Censorship by Bullet

Murder of a journalist has a chilling effect

Much fact-finding has been done on these issues and there can be no doubt that each targeted murder of a journalist has a real “chilling effect” on other journalists and often on whole societies. When world-famous journalists are killed – such as Anna Politkovskaya in Russia (2006), Hrant Dink in Turkey (2007), Lasantha Wickrematunge in Sri Lanka (2009) and Marie Colvin in Syria (2012) – a clear warning is delivered to all concerned. That chilling effect is multiplied greatly when those responsible for the killing of journalists – often comprising both hitmen and masterminds – are allowed to go unpunished. Impunity kills by encouraging more killing because the risks are seen to be negligible.

Such patterns of impunity mean that victims of many forms of gross human rights abuses of justice are deprived of justice or any form of redress. That has been the harsh reality for the families of thousands of civilians killed in the civil war in Sri Lanka and in the ongoing drugs wars in Mexico. But murders in which journalists are singled out as targets are associated with especially high levels of impunity.

Striking proof is there in the figures published in UNESCO's worldwide audit∗ of judicial follow-ups (or in most case lack of follow-ups) after the journalists' killings which occurred between 2006 and 2009. UNESCO documented 244 cases of violent deaths of journalists in 36 countries during that period. Out of all those cases it was able to verify successful convictions so far only in a total of eight cases, based on reports from the states concerned. While the great majority of journalists who have died on assignment are nationals of the country concerned, the grave dangers affect local and international media alike. The picture that emerged from the London meeting was that in many regions it has effectively become impossible to report what goes on because of the risks of physical attack or arbitrary imprisonment to journalists who operate there.

“The BBC's journalists, along with other journalists around the world, face enormously increasing threats – threats to their physical safety, legal threats, impediments … Todays' meeting is about raising that subject up the international agenda, by creating pressure on governments and inter-governmental organisations to put in place the proper international frameworks to ensure that journalists are protected as fully as possible.” – Peter Horrocks, director of BBC Global News, at the London Symposium in October 2012

So a new realisation has come to be shared widely: that the breakdown in the rule of law in many of the world's hotpots now seriously impairs the ability of major media houses to fulfil their core role. Peter Horrocks said major news organisations have a responsibility to take a lead in remedying this situation. Jon Williams, the World News Editor, said it was a passionate belief of the BBC that its own audiences and other audiences around the world should have the right to receive free and impartial information.

The UN has effectively endorsed those sentiments. The media's work, it says, is a major civilising influence – an essential foundation for democracy and for the prevention of wars. Senior editors from Al Jazeera, Sky News, The Guardian and other international media spoke about what they had learned from their experiences dealing with the deaths or persecution of their reporters or support staff in dangerous parts of the world. Many voiced an active desire to play some part in concerted international efforts to end the heavy toll of casualties among journalists. That was expressed in an eight-point London Statement∗∗ signed by representatives of 46 leading media organisations, demanding action by responsible governments to end the heavy toll of journalists' deaths and impunity. The statement also encourages all media to scrutinise the actions of governments and national courts, and the workings of the UN itself. The London meeting was timed so that the agreed statement (with just a few abstentions) could be discussed on the formal agenda of a special United Nations conference about the same issues held in Vienna on November 22–23, 2012.

That “big tent” meeting marked the launch of a wide-ranging and ambitious UN Action Plan on the Safety of Journalists and Impunity, which grew out of a UK initiative and then survived a tough diplomatic battle against resistance by certain UN member states. The action plan is precisely designed to be a concerted attempt to make all governments live up to their obligations to safeguard the lives and work of journalists. But UNESCO and other concerned UN agencies say the plan will make a real difference only if the professional news media, journalists' associations and the power of civil society are fully mobilised to hold backsliding governments to account. “Be the proverbial watchdog. Ask the tough questions,” urges Guy Berger, UNESCO's Director for Freedom of Expression.

Predictably enough, some western media voices have expressed disdain for the UN plan and for the very idea that news organisations themselves should seek to make the machinery of the United Nations work for them. “Well-meaning but pompous, and probably ineffectual” was the verdict on the London safety symposium in a message sent in by the award-winning Sunday Times reporter Jon Swain. But the scepticism voiced by Jon Swain (and echoed for sure in the minds of some others) is entirely at odds with the urgent, sometimes desperate, appeals for international support and protection from editors and journalists who live in the countries where exercising your right to free expression is most likely to shorten your life: Mexico, Pakistan, Russia, Somalia, Syria.

Much of the media are open to criticism

An interesting argument could be made about the underlying reasons for the news media's relative passivity in the face of an epidemic of targeted violence against journalists. Is it down to commercial rivalry; a failure of resources, or of courage and imagination? Or else to the fear of exposing one's own journalists to reprisals; a laudable reluctance to engage in special pleading; or a purist conviction that journalists should be “above the fray”, not lobbying governments as NGOs do?

Plainly, though, some news media are giant industrial concerns in their own right, and deploy large resources to secure their corporate goals on many issues of regulation and in dealings with public and inter-governmental bodies. Actually, much of the media are now open to the criticism that they have been ‘behind the curve’. The UN now invites the media's expertise, for the common good as well as to better protect its own. True, in the past the UN has let the media down. The unanimous adoption in 2006 of UN Security Council Resolution 1738 on the safety of media workers in war zones raised high expectations but has brought few tangible results.

