Coronavirus
UK government covid contracts illegal
The UK government acted
unlawfully over public contracts in the coronavirus crisis, one of
England’s most senior courts has ruled. 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 campaign group 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”.
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.
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.
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.
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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Lunchtime meetings
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Covid-19
Impact
The
AEJ’s regular scheduled lunchtime meetings have had to be paused and
have been replaced by online meetings for the last few months.
Regent’s University – our regular host - has suspended many
physical meetings at their campus including those with the AEJ.
Updates for online events and Regent’s University will be available
by email and on this site.
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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.
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
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.
City of London
official confident of future after Brexit
Catherine McGuinness, chair of the influential policy
and resources committee of the City of London Corporation, says the City will
remain a great centre for global capital after Brexit – deal or no
deal. She spoke at a meeting with AEJ UK members, London's Foreign Press
Association and other specially invited journalists, on December 4 at a
delicate moment in UK-EU relations, just days away from a final deadline in
talks about a possible trade deal. While the City did want a UK-EU post
Brexit deal, she said the financial sector was already taking steps to ensure
and strengthen relations with the EU even as it accepted the nature of
London's relationship would change. McGuiness is also deputy chair of City
UK, the lobby group for UK-wide financial services. For more on the meeting
please see this report
by Peter Norman, AEJ meetings secretary and former economics editor of the
Financial Times, and this audio
record of the meeting.
Media freedom and the rule of law
Media freedom and the rule of law are inextricably
linked and both are necessary to enable people to assert their rights and
hold the powerful to account, says a leading UK human rights lawyer. Can
Yeginsu, one of 15 leading international lawyers appointed last year to the
High Level Panel of Legal Experts on Media Freedom in a much-publicised bid
by the governments of the UK and Canada to counter what they termed a
“global assault on media freedom”, spoke to a meeting of AEJ UK
members and other international journalists on November 2. The panel was set
up as part of an international campaign to turn back the worsening trend of
attacks on press freedom worldwide and its core goal is to bring about a
better level of compliance by state authorities with the framework of
international legal protections for journalists that is recognised by most
governments in theory but often disregarded in practice. For more on his
presentation please see this
report from AEJ UK chairman William Horsley and this audio recording of the meeting.
And please see here for more information on the
work of the High Level Legal Panel.
Governments failing on climate crisis…
says eminent
UK climate scientist, Prof. Sir Robert Watson. Joining the AEJ UK via Zoom
from Washington on September 3, Professor Watson talked frankly and
passionately about the “crisis” of human-induced climate change -
he said governments are not reacting; young people are rightly concerned;
greenhouse gases are increasing despite the Paris Agreement; all the hottest
years on record have been in this century. And this means the threats to
human life include drier weather in arid areas threatening water and food
security, more floods in wet regions and rising sea levels threatening
coastal communities. Sir Robert was chair of the UN Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change (1997 – 2002), is emeritus professor at the Tyndall
Centre for climate research at the University of East Anglia, and is
currently leading a major international assessment of the links between
Climate Change, Biodiversity Loss, Land Degradation and Food and Water
Security, and how they will affect human well being. Please see this full report from AEJ
member and former BBC editor and manager Rick Thompson – and this audio record of the
meeting.
A view from Europe
The AEJ UK held its second virtual
meeting of the coronavirus lockdown on July 3 with Danuta Huebner MEP, a
member of Poland's centre-right Civic Platform and the European People's
Party in the European Parliament, who served previously as an EU Commissioner
and Polish Minister for Europe. Professor Huebner drew on her experiences of
high-level involvement with Polish and European politics over the past two
decades to answer a host of topical questions - the uncertain outlook for
democracy and the rule of law in her native Poland, the impact of the
Covid-19 pandemic on Europe, likely EU-UK relations post-Brexit, and the EU's
relationship with China at a time of unstable leadership in the US.
Please see
this report from former FT correspondent Peter Norman on the wide-ranging
discussion with 28 UK and Irish AEJ members who joined the call.
America in trouble
Veteran
American journalist and columnist Llewellyn King was the online guest from
Washington for the AEJ-UK’s first online Zoom meeting on June 4. The
wave of angry protests and riots that erupted across America following the
police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis are a “bellow of
rage” against the Trump administration, he said, and the U.S.
“has never been on such a precipitous slope since the Civil War.”
The honorary AEJ member and host and producer of the weekly PBS program
“White House Chronicle” was
joined by 20 AEJ online participants. For more on his analysis please read Peter Norman’s
account of the AEJ’s “Letter from America with Llewellyn
King” event and on King’s
own website.
China
and Asia
China will bounce back from the coronavirus disruption,
probably without any major long-term geopolitical impact. But, says Asia and China scholar
Jeff Kingston, the consequences for President Xi Jinping might be less clear.
