faces searching questions
about its management and its future in the wake of an independent report
severely critical of how it handled its scoop interview with Princess
Diana over 25 years ago. The report
on May 20 2021 by retired judge Lord John Dyson
found that journalist Martin
Bashir used deceitful practices – faked documents designed to
convince Princess Diana to grant the blockbuster interview in 1995 in which
she spoke candidly about the breakdown of her marriage to Prince Charles,
heir to the throne. The report also said BBC
management failed to follow its own protocols before the interview, was
“woefully ineffective” in its subsequent investigations, and
asked if a series of BBC management actions following the interview
constituted a cover-up. The BBC has apologized, says it has better procedures
now, and has launched
an internal review of its editorial policies. It has not specified how it
will deal with management failures in the handling of the issues. Arguably
the world’s most trusted news source, the BBC now faces
a series of questions about its actions and opportunistic calls for
changes that could endanger its editorial independence and possibly threaten
its very existence. Journalistic media like the UK Press Gazette and
organizations such as the National
Union of Journalists (NUJ) have rallied to defend the BBC’s
journalists but they have also noted difficult
questions still to be answered. The BBC was already under pressure about
its cuts to local news across the UK and a looming government review of
funding and governance. So unsurprisingly, long-time critics
in Fleet Street tabloids – with their own long
history of questionable practice – and Boris Johnson’s government
and MPs
were lining up to have their say.
Belarus faces international outrage
over plane arrest
The forced landing of a Ryanair
passenger jet and arrest of a prominent opposition journalist in Belarus on
May 23 sparked
international outrage and condemnation.
Ryanair chief executive Michael
O’Leary described the action as “state
sponsored hijacking”. AEJ Media Freedom Representative William
Horsley reports here on
the British and international condemnation - British foreign secretary
Dominic Raab told British carriers not to fly through Belarusian airspace and
suspended operations to the UK by the Belarusian airline Belavia.
The European Union followed
suit along with further sanctions. The dramatic
developments unfolded like an international
thriller novel.
Belarus state media said President
Alexander Lukashenko personally ordered a fighter jet scrambled and the
country’s air traffic control to force the passenger plane to land in
Minsk as it flew briefly in Belarusian airspace on a flight from Athens to
Vilnius in Lithuania. Belarus claimed there was a bomb threat and on the
ground arrested journalist Roman Protasevich,
co-founder and former editor of Nexta, a channel of
online messaging app Telegram. They also arrested his girlfriend and three
other people. The EU faces difficulty
in taking effective action and both Europe and Russia in particular will
need to examine just why
Lukashenko took such action and its
impact. For more on the ongoing struggle in Belarus please see here.
Council of Europe warns of democratic
backsliding
The Secretary General of the Council
of Europe, Marija Pejčinović
Burić, has issued a stark warning that the
increase in violence against journalists demonstrates “a worrying
degree of democratic backsliding” and endangers Europe’s
“democratic culture”. AEJ media freedom representative and AEJ UK
chairman William Horsley has this report.
World Press Freedom Day 2021
Marking World
Press Freedom Day 2021 on May 3, the secretarys
general of both the United Nations and the Council of Europe called for
urgent action to stop threats to media freedom. AEJ UK chairman and AEJ
international media freedom representative William Horsley has this commentary - The
Media Freedom Fightback Gets Stronger. UN Secretary-General António
Guterres said the coronavirus pandemic and its severe impact on media
revenues could lead to a “media extinction event”. The Council of
Europe Secretary General Marija Pejčinović
Burić expressed concern about attacks on
journalists and limitations to press freedom in many parts of Europe in a
joint statement with Germany’s federal minister of justice and
consumer protection, Christine Lambrecht, representing the German presidency
of the Council of Europe’s committee of ministers. Earlier Ms. Pejčinović Burić
urged
European governments to show stronger political will to protect
journalists and independent journalism as she marked the release of the its annual
report on media freedom of the Council of Europe Platform for the
protection and safety of journalists. AEJ UK chairman and AEJ international
media freedom representative William Horsley contributed a personal message
of support for editor and journalist Maria Ressa in
the Philippines as part of an innovative and unprecedented global solidarity
campaign led by Reporters Without Borders (RSF) and the #HoldTheLine coalition. Their website features
hundreds of videos from prominent supporters around the world - with a call
for public contributions - that will stream on a continuous loop until all
charges are dropped against Ressa and the media
outlet Rappler she founded. Ressa
faces a possible lifetime in prison in the Philippines. She was named Time
magazine’s Person of the Year in 2018 and won this year’s UNESCO/Guillermo
Cano World Press Freedom Prize. This year marks exactly 30 years since
the landmark “Windhoek Declaration” when African journalists set
out three key demands – for media freedom, media independence and media
pluralism - that laid the foundation for a United Nations global campaign
proclaiming the date as World Press Freedom Day. Then, South Africa’s
apartheid regime was crumbling and the Cold War was becoming history in
Europe. This year, World Press Freedom Day is hosted in Namibia and key
themes include the survival of independent and local media, enforcing the
responsibilities of internet giants, and public media literacy in the face of
the “disinfodemic” and persecution of journalists
through anti-media “fake news” laws.
