Abstract
A truly healthy society supports free expression – through ensuring media independence, an open internet and adequate protection for journalists around the globe.
On 3 May 2013, World Press Freedom Day celebrated its 20th anniversary, having been proclaimed at the UN General Assembly in November 1993. The slogan was Safe to Speak: Securing Freedom of Expression in All Media – a timely, but also tragic, recognition of key current issues. The milestone left a bittersweet taste in the mouth, coming in the wake of 2012’s terrible toll on the lives of journalists, including citizen journalists.
As individuals, journalists are no different to anyone else when it comes to the right to life and to freedom of expression. But as people who serve society by producing public interest information, irrespective of whether the platform is online or offline, their deaths have a much wider significance. Each killing means there is one less supplier of news that the world needs for informed decision-making. Each killing also encourages other journalists to stick to easier beats and to self-censor for fear of stumbling upon ‘sensitive’ news. Even more than this damage, the public prominence of journalists means that their murder sends out a negative signal to their sources and to society at large: ‘Better button your lip than take a risk and speak out.’ Whether the issue is corruption, extortion, gender-based abuse, or another social ill, silence fastens upon a society.
On average, one journalist was killed every three days last year. In the majority of cases, the deaths were not casualties of civil/armed conflicts, but the result of premeditated targeted murders by ruthless people who sought to suppress information they did not like. Little wonder that, against this background, a participant at this year’s UNESCO World Press Freedom Day conference on 3 May in Costa Rica mused about whether risking one’s life was an integral part of the profession of journalism. Strongly countering this train of thought, however, came an observation from another delegate – one who has spent years promoting press freedom in Pakistan. ‘The only price of journalism,’ he said, ‘should be feeling tired after a long day’s work.’
The take-away lesson for everyone is: ‘journalists can be killed with impunity’
Is it possible to promote a social norm whereby it becomes taboo to kill a person who does journalism? And in cases where killings do happen, to ensure that the full force of the law is deployed to apprehend and then punish the perpetrators?
It’s an uphill challenge. Worldwide, on average only one in ten cases of murders of journalists ends in a conviction. The message this sends out is very far from being one that the rule of law will be especially enforced for crimes against freedom of expression and press freedom. Rather, the take-away lesson for everyone is: ‘journalists can be killed with impunity’.
ABOVE: Ana Maria Busquets, the widow of slain journalist Guillermo Cano, places the 2013 World Press Freedom Prize on a photograph of jailed journalist Reeyot Alemu, 3 May 2013
Credit: UNESCO
In Pakistan itself, with more than 70 journalists killed, usually with impunity, one particular case has been resolved according to a leading local NGO – that of US journalist Daniel Pearl, who was decapitated by his captors in 2002. But the same case shows that when there is political will, and not least when international concerns are at stake, a state can successfully see that justice is done. On the other side of the world, Colombia – once a place with an international reputation for murdered journalists – has also shown what can be done. An effective system has been put in place to provide armed protection for journalists receiving death threats and special energies have been dedicated to pursuing and prosecuting those who murder them.
Plan of action
It comes too late for Guillermo Cano, a celebrated Colombian editor gunned down in 1997, and in whose name UNESCO now awards the World Press Freedom Prize every 3 May. This year saw the emotional scene of his widow Ana María Busquets awarding the honour to jailed Ethiopian journalist Reeyot Alemu. Busquets presented the award to a photograph of Alemu at the ceremony in Costa Rica.
The success in Colombia, as in the case of Daniel Pearl, points the way to potential success around the world. The uphill struggle to stop journalists from being killed has made progress against the odds. Work is under way to mobilise the full weight of the UN on the issue of safety for journalists. This follows an April 2012 agreement by the heads of all UN bodies on a UN Plan of Action on the Safety of Journalists and the Issue of Impunity. The plan, with more than 120 actions to be implemented, sets out how the combined UN and other actors – governments, media, civil society, international organisations – can make a concerted push on safety. These actions range from sharing best practices (such as the Colombian case) and raising public awareness through naming streets for murdered journalists and providing digital security training for bloggers.
It’s a momentum that is beginning to bear fruit in Pakistan, Nepal and South Sudan, and is also evolving in Iraq, Honduras and Brazil. In a globalised world, everyone has a stake in the free flow of information– and therefore in the safety of those who produce journalism everywhere. Today, this includes citizen journalists and human rights activists as well as freelancers and employees of traditional media.
