From Charles Jenkins, AEJ UK Secretary
(Originally written for the Il Giornale Europeo website – https://www.ilgiornaleeuropeo.it/ – edited by Giuseppe Jacobini, AEJ Italy in December 2022, updated January 2024)
With the important exception of Julian Assange, who has been in prison in the UK since April 2019, and is awaiting a decision on extradition to the US, UK journalists working for newspapers or other media organisations have generally hitherto not faced a direct threat by the UK state to their life or freedom. However, were the extradition of Julian Assange to be granted, this would be a grave precedent for other journalists working to hold government to account in the fields of foreign and security policy, where the UK is closely involved with the US.
In addition, there are serious ongoing threats to the long established democratic norms which underpin UK democratic freedoms, including media freedom. From the point of view of free speech, a particularly worrying development is increasing restrictions on public protests in the recent Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act of 2022 and the Public Order Act of 2023. Although the government claims that the acts do not weaken the right of protest this is not the view of civil liberty organisations. Fortunately, a so called “Bill of Rights” put to Parliament in 2022 which was to replace the direct application of the European Convention on Human Rights, has been dropped although the ECHR, which was promoted in the late 1940s and early 1950s by British politicians, including Winston Churchill, and largely written by British lawyers, remains under constant attack from many Conservative MPs and sometimes from the government itself.
A more direct threat to journalists might come through the National Security Bill, which was passed by the House of Commons in November 2022. Although purportedly intended to update tackling foreign espionage, it is written in a way which, according to Index on Censorship represents a “severe threat to media freedom, free expression and the public’s right to know”. This is particularly the case given that an amendment proposed by a cross party group of MPs to introduce a “public interest defence” was not debated before the bill’s adoption.
Also of great concern regarding the wider issue of democratic norms is the Elections Bill. This requires photo identity in order to vote. The argument used is that this would prevent fraud, but identified cases of voter fraud are miniscule and have not influenced the outcome of any significant election, while very likely a million or more potential voters would find obtaining photo ID too difficult and not vote as a result, which could influence election results.
In 2019 the government suspended Parliament to avoid debate on its negotiations with the EU to take the UK out of the EU and its single market, including those on the Northern Ireland Protocol which the government itself subsequently rejected, resulting in an ongoing crisis in Northern Ireland and UK-EU relations. The Supreme Court retrospectively declared the suspension illegal, but there were no consequences for the government.
The BBC, with four national TV channels, five radio stations, and a news website, remains very important to the UK’s media scene. Its World Service, including a wide range of individual language services, can also lay a claim to be the most impartial international source of information, despite modest funding. The BBC has been under constant attack from the government and those close to the government, sometimes with hints that unless it changes to present a more favourable approach to the government, its funding will be called into question. To an extent, such criticism is reasonable. The BBC is a part of the establishment and like every other public institution needs to be held to account. Its funding which relies on a flat rate licence fee on all users of TV and internet services, imposes a financial burden on poorer households while BBC executives and presenters are paid huge salaries. Furthermore it has proved to be in some ways deeply flawed. For decades it employed the high profile presenter, Jimmy Saville, despite subsequent revelations that there was abundant evidence of serial child abuse. Until a few years ago, the BBC covered up the fact that fraudulent means were used to obtain a dramatic interview with Princess Diana in 1995.
However, the BBC has continued throughout the recent tumultuous period in British politics, which started with the Brexit referendum in 2016, to do its best to present a balanced picture of events and to allow all sides, other than those openly advocating hate and violence, to air their opinions. In so doing it has attracted criticism from left and right, from (EU) Remainers and Leavers as well as those on different sides of other debates. It is likely that, as journalists have a duty to hold authority to account, there will be more criticism from the government than the opposition. The weakened state of the Conservative government probably means that the threat to the BBC’s future as an independent broadcaster is less than it was a year or more ago. However, there is serious concern that with the funding being frozen and costs rising with general inflation, damaging cuts will be made both to local services, where the BBC plays an important role as local newspapers decline, and to foreign language services.
Most of the government’s controversial measures have been opposed by the opposition Labour Party. However, that does not mean that they would be reversed given the amount of new legislation a new government would want to introduce, and indeed the possibility that they may be convenient to a Labour government in inhibiting protest. The last Labour government after taking office in 1997 introduced liberal reforms such as the incorporation of the European Convention of Human Rights into UK law and the Freedom of Information Act, but it subsequently rowed back sharply on a range of issues. The worst attack on the BBC’s independence in recent decades happened in 2003-04 during a Labour government, when both the director general, Greg Dyke and chairman of the board of governors, Gavyn Davies were forced to step down following the Hutton Inquiry which found in favour of the government over its attacks on a BBC reporter, Andrew Gilligan, who had claimed that intelligence information on alleged weapons of mass destruction held by the regime of Saddam Husein, which were used to justify the British participation in the invasion of Iraq, had been manipulated to justify the war. This probably had a chilling effect on investigative journalism by the BBC and others, supplemented by the role of lawyers for large organisations and rich individuals, in intimidating those contemplating investigations into abuses of power.
At the time of writing (January 2024), most UK news organisations have given extensive coverage to a miscarriage of justice scandal going back 20 years of hundreds of sub-postmasters who have been prosecuted and in many cases jailed as a result of allegations supposedly justified by flawed computer software – after the software had been shown to be flawed. The issue was reported in Computer Weekly and Private Eye and in a series of reports by Nick Wallis first on local BBC starting in 2011 and ultimately in 2020 on BBC tv Panorama and a 10-part series on BBC Radio 4. However, until 2019 when the subpostmasters began to win legal actions against the Post Office, there was very little reporting of the issue in the mainstream national newspapers or broadcasting organisations despite the efforts of the postmasters, led by Alan Bates and with the help of an MP James Arbuthnot, going back to 2006.
Nevertheless, British newspapers so far remain independent of the government. Indeed a bigger question over recent decades is whether governments, both Labour and Conservative, have been independent of overbearing influence from mass circulation newspapers, controlled by non-resident billionaires, given their power to influence the electorate. Another way in which the power of wealth has a serious impact on journalism is the way in which British laws allow reporters to be sued for revelations about wealthy individuals which, for example, has held back investigations into the activities and influence of Russian oligarchs in the UK. The government is now considering making changes to the law but even if legislation were to be passed by Parliament, there are doubts as to how effective it will be.