AEJ Hungary defends media independence
The AEJ Hungarian Section marked World
Press Freedom Day with a broadside
against the government’s attempts to stifle media independence and
a fresh call for the European Union to use stronger means to counteract the
hostile propaganda of Hungary’s pro-government media.
Media Freedom Report 2021
The 2021 annual
report on media freedom by the Council of Europe platform for the
protection and safety of journalists notes a strong rise in reports of
violence against journalists as well as censorship and reprisals for
questioning government policies. At the same time, quality media face serious
economic challenges and many journalists have lost their jobs due to the
pandemic. The report says extraordinary damage was inflicted on
free and independent journalism in 2020 as governments across Europe adopted
emergency laws and regulations in response to the Covid-19 pandemic that also
imposed extraordinary restrictions on journalists’ activities. It says
these represent arbitrary interferences in the legitimate work of journalists
and news organisations and place excessive limitations on the fundamental
rights of people across Europe to enjoy access to uncensored information
freely and from diverse sources. The Council of Europe platform for the protection and safety of
journalists joins the AEJ and 13 other journalistic and NGO partner
organisations in a Europe-wide “rapid response mechanism” to
issue real-time online media freedom alerts. The AEJ, Article 19, the
Committee to Protect Journalists, the European Federation of Journalists and
the International Press Institute form the core editorial team for the report
which is the collective work of all 14 partner organisations. Please see here
for the full
report and here for the press
conference marking the launch.
Hungarian media attack on Austrian
journalist
The Council of Europe Platform for the
protection and safety of journalists has followed
the AEJ and other media freedom groups in condemning the Hungarian
government for a serious attack on media freedom. The COE Platform has issued
an alert about a Hungarian state television broadcast which attacked an
Austrian journalist for asking "provocative questions" and
questioning her integrity and professionalism. The attack on prime time news
prompted a protest from Austria’s Minister of Foreign Affairs and a
further attack in reply on social media by his Hungarian counterpart. The COE
action is one of several recent alerts related to malicious verbal attacks
and threats including ones in Bulgaria and Slovenia. Please see the AEJ International website for more.
Shocking murder of Athens journalist
The killing
of prominent Greek crime reporter Giorgos Karaivaz in Athens on April 9 highlights fears that
investigative journalists in Europe face growingly more dangerous conditions
because of increased hostility to the media from both state and non-state
actors. The AEJ’s media freedom representative and AEJ UK chairman,
William Horsley, called on the Greek authorities to “conduct an urgent,
independent and effective investigation and bring the killers of Giorgos Karaivaz to justice to
prevent a further erosion of public trust." Karaivaz
was a veteran of crime reporting who had worked for various Greek newspapers
and broadcasters. For more please see this
alert on the Council
of Europe platform to promote the protection of journalism and safety of
journalists and the AEJ International website.
Justice for Daphne?
There may be a possible glimmer of
hope for justice in the killing of Maltese investigative journalist Daphne
Caruana Galizia. One of three previously accused men, Vincent Muscat –
believed to have been the hitman - has
been sentenced to 15 years in prison after pleading guilty in a plea
bargain deal. On the same day, Feb.23 2021, police
arrested three new suspects - two of them have been charged
with supplying the car bomb in Caruana Galizia’s assassination in
October 2017. Her son Matthew told the AEJ: “What has happened is a
step from no to partial justice. The homicide squad has done a good job, but
there are severe problems with Malta’s capacity to fight
corruption.” Police
claimed all suspects in the case have now been arrested but it’s
widely suspected that Caruana Galizia’s assassination involved both
organized crime and members of Malta’s elite. Her blog uncovering
political corruption in Malta earned her a reputation as a one-woman
WikiLeaks. And her murder mired Malta’s ruling Labour party in
political scandal. Prime Minister Joseph Muscat resigned in 2019 over
allegations that members of his administration had tried to sabotage the
police investigation. AEJ President Saia Tsaousidou
described the new arrests as
“half-good news, but not more than that.”