On 27 September 2012, the UN Human Rights Council, comprising 47 member states, adopted an unprecedented resolution, urging countries to ‘promote a safe and enabling environment for journalists to perform their work independently’ and to fight impunity by ensuring ‘impartial, speedy and effective investigations’ into acts of violence against journalists. It recognised the importance of all forms of the media for the exercise, promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, while also acknowledging the particular role of journalists on matters of public interest, including their role in raising awareness for human rights. The resolution further called upon states to promote a safe and enabling environment for journalists through (i) legislative measures; (ii) awareness-raising among the judiciary, law enforcement officers and military personnel, as well as journalists and civil society; (iii) monitoring and reporting of attacks against journalists; (iv) publicly condemning attacks and (v) dedicating necessary resources to investigate and prosecute attacks. In addition, the resolution encouraged ‘UN agencies, funds and programs, other international and regional organisations, member states and all relevant stakeholders, when applicable and in the scope of their mandates, to further cooperate in the implementation of the UN Plan of Action on the Safety of Journalists and the Issue of Impunity’.
In a globalised world, everyone has a stake in the free flow of information
The UN Plan is the culmination of a long history of trying to build a normative consensus about the importance of optimum conditions for journalists to do their jobs. An environment conducive to press freedom is top of the list, and is also a key contextual condition of safety. The relationship was well put by Namibian publisher Gwen Lister at the Costa Rica World Press Freedom Day conference when she said: ‘Press freedom cannot exist without journalists’ safety, and journalists’ safety cannot exist without press freedom.’ The observation shows the distinct, yet interlinked, nature of the two issues. Cowed journalists around the world may be safe, but at the price of freedom to work without fear. And even where journalists are fortunate to operate in conditions of media freedom, they may still find their safety at risk – something that clearly undermines the meaning of this freedom.
Windhoek Declaration
The Windhoek Declaration of 1991 has been particularly important in developing a shared international norm about press freedom and the safety of journalists. It was developed by independent African journalists at a conference in the then recently-independent republic of Namibia. At the 2013 conference, UNESCO paid tribute to the convenor of the Windhoek conference, Alain Modoux – head of freedom of expression at UNESCO at the time – and the co-chairs of the event, Namibia’s Lister and the (late) Cameroonian editor, Pius Njawe. The declaration highlighted the importance of press freedom, called for governments to play an active role in promoting media pluralism and emphasised the importance of journalistic independence. It won unanimous endorsement by all UNESCO member states.
In a nutshell, the Windhoek Declaration elaborated on the political, economic and professional foundations for press freedom. First, it highlighted the fundamental necessity for a legal regime in which the media was free from political control and repression. Second, it stressed pluralism by rejecting media monopolies, whether by government or the private sector. Third, it highlighted that journalists needed editorial independence and self-regulation in order to ensure that they were accountable only to professional standards and not to any other contaminating influence. As an acceptable international norm, the position prescribed – and proscribed – specific roles for governments for full press freedom to be in place.
The strength of this norm also lies in the fact that the three Windhoek elements are interdependent. Media freedom is a prerequisite for pluralism and independence, but it does not deliver these. Pluralism, which may well require action by the state, does not automatically produce journalistic independence – something that requires agency on the part of practitioners themselves, and which needs to be respected by the state. All three elements are clearly needed for a functioning democratic media system.
Windhoek’s emphasis on this ‘package’ of media freedom, pluralism and independence was something upon which all governments could agree. In practice, of course, not all governments – and not all journalists – live up to this tripartite dream today. But what is important is that an agreed bar was set in a major international forum, and it is this which still today can be used to assess performance in different countries. Significantly, it is a threshold that also obviously presupposes that journalists should be able to operate independently and without fear of violent repercussions.
Though the world has changed since Windhoek, its three markers of press freedom continue to resonate. Over the years, concerns about imbalances in international flows of information have diminished in the face of the growth of global pluralism, including vibrant domestic media industries in many countries of the South. More recent concerns about unequal access and linguistic marginalisation online are also diminishing as connectivity increases. Community media, however, remains one of the last hurdles in terms of ensuring a truly pluralistic media landscape, although it is also the case that independent and viable public service media also remains a major challenge in many countries. Independence continues to be contested, as is especially evident in the UK’s Leveson Inquiry, and issues of self-regulation and ethical standards continue to be hotly debated in mainstream and social media alike.
