01 Jul 16 | Mapping Media Freedom, mobile, News and features, Serbia, Spain, Turkey, United Kingdom
Click on the dots for more information on the incidents.
Each week, Index on Censorship’s Mapping Media Freedom project verifies threats, violations and limitations faced by the media throughout the European Union and neighbouring countries. Here are five recent reports that give us cause for concern.
June 28: Shortly after an attack that saw three suicide bombers target Istanbul airport, killing 41 people and injuring more than 200, the government imposed a gag order to Turkish media outlets. This was followed by social media users reporteing problems with access and switching to VPN services.
Gag orders are frequently used by the Turkish authorities. But this time, shortly after the attack, RTUK, Turkey’s Radio and Television Supreme Council, expanded the ban to include all media.
According to Vocativ, the office of the Turkish Prime Minister instituted the ban on any photos or videos of the explosion for national security reasons.
According to Mashable, the media ban has been an issue as Turkey has been the victim of a spate of terror attacks in the last year, including a suicide bombing in Suruc in July 2015, a double suicide bombing in Ankara in October 2015, a suicide bombing in Istanbul in January and a deadly bombing in Ankara in February.
25 June: A Guardian reporter was denied access to a golf course resort in Aberdeen owned by Donald Trump, where US presidential candidate was on the second day of a two-day UK visit.
Two Guardian journalists were denied entry to the golf club by staff who said they weren’t on the list and did not have credentials.
At a press conference on Friday at his Turnberry golf course in Ayrshire, Trump took offence when a Guardian journalist asked him why UK and Scottish senior politicians had not come to meet him, suggesting it might be because he was toxic.
He replied by saying the questioner was a “nasty guy”.
Trump has banned several newspapers and media organisations from campaign events, including Buzzfeed in 2015 and The Washington Post in June 2016.
24 June: Two days before the general elections, two police officers entered the newsroom of website Público in Madrid asking for the recording of a conversation between the Spanish interior minister and a regional anti-fraud office chief, the newspaper reported.
Público executives refused to hand over the material because the agents didn’t have a court order, according to Público.
On Tuesday 21 June, left-leaning Público website published the secret conversation between centre-right interior minister Jorge Fernández Díaz and Daniel de Alfonso, director of Catalan anti-corruption office.
The conversation took place in October 2014, when the officials discussed the investigation directed at members of the two regional political parties which had been organizing a referendum on independence. They were planning to fabricate scandals related to separatists, informed Público, calling it a “conspiracy”.
In November 2012, the local centre-right Democratic Convergence of Catalonia party and left-wing party Republican Left of Catalonia organised a non-official referendum in Catalonia, north-eastern region, where a majority of citizens voted in favour of independence from Spain.
The Spanish Constitutional Court prohibited the referendum, claiming it was not legal according to the constitution.
Center-right Partido Popular has been in power since 2011 and both interior minister Fernández Díaz and prime minister Mariano Rajoy said the case, [in the run-up to the general elections], is a “campaign maneuver” produced by their political rivals.
24 June: Turkish businessman Mehmet Cengiz threatened newspaper Cumhuriyet with death threats over the phone, Turkish Minute reported.
Cengiz whose name was mentioned during the corruption scandal in December of 2013, called the newspaper headquarters telling them “I will fight you. Don’t make this man a killer”, reported Ozgur Dusunce news website.
The threat came shortly after Cumhuriyet newspaper announced it was set to publish a series of documents leaked through the Panama Papers, which would include Mehmet Cengiz, and other well-known businessmen with ties to the ruling government of Justice and Development Party.
24 June: A local politician for the Democratic Party of Sandzak, Behri Beganovi, menaced and tried to stop Alem Rovcanin, a cameraperson for TV Novi Pazar, from filming during a session of the local parliament in Prijepolje, news agency Tanjug reported.
According to Rovcanin, Beganovic cursed at him multiple times, and then reached for his camera, telling him he should not film him.
Due to the interference of other parliament members, the camera remained untouched.
Beganovic, the founder of the party DPS, was reportedly unhappy that cameraperson Alem Rovcanin was filming him during a parliamentary session.
Regional TV Novi Pazar has condemned the incident and asked journalist associations to react.
22 Jun 16 | News and features, Turkey, Turkey Uncensored
From left, Ahmet Nesin (journalist and author), Şebnem Korur Fincancı (President of Turkey Human Rights Foundation) and Erol Önderoğlu (journalist at Bianet and RSF Turkey correspondent). (Photo: © Bianet)
I have known Erol Önderoğlu for ages. This gentle soul has been monitoring the ever-volatile state of Turkish journalism more regularly than anybody else. His memory, as the national representative of the Reporters Without Borders, has been a prime source of reference for what we ought to know about the state of media freedom and independence.
On 20 June, perhaps not so surprisingly, we all witnessed Erol being sent to pre-trial detention, taken out of the courtroom in Istanbul in handcuffs.