The International and European
Federations of Journalists (IFJ-EFJ) welcomed
Muscat’s guilty plea and urged Malta’s authorities to
continue to pursue others involved in her murder. The AEJ has worked
consistently with other media freedom organizations to focus attention on the
case of Daphne Caruana Galizia and AEJ media freedom representative William
Horsley was instrumental in the publication of the last
interview with her.
CIA
confirms Saudi prince approved assassination
The United
States has released a Central
Intelligence Agency report saying Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince
Mohamed bin Sultan approved the assassination of Saudi
Arabian journalist Jamal Khashoggi. The new U.S. President Joe Biden
stopped short of imposing sanctions on the prince but did announce measures against
other key Saudis involved in the brutal killing. The report’s
release in early 2021 signals a recalibration of the U.S. relationship
with Saudi Arabia which rejected the report. The Crown Prince - profiled in this BBC Radio 4
program, de facto ruler of the country, and son and heir apparent to the
king - has always denied a role in the murder. Jamal Khashoggi disappeared
inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, on Oct.2
2018, was killed, and his body cut up. He was one of Saudi Arabia’s
most prominent journalists, once an advisor to the country’s
intelligence chief, but left in 2017 to the USA where he wrote
a regular column for The Washington Post in which he criticised the
direction of his country under Crown Prince Mohamed. Khashoggi’s murder
turned a spotlight on the Saudi regime’s pivotal role in a number of
key issues – the Yemen civil war, western arms sales to the Saudis,
international terrorism, its actions as one of two key Western allies in the
Middle East, and its financing and trade particularly in relation to the USA
and western European countries. At the time the Association of European
Journalists International joined the Journalist Support Committee (JSC) to call for justice and a full investigation into
Khashoggi’s death. The AEJ and JSC called for
disclosure of all information in the Turkish investigation and for a
thorough, independent review of the human rights record of the Saudi
authorities. They joined other
journalist and human rights groups in their alarm as Saudi activists
remain in jail.
AEJ condemns attack on Kosovo
investigative journalist
The AEJ and other media freedom
groups have condemned a targeted assault
on investigative journalist Visar Duriqi in Kosovo. He was hospitalised with serious head
and face injuries after the late-night ambush attack near his home. Duriqi had just made a TV appearance in which he accused
public officials of corruption and abuse of their positions. The European
Union’s office in the capital, Pristina, condemned the attack and
declared that journalists must be allowed to carry out their work freely and
safely.
Big Tech, media freedom, and money
The world’s tech information giants remain in the spotlight as
debate rages across the world over media freedom and money. Australia has passed the
world’s first law aimed at making Google and Facebook pay news
publishers for content on their platforms. It follows a major struggle with
the tech giants in which Google
threatened to pull its search engine from the entire country and Facebook
actually did block Australians from viewing or sharing news. The law
passed with amendments after tough negotiations and mixed consequences
from the Facebook ban. Facebook and Google’s fight
in Australia were not their first over payment
for news and Australia is far from their largest market but the proposed
law is seen as a potential global
test case for how governments regulate big tech firms. Both Facebook and
Google resisted the
Australian plan because negotiating
business deals would be subject to national rules and they would have
less control over how much they would have to pay – but they took different
approaches in their fight.
Across the Pacific in the USA there were serious questions about the power of
digital media giants and free speech after Twitter and Facebook shut down
U.S. President Donald Trump’s accounts. Honorary AEJ member and veteran
American journalist and columnist Llewellyn King examines
issues of media freedom and free speech in the wake of actions by the
tech giants. They shut down Trump’s accounts after he encouraged
protests that turned violent at the Capitol building in his last days in
office. What if these companies get politically activated in the future, King
asks, while acknowledging that ex-President Trump deserved censure and the
digital companies’ actions may not be wrong at a time of crisis.
Quoting journalist and essayist H.L. Mencken in 1940 - “freedom of the
press is limited to those who own one” - King says the current exercise
of censor authority should alarm all free-speech advocates and is power that
exceeds anything ever seen in media. For more on his call for a re-examination
of current law and a larger discussion on all the issues of free speech on
social media please see his column in the White
House Chronicle and InsideSources.