Internet universality and the multipolar world
Perhaps the biggest change since Windhoek has been the rise of internet intermediaries – such as search engines, social networks, cloud-computing services, mobile phone companies, makers of devices and apps and many more. The multipolar world today thus includes not only states that are new powers in regional media but also the power of transnational internet intermediaries. These gatekeepers have enormous capacity to protect – or to puncture – press freedom in terms of pluralism and independence. Typically, however, they are private entities, accounting to shareholders rather than citizens. There are concerns that they, rather than elected governments, can make decisions about what, where and how information may flow or not. There are equal concerns about governments, whether democratic or not, informally delegating censorship to these entities, without getting their own hands dirty.
ABOVE: Pius Njawe (r) and Argentina’s Clarin director Ernestina de Noble, 3 May 1996. The Cameroonian editor and colleagues Alain Modoux and Gwen Lister were honoured at the 2013 World Press Freedom Day event in Costa Rica for their part in the Windhoek Declaration, which helped implement international standards on press freedom
Credit: Mousse Mousse/Reuters
To understand how press freedom and safety relate to these internet intermediaries, it is helpful to hark back to the right to freedom of expression, which underpins the right to press freedom. Free speech is internationally agreed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Of course, like the Windhoek Declaration, it is also not always respected, but it is established as the basic norm that should apply across the entire world – and as much to old as to more recently emerging media powers. As is often stressed by UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression Frank La Rue, as a norm, the right to free speech means that any limitations should be the rare exception rather than the rule. And, to be legitimate in terms of international standards, such limitations themselves have to meet strict conditions – such as being in law (rather than being arbitrary), being necessary and hence proportionate, and being for purposes compatible with democracy (such as the protection of the rights of others like privacy, reputation, or safety).
Today, this limitations benchmark continues to serve well for evaluating governmental (and intergovernmental) laws and actions that serve to curtail freedom of expression. But it is also increasingly relevant as a kind of informal jurisprudence to be considered for self-regulatory policies and practices of internet intermediaries. Thus, in deciding whether to give over information that could compromise the safety of journalists, or whether to block or filter online content, intermediaries could do well to refer to the international benchmark for protecting free expression against illegitimate incursions or disproportionate responses.
As the internet moves more and more to centre-stage of all communications (and indeed to commerce, education, manufacturing, entertainment, government, etc), so there is increasing contestation over norms and standards for this dynamic facility. An emerging and correct mantra is that human rights offline should apply equally online. Yet this is just one, albeit vital, pillar of the internet. The entity as a whole needs to be understood in its totality if comprehensive norms are to be established.
Current perceptions about the internet are akin to the parable of blind men touching and describing different dimensions of an elephant. In order to conceptualise the key elements of the whole, UNESCO is now canvassing the concept of ‘internet universality’. This notion encapsulates the rights-based dimension of the internet, because universality is intrinsically predicated on respect for universal human rights. Yet the concept also includes the issues of increasing access to the internet – across hurdles of cost, region, class, gender, language and disability. Such norms are necessary to make a reality of the rights-based considerations. A third dimension of internet universality is ‘openness’, which designates the fundamental feature of the internet as regards its affordance of technological innovation and inter-operability, ease of entry into the marketplace, and availability of public goods – such as Wikipedia, open education resources, and free and open source software. Finally, internet universality recognises the widespread range of participants in the development, use and governance of the facility – something that is known as ‘multi-stakeholderism’. It means that no single group can or should control, let alone seek to monopolise, the internet. In total, then, one is talking about a ‘package’ of four complementary and mutually-reinforcing norms which set the stage for the ongoing success of the internet.
As an umbrella concept, internet universality points holistically to the existence, and interdependence, of these four norm-based pillars. It highlights the combination of norms about being rights-based, accessible, open and multistakeholder oriented. If these four elements are seen as describing the legs of the proverbial elephant, it is clear that damage to any of these will weaken the balance and momentum of the creature.
It is also possible to elaborate on the metaphor and see the extension of the rights-based ‘leg’ of the elephant in the way this interconnects with the beast’s ears, eyes and trunk. Internet universality, in short, can help us visualise the importance of freedom of expression, as we collectively lumber into the online and multipolar future.
It is still too early to tell whether such an overarching concept of internet universality will become an international norm. For now, however, it sensitises us to the fact that there are also those who seek to capture elephants for circuses, and there are those whose interests lie in hunting and shooting elephants. On the other hand, the safety of life and the freedom to trumpet, particularly for those doing journalism, are clear preconditions if humanity is to continue to forage and to flourish in the emerging knowledge society.