Coronavirus
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?
Covid,
cash and contracts
There have been
more serious questions about UK government spending on combatting Covid 19. 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.
And only a few weeks before that row a senior UK 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 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.
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
|
|
Lunchtime meetings
|
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.
|
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
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.
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.
|
|
News
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 this report on 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, 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 notes growing concerns
about the health of jailed Russian Opposition leader Alexei Navalny. This 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 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
|