AEJ joins protests against
jailing of Navalny
The AEJ notes growing concerns
about the health of jailed Russian Opposition leader Alexei Navalny. A report by AEJ secretary general Edward
Steen follows strong protests from the AEJ against the jailing of Navalny as
well as attacks on journalists covering protests in his support. The AEJ has
joined the Committee
to Protect Journalists, Article 19 and Reporters
Sans Frontieres in recording and protesting against a record wave of
arrests, attacks and criminal cases against journalists. The London-based Justice
for Journalists organisation
reported nearly 400 attacks on Russian media workers and their families
in the last few weeks of January. The Council of Europe has issued a formal
media freedom alert on the Europe-wide platform for the safety of
journalists. At the time former AEJ president
Otmar Lahodynsky said the sentencing of Navalny for 3½ years in a
penal colony was “a grotesque infringement of elementary human
rights.” Lahodynsky said there had been no investigation into the
poison-attack on Navalny in August 2020 and called for sanctions by the EU.
And the man who helped evacuate Navalny from Russia says his sentencing
“suggests Russia under Vladimir Putin is on an unstoppable shift back
to the old authoritarian ways of the Soviet Union” – in a guest commentary on the AEJ International website.
Jaka Bizilj is the
founder of the Cinema for Peace Initiative and flew with Navalny to Berlin in
a private plane on August 22 2020 at the request of Pussy Riot in a
humanitarian gesture supported by the German government and the Presidents of
France and Finland.
Hungary’s Klubrádió in jeopardy
The AEJ Hungary has called for Europe-wide
support for Klubrádió, one of the
last independent
radio stations in Hungary. A Hungarian court has confirmed a decision by
the government-controlled Media Council to deny
Klubrádió’s broadcasting
license from February 15 although the station still plans to broadcast on
the internet at https://www.klubradio.hu/
The AEJ Hungary said the
government’s intention was to reduce voices and programs independent
and critical of the government less than a year before planned elections and
called for solidarity and support as the station appealed to Hungary’s
Supreme Court. The president of
Klubrádió described the lower court
decision as “shameful” and the removal of its licence as
“illegal”.
Will Europe defend journalists
at risk today?
As journalists in Turkey face
continuing pressure from the government many marked
the anniversary of the murder of renowned Turkish investigative
journalist Ugur Mumcu.
Killed in a car bomb explosion on 24 January 1993, he defined journalism as
the medium that “talks about struggles in all areas of life”. AEJ
UK chairman and international media freedom representative William Horsley
writes that those words still ring true today as the struggle for survival of
independent media across the world has grown more acute and many political
leaders want to transform the role of the media from that of a public
watchdog that holds power to account into propaganda weapons for their own
advantage. The AEJ joined a
mission to Turkey with 10 other international media freedom, journalism
and human rights groups in
October to warn of a growing
crisis for freedom of expression in Turkey.
Belarus
standoff
The Association
of European Journalists has called for the
release of Belarusian journalist Andrei Aliaksandrau and eight others
held in jail in connection with their reporting of public protests against
the government. Aliaksandrau, detained since January 12 2021, is a long-time
associate of the AEJ, was a deputy chairman of the Belarusian Association of
Journalists from 2009 to 2012, and is the founder and chief editor of the
news website Belarus Journal. In November 2020 the Belarus Association of
Journalists was awarded the prestigious Media Freedom Award from the Global
Media Freedom Coalition, now made up of over 40 countries, that was
established in 2019 by the UK and Canada. The award citation recognised the BAJ for its commitment to covering human rights and
election fraud in the face of violence and threats. The AEJ previously called for a strong, concerted
international response against violent suppression of free media in Belarus,
saying on September 3 that the Belarusian authorities’ violent
suppression of free media, targeted attacks against journalists, and the
denial of accreditations and deportations of large numbers of journalists
were aimed at preventing journalists from reporting on legitimate protests
against alleged election fraud and other government abuses.
Hundreds of journalists have
been arrested in Belarus in a harsh
crackdown by the government of President Alexander Lukashenko on mass
protests that have
continued weekly for five months against August elections widely
considered as rigged. The European Union has not recognised the legality of
the elections, saying they were “not free and fair” and an
investigation supported by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in
Europe found massive and systemic violations of basic rights before and after
the poll. On January 18 the International
Ice Hockey Federation stripped Belarus of its right to co-host this
year’s world championships, a slap to avid hockey fan Lukashenko. For
some time Lukashenko has been stuck in an ongoing power standoff with
opposition protesters. His state media said on December 31 he will hold
a referendum on his suggested constitutional reforms and has called
a congress of his supporters in February. At the same time reports
surfaced that neighbouring Russia plans to launch
a pro-Russia party in the Belarus borderland between it and the EU. Russia
has kept a low profile amid much reporting about its plans – ranging
from speculation about losing
patience with Lukashenko through opposition
hopes for support from new U.S. President Joe Biden, along with earlier
analysis of Vladimir Putin’s options from the Washington-based Council
on Foreign Relations, the Washington Post-owned Foreign
Policy, and even from inside Russia in the Moscow-based English language Moscow
Times.