Kingston - writer, columnist and Director of Asian Studies at Temple
University Tokyo – briefed an AEJ UK meeting on March 9 2020 on
China’s relationships in Asia. Please see this report on the meeting
from former FT correspondent Peter Norman and this audio recording.
UK cyber security
How is
the UK dealing with threats to cyber security and defending against them? As Brexit
looms and debate continues about potential cyber threats such as the
involvement of China’s Huawei in 5G telecommunications and Russian or
other state interference in democratic processes in the UK and elsewhere,
Nicola Hudson, Director of Policy and Communications at the National Cyber
Security Centre (NCSC), explained the role of her young agency. She told the
AEJ on February 20
2020 the NCSC, formed only 3 years ago, functions in two very different
worlds:
– as an operational division of GCHQ, the UK's signals intelligence
agency
- and at a public level seeking ways of raising awareness of fast growing
cyber threats and devising innovative ways of developing the population's
cyber security skills for the future.
For more on her presentation please see this report from
former FT correspondent Peter Norman and this audio recording.
London
central to UK future relations with EU?
Rory Stewart, former Conservative MP, cabinet minister, and former
contender for Conservative party leader, says London could have a "very,
very central" part to play in Britain's future relations with the
European Union. Stewart was an independent candidate for London mayor in
elections scheduled for May 7 2020 but withdrew after they were postponed for
a year. He told an AEJ UK meeting on January 29 that London’s
connections and contributions are crucial to the success of the rest of the
UK and it could act as a bridge between Britain and the EU over the next 10
to 15 years in areas such as artificial intelligence, robotics and
nanotechnology while still learning from policies in other European cities.
For more on his argument and following discussion please see this report from former FT
correspondent Peter Norman and this
audio recording of the meeting.
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 new book Park Life has just 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. Park Life is available from many booksellers including The
Book Depository, Amazon, Waterstones, Foyles and all leading online
booksellers.
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.
Long-time AEJ member – and journalist, author and politician –
Jonathan Fryer is the Liberal Democrat Brexit spokesman for London. Please
see his blog here.
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News
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, 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
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 has protested strongly
against the recent jailing of Russian opposition leader Alexei 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. 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 25th 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, 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. Last November 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.
Peace in Nagorno-Karabakh?
Six weeks of fighting
between Azerbaijan and Armenia have ended in the bitterly disputed territory
of Nagorno-Karabakh with a
peace agreement brokered by Russia. Russian peacekeepers arrived at the
end of November as thousands of Armenian refugees left and there is some
scepticism about how long peace will last.
Fighting
flared at the end of September after months of rising tension over the
disputed territory, internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan but
governed by ethnic Armenians who claim a separate state. The Association of
European Journalists joined 10 other international media organizations on the
Council of Europe Journalists’ Platform to
raise concern for the safety of journalists in the conflict. It was the
second warning issued by the AEJ. On October 2 the AEJ condemned all acts of
violence targeting journalists and other media workers in the renewed
armed conflict. The statements reinforced a call
from the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights to protect human
rights and ensure accurate and comprehensive reporting in such a volatile
conflict. The AEJ statement is available
here and coverage of the dispute is available at Hetq Online,
published by the
Armenian Association of Investigative Journalists NGO. For more please see here.
AEJ joins call for the U.S.
government to drop plan for shorter journalists visas
The AEJ has
joined 24 global media organisations to support a European Broadcasting
Union (EBU) appeal to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to not
shorten the length of visas for foreign journalists. The joint statement says
the proposed changes would put media freedom at risk and jeopardise the work
of foreign media to provide accurate, unbiased news reporting for global
audiences from the USA. U.S. Homeland Security has proposed shorter visas -
240 days, with a possible extension of a maximum of another 240 days.
Currently many foreign news organizations appoint correspondents for a number
of years (commonly 2-5 years), allowing time for individual journalists to
better understand the country and therefore better report on it to the rest
of the world.
Freedom
of expression under growing threat in Turkey
The AEJ joined 10 other
international media freedom, journalism and human rights groups to warn of a growing
crisis for freedom of expression in Turkey. The group coalition said the
situation is getting worse amid growing state capture of media, the lack of
independence of regulatory institutions, and a new social media law designed
to clamp down on the remaining spaces for free comment. The coalition
highlighted the continued jailing and prosecution of journalists as well as
ongoing concerns over the safety of journalists and judicial independence.
The warning came after a four-day mission to Turkey in early October for
hybrid online/offline meetings in Istanbul and Ankara with journalists, civil
society, members of parliament, the judiciary and other authorities to assess
the newest threats to independent journalism, which in 2020 included
detentions and criminal investigations of journalists who reported on the
country’s management of the Covid-19 pandemic. It was led by the
International Press Institute(IPI) and included representatives from ARTICLE
19, the Association of European Journalists (AEJ), the Committee to Protect
Journalists (CPJ), the European Centre for Press and Media Freedom (ECPMF),
the European Federation of Journalists (EFJ), Human Rights Watch (HRW),
Osservatorio Balcani e Caucaso Transeuropa (OBC Transeuropa), PEN
International, Reporters without Borders (RSF) and the South East Europe
Media Organisation (SEEMO). Please find the whole
statement here.
