The online retailer has been criticised for profiting from ebooks featuring terror and violence. No one should tell us what to read, says Jo Glanville
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As Mexican voters get ready to eelect their next president1 July , all four candidates have made statements in support of free expression and the protection of journalists. In the last five years, 44 Mexican journalists have been killed, most of them in the provinces.
During a June meeting with farming groups in the state of Veracruz, one of the most deadly provincial areas for journalists, Enrique Peña Nieto, the frontrunner candidate for the former ruling party Partido Revolucionario Institucional, (PRI) offered a one minute silence in memory of the nine journalists killed in that state in the last few months. Organised crime would not “force Mexicans to stop expressing their freedom of expression in terms of ideas; this is the pillar and strenght of our democracy,” said Peña Nieto.
Manuel Lopez Obrador, candidate for the leftist Partido de Revolucion Democratica (PRD), has also said that individual, religious, political freedoms and freedom of expression would be the most important rights his government would respect if he won the elections. And Josefina Vasquez Mota, the candidate for the ruling Partido Accion Nacional also hitched her wagon on freedom of expression. “When the right to freedom of expression is gone, we lose all our other freedoms,” during International Day for Freedom of Expression. Gabriel Quadri of the smaller Nueva Alianza party also endorsed better security for journalists.
This is good news. It took several years to reform the legal infrastructure to prosecute crimes against journalists. A new law that makes the murder of a newsperson a federal crime was recently approved, but many problems remain to make it work, including establishing a new legal infrastructure and incorporating new language in the penal code.
However, for the last few months of the campaign, the elephant in the room has been the mistrust that exists among sectors of the population which feel the media manipulates the information they get, especially at election time — a mistrust that goes back to the 70 years the PRI was in power, and was believed to have fixed elections with the help of the news media. The YoSoy132 university student movement, which was launchedin May, struck a chord when it protested against television monopolies. While cable television offers a variety of options, non cable subscribers can only see two companies, Televisa and Television Azteca. This is difficult in a country where 80 percent get their news from television.
The Guardian also drove the point home, when it published a story based on leaked documents that sought to prove that Televisa had received multi-million dollar payments to promote the image of the PRI´s candidate Peña Nieto. The documents had been first mentioned in an earlier story in 2006, and their veracity was downplayed by some media in Mexico.
Amedi, civil society organization that promotes media plurality, suggests that whoever wins the 1 July presidential election should push for two more national open channels at least, and better policies to promote digital television.
In May 2011, I wrote about the epic libel battle between a south London primary school, Durand Academy, and Lambeth Council. Durand had been funding a defamation action over three emails in which Lambeth’s Chief Auditor raised concerns about the school’s management. At the time, costs in the case were already believed to have exceeded £100,000.
This week it was announced that the case had finally reached a happy conclusion. On 25 June, the day that the full libel trial was due to begin, Durand’s barrister stood up in court and announced: “The claimants feel they have achieved the purpose for which they brought these proceedings and can now draw a line under this matter.” (See statement below)
Whereas the claimants had been concerned that a briefing note sent round by Lambeth’s then Chief Auditor, Mohammed Khan, had made “a serious allegation of financial impropriety,” the defendants had made it clear that “it was never Mr Khan’s intention to make such an allegation, which they accept would have been quite untrue”. The defendants also accepted that “the claimants were upset by the contents of the briefing note, and they regret this”.
All good then. This unfortunate misunderstanding has now been resolved to everyone’s satisfaction. Except that, given the nature of English libel law, to get this far both sides will have had to spend enormous amounts of money. Interim judgements like this one don’t come cheap. In the previous libel case Durand were involved in — against the father of a former teacher at the school — their side alone incurred legal fees of over £244,000.
Given that in the latest case both Lambeth and Durand are state-funded bodies, whoever is picking up the inevitably substantial tab, the taxpayer seems destined to be the loser. It is still difficult to find a better illustration of the urgent need for libel reform than the case of Durand Academy.
McLaughlin Ors -V- Lambeth Anor – Signed SIOC
Richard Wilson is a freelance writer and blogger. He is the author of Titanic Express and Don’t Get Fooled Again. He tweets at @dontgetfooled
The Monastir appeal court has upheld a primary verdict in Tunisia’s Muhammad cartoon case.
In March, Jabeur Mejri and Ghazi Beji were sentenced to 7-and-a-half years in prison over the publishing of caricatures of the prophet Muhammad , and books criticising Islam. Mejri appealed the verdict, but Beji, who was sentenced in absentia fled to Europe.
Defence lawyer Ahmed Msalmi described today’s ruling as “severe”, and “incompatible with human rights”. “Such a severe verdict can be considered a form of torture,” Mslami told AFP.
“The defendant suffers from behaviour disorders, and there are also social conditions that need to be take into account”, he added.
The court had previously refused the defence team’s request to examine Mejri’s mental state.