That landmark resolution seemed to promise firm action by the international community to punish and deter those responsible for targeting journalists in areas of conflict. Yet journalists have continued to be attacked and sometimes killed with impunity by armies in Iraq, and now in Syria and Palestine, as they were in the past elsewhere. No prosecutions or threats of punitive action have resulted from resolution 1738, despite the great efforts required by international media and friendly governments to get it passed.

But resentment will not save any journalists' lives. Major western-based press, broadcasting and online media now need to up their game significantly again, and push well-founded demands for effective safeguards for media freedom through the arenas of international policy and law, as well as through practical safety measures on the ground. So far, ironically, it has been parts of the often scorned machinery of the United Nations which have articulated the need for those safeguards and taken steps to strengthen them. Last September Austria took the lead in a diplomatic effort which led to the adoption of the first UN Resolution on the Safety of Journalists in the UN's Human Rights Council in Geneva. That text acknowledges the particular role of journalism in matters of public interest, calls on all states to align their laws and law-enforcement practices with agreed international standards, and opens the way for stronger political pressure to be applied through the Human Rights Council on states that violate accepted norms.

A Western diplomat involved said afterwards that “we think we are winning the argument”. It is rather odd, then, that our media have paid so little attention to an issue which the UN has placed near the top of its agenda. They should also pay closer attention to the brave and important work done by a host of legal and free-expression NGOs as well as the Council of Europe, the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe and others, which give first-hand support to journalists under fire, under threat or in jail.

After all, the crisis over press freedom is all too evident in our own backyard. Hungary has enacted restrictive media laws which flout the basics of press freedom and independence; the European Broadcasting Union was accused of abetting the authoritarian regime in Azerbaijan by allowing it to glory in its hosting of the 2012 Eurovision Song Contest while locking up journalists and bloggers on false charges; and criticism of President Putin's Russia remains muted even though a respected leading human rights figure there, Andrei Kovelev, has described the package of recently-adopted laws in Russia – including a treason law and the re-criminalisation of libel – as creating “a legal basis for totalitarianism”.

Have our media truly reflected the extent of the abuse of office in countries within the Council of Europe area, or even in the European Union? Does the British public – and do journalists themselves – realise that the European Court of Human Rights has issued landmark judgments on journalists' legitimate public interest defence; on striking down extra protections for high officials in defamation suits; and in safeguarding the right to protect reporters' confidential sources? Or have the British media been too busy attacking the Strasbourg court over other matters, without reflecting on its role in creating the bedrock of defences of press freedom in law, not only for Europe but for the whole world?

So, what can the UN action plan really do for us? The action plan on journalists' safety and impunity is a blueprint for more than 100 lines of action by powerful UN agencies, including the UN Development Program and the Office for Drugs and Crime, as well as the existing human rights machinery, all aimed at giving more protection to journalists. At the start there will be a special focus on some of the most troubled states – Iraq, Nepal, Pakistan, South Sudan and the Latin American region.

This plan should improve journalists' safety

Like the wide-ranging programme arising from the Millennium Development Goals, this plan will mobilise many UN agencies and bodies (at least a dozen) and closely involve the Secretary-General and the UN's coordinating machinery in efforts to improve journalists' safety. Most will require a high level of co-operation action between UN agencies, public authorities and non-governmental groups, including journalists. The plan cannot be a ready-made solution, since within UN bodies, it is states that decide. But here are some of the important results that could be achieved with “concerted efforts” by willing governments, media and others:

Never before has the climate of international law been so favourable to the cause of press freedom, even if the behaviour of states suggests too little regard to either their domestic laws or international standards. The plan also spells out why it is imperative for the international community to ensure a safe and enabling environment for journalism: because freedom of expression is a “meta-right”, one on which the enjoyment of other fundamental rights depend. When journalists are threatened or attacked, the UN plan says, “whole communities are cowed … and citizens lose the ability to take informed decisions about their lives”.

An episode concerning Brazil shows that talks at the UN need not be a sterile exercise but can yield political results. At a meeting last March in Paris to prepare for the UN action plan Brazil's representative was seen to obstruct agreement. Press freedom NGOs were incensed – journalists' murders have been rising in the country and those responsible have rarely been brought to justice. So the NGOs issued a statement deploring the government's stance, which the giant Globo TV network reported on the main evening news, and then the story went viral in Brazil. After that Brazilian ministers dropped their objections and since that time they have conspicuously supported the UN action plan.

Are partnerships between media houses and relevant UN agencies possible without compromising media independence? Important moves in that direction are under way. The World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers says the industry intends to carry out independent monitoring of the UN action plan in co-ordination with others. The International Press Institute, too, is preparing ways of ensuring that the voice of the professional media is heard more clearly in the global strategy for implementing the UN plan, which is still being actively developed. It is never too late to get involved.

How will the UK-based media respond? Currently they are being obliged by public pressure and the strictures of Lord Justice Leveson to show they can self-regulate in a way that inspires public trust. They will do themselves much credit if they also show leadership, in the best traditions of British journalism, in confronting the even greater challenge of global threats to free and inquiring journalism. That means acting as stakeholders and champions of free speech, not only as bystanders or critics, or as recorders of the actions of others.