Please see more on Belarus.
Journalism
in the age of Covid
There has been
concern for most of the last year about growing pressures on journalists and
politicians of all stripes using the coronavirus pandemic as an excuse to
control reporting and suppress information. For an update on this – reported here on the
AEJ UK website earlier this year – please see
this update and round up from Brussels Morning.
Quicker
justice for journalists
The AEJ has formally endorsed an authoritative legal report calling for an
international task force to ensure effective investigations into violent
attacks and abuses against journalists. The report
by 15 leading international lawyers calls for creation of a new
International Investigative Task Force to ensure effective investigations
into violent attacks and abuses against journalists. It was launched on
November 25 by the independent High Level Legal Panel supporting the Global
Media Freedom Coalition made up of some 40 UN member states. The task force
of forensic and legal experts is intended to act with strong political
backing with a mandate to strengthen existing UN mechanisms to bring to
justice perpetrators of acts such as the assassination of Maltese journalist
Daphne Caruana Galizia in a car bomb attack in 2017, and the murder of Saudi
journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018.
How
journalists handle political pressure and threats
AEJ UK chairman
William Horsley has addressed the Council of Europe committee on media and
information society about the extraordinary experiences, persecution and
courageous work of 20 frontline journalists across Europe detailed in a new
book he has co-authored. Along with co-author Marilyn Clark, associate
professor of psychology at the University of Malta, the writers hope to
provide a new rationale and impetus for protecting journalists more
effectively from physical and legal attacks, exclusion and online harassment,
and the impact of climates of impunity when journalists are attacked or
murdered. The book “A
Mission to Inform: Journalists at risk speak out” was launched
on October 14 coinciding with the third anniversary of the death of
Maltese investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia. It includes the last
interview she gave, available
here – only 10 days before she was killed while reporting on
corruption issues. On the anniversary of her death on October 16 2017, the AEJ added its voice to 19 other organisations
supporting journalists, international free expression, anti-corruption, and
civic participation in demanding an end to impunity from prosecution for the
attack.
The new book is based on “in-depth interviews with 20 journalists from
18 different countries selected for their experience and skill in reporting
in the public interest and exposing injustice and abuses. Each … shared
their insights into the realities of doing cutting-edge journalism to bring
the truth to light; they spoke about their first-hand experience of threats,
hostility and intimidation, surveillance and cyberattacks, and about
self-censorship, resilience and coping strategies, as well as about what they
portray as routine failures by state authorities to give journalists the
protection they need to fulfil their public watchdog role.” It is published
by the Council of Europe and the foreword by the COE’s
Director General of Human Rights and Rule of Law notes that journalists
across member states face various forms of pressure and intimidation meant to
silence and hinder their ‘mission to inform’ - “worrying
given that democratic societies can only function if media actors can report
on matters of public interest without interference and without
fear”. The COE notes that
the book is a follow up to a study in 2017 involving nearly 1000
questionnaires answered by journalists which revealed grave statistics
concerning the risks they faced. “A Mission to Inform: Journalists at
risk speak out” is aimed at analysing how journalists responded to
pressures exerted on them and what solutions they found to overcome fear and
continue being able to fulfil their public watchdog mission.
Fake news updates
Two key characters in the ongoing fake news
saga of the last few years now face forms of justice. In the UK, Alexander
Nix the former head of Cambridge Analytica has
been banned from running any limited liability company for seven years.
And in the USA, right-wing promoter and former Trump chief strategist Steve
Bannon has been charged
with fraud. The Cambridge Analytica story first looked like a plotline
straight out of the U.S. TV series Homeland – allegations of an illegal
data grab used to manipulate national votes in both the U.S. presidential
election and the UK referendum on leaving the European Union. But it was life
once again imitating art – sparked by an investigative report published in mid-March 2018 by The Observer newspaper and
shared with the UK’s Channel 4 television and the New York Times. For
more please see here.
See here
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