Growing dangers to media freedom
in Bulgaria
The AEJ Bulgaria is highly critical
of growing dangers to media freedom in Bulgaria in its annual media
freedom survey. It highlights dangerous trends arising from external
pressures on free and independent media from political and business forces,
national and local government, and advertisers. And it says stagnation is a
fitting description for the current state of the media environment in
Bulgaria in 2020 - a snapshot from the replies of the respondents is almost
identical to that in 2015. Nearly one out of two Bulgarian journalists
described the situation in the media industry as “poor” or
“very poor”, with a mere 3% of respondents describing it as
“excellent”. Please see the full report Journalism Without Masks,
2020 Annual Survey Of Media in Bulgaria here
on the AEJ Bulgaria website.
AEJ
journalist wins Pulitzer Prize
Bulgarian journalist Boryana Dzambazova, a member of the AEJ Bulgaria
management board, has won a 2020 Pulitzer Prize in International Reporting
for a New York Times investigation into actions of the Russian secret
services. Please see
here for more.
AEJ actions on media freedom
The AEJ has
played an active part with other media freedom organisations throughout 2020
to highlight attempts by some European states to use the covid pandemic as a
pretext to suppress independent media voices. And in a number of cases forced
governments to reverse their actions or take account of public criticism of
attempts to constrain media freedom. A report on these actions is available here
from William Horsley, AEJ media freedom representative and UK chairman.
Continuing struggles for media freedom worldwide
The struggle to
maintain and preserve media freedom continues around the world.
In Hungary the AEJ is among 16 groups which have urged the EU Competition
Commissioner Margrethe Vestager to take action in response to complaints
that the Hungarian government has violated EU state aid rules on abuse of
state advertising and aid to public broadcaster to undermine media pluralism.
Earlier it raised an alarm
against the destruction of Hungary’s independent Index news portal. It
has expressed support for Szabolcs Dull who was dismissed as editor in chief
and for all the Index journalists who resigned, accusing the government of
political interference. The sudden sacking came after allies of prime
minister Viktor Orban took a controlling interest in the ownership of the
online Index news website, Hungary’s leading source of independent news
and political comment.
In
Bulgaria the AEJ has condemned unprovoked violence against a reporter for
Radio Free Europe by security guards and delegates at a national conference
of the ruling party.
And in The Philippines, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) and
other NGOs have opened a petition calling for the Philippine government
to drop all charges and cases against Maria Ressa, the award-winning
journalist and editor of Rappler, and to end pressure on independent media in
the Philippines. Maria Ressa was awarded the UNESCO World Press Freedom Prize
for her courageous work and journalistic leadership. President Duterte has
declared that journalists are “not exempt from assassination” and
his government has sought to close down leading independent media and
imprison respected journalists, including Ressa, who with her colleague
Reynaldo Santos Jr was convicted on “cyber libel” charges.
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.
Media Freedom in the Commonwealth?
”It’s never been so bad, ” says the publisher
of Africa Today. Nigerian journalist Kayode Soyinka thus summed up the wide
consensus that emerged from a media freedom panel discussion during the
Taking Stock of the Commonwealth day-long global webinar on 24 June. The
event was organised by the Institute of Commonwealth Studies as a
“virtual tour of the Commonwealth and its challenges” and took
place on the exact date when the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting
(CHOGM) had been due to open in Rwanda. The biennial summit was postponed
because of the Covid-19 pandemic. For more please see
this report from AEJ UK chairman and international media freedom
representative William Horsley.
Attacks on media risk a New Normal
The 2020
annual media freedom report warns that attacks on press freedom in Europe
risk creating a new normal as the Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated a growing
pattern of intimidation to silence journalists on the continent. These
attacks underscore the report’s
urgent wake-up call for Council of Europe member states to act quickly
and resolutely to end the assault against press freedom, so that journalists
and other media actors can report without fear. The 14 international media
freedom groups and journalists’ organisations –the AEJ, Article 19,
Committee to Protect Journalists, EBU, EFJ/IFJ, European Centre for Press and
Media Freedom, Free Press Unlimited, Index on Censorship, INSI, IPI, PEN
International, Reporters Without Borders, Rory Peck Trust – warn
of a growing pattern of intimidation to silence journalists on the continent
through attacks, intimidation, media ‘capture’ and sweeping
emergency laws that are open to abuse and severely restrict the media’s
ability to hold state power to account.
See here
for more news
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