Charge? “Terrorist propaganda.” Why? Erol was subjected to a legal investigation together with two prominent intellectuals, author Ahmet Nesin, and Prof Şebnem Korur Fincanci – who is the chairwoman of the Turkish Human Rights Foundation – because they had joined a so-called solidarity vigil, as an “editor for a day”, at the pro-Kurdish Özgür Gündem daily, which has has been under immense pressure lately.
This vigil had assembled, since 3 May, more than 40 intellectuals, 37 of whom have now been probed for the same charges. One can now only imagine the magnitude of a crackdown underway if the courts copy-paste detention decisions to all of them, which is not that unlikely.
Journalism has, without the slightest doubt, become the most risky and endangered profession in Turkey. Journalism is essential to any democracy. It’s demise will mean the end of democracy.
Turkey is now a country — paradoxically a negotiating partner with the EU on membership — where journalism is criminalised, where its exercise equates to taking a walk on a legal, political and social minefield.
“May God bless the hands of all those who beat these so-called journalists” tweeted Sait Turgut, a top local figure of AKP in Midyat, where a bomb attack on 8 June by the PKK had claimed 5 lives and left more than 50 people wounded.
Three journalists – Hatice Kamer, Mahmut Bozarslan and Sertaç Kayar – had come to town to cover the event. Soon they had found themselves surrounded by a mob and barely survived a lynch attempt.
Most recently, Can Erzincan TV, a liberal-independent channel with tiny financial resources but a strong critical content, was told by the board of TurkSat that it will be dropped from the service due to “terrorist propaganda”. Why? Because some of the commentators, who are allowed to express their opinions, are perceived as affiliated with the Gülen Movement, which has been declared a terrorist organisation by president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
It is commonplace for AKP officials from top down demonise journalists this way. Harrassment, censorship, criminal charges and arrests are now routine.
Detention of the three top human rights figures, the event in Midyat or the case of Can Erzincan TV are only snapshots of an ongoing oppression mainly aimed at exterminating the fourth estate as we know it. According to Mapping Media Freedom, there have been over 60 verified violations of press freedom since 1 January 2016.
The lethal cycle to our profession approaches its completion.
While journalists in Turkey – be they Turkish, Kurdish or foreign – feel less and less secure, the absence of truthful, accurate, critical reporting has become a norm. Covering stories such as the ”Panama Papers” leak — which includes hundreds of Turkish business people, many of whom have ties with the AKP government — or the emerging corruption case of Reza Zarrab — an Iranian businessman who was closely connected with the top echelons of the AKP — seems unthinkable due to dense self-censorship.
Demonisation of the Kurdish Political Movement and the restrictions in the south eastern region has made it an extreme challenge to report objectively on the tragic events unfolding in the mainly Kurdish provinces which have forced, according to Amnesty International, around 500,000 to leave their homes.
Journalism in Turkey now means being compromised in the newsrooms, facing jail sentences for reportage or commentary, living under constant threat of being fired, operating under threats and harassment. A noble profession has turned into a curse.
In the case of Turkey, fewer and fewer people are left with any doubt about the concentration of power. It’s in the hands of a single person who claims supremacy before all state institutions. The state of its media is now one without any editorial independence and diversity of thought.
President Erdoğan, copying like-minded leaders such as Fujimori, Chavez, Maduro, Aliyev and, especially, Putin, did actually much better than those.
His dismay with critical journalism surfaced fully from 2010 on, when he was left unchecked at the top of his party, alienating other founding fathers like Abdullah Gül, Ali Babacan and others who did not have an issue with a diverse press.
Soon it turned into contempt, hatred, grudge and revenge.
He obviously thought that a series of election victories gave him legitimacy to launch a full-scale power grab that necessitated capturing control of the large-scale media outlets.
His multi-layered media strategy began with Gezi Park protests in 2013 and fully exposed his autocratic intentions.
While his loyal media groups helped polarise the society, Erdoğan stiffly micro-managed the media moguls with a non-AKP background — whose existence depended on lucrative public contracts — to exert constant self-censorship in their news outlets, which due to their greed they willingly did.
This pattern proved to be successful. Newsrooms abandoned all critical content. What’s more, sackings and removals of dignified journalists peaked en masse, amounting now to approximately 4,000.
By the end of 2014, Erdoğan had conquered the bulk of the critical media.
Since 2015 there has been more drama. The attacks against the remaining part of the critical media escalated in three ways: intimidation, seizure and pressure of pro-Kurdish outlets.
Doğan group, the largest in the sector, was intimidated by pro-AKP vandalism last summer and brought to its knees by legal processes on alleged “organized crime” charges involving its boss.
As a result the journalism sector has had its teeth pulled out.
Meanwhile, police raided and seized the critical and influential Koza-Ipek and Zaman media groups, within the last 8 months, terminating some of its outlets, turning some others pro-government overnight and, after appointing trustees, firing more than 1,500 journalists.
Kurdish media, at the same time, became a prime target as the conflict grew and more and more Kurdish journalists found themselves in jail.
With up to 90% of a genetically modified media directly or indirectly under the control Erdoğan and in service of his drive for more power, decent journalism is left to a couple of minor TV channels and a handful newspapers with extremely low circulations.
With 32 journalists in prison and its fall in international press freedom indexes continuing to new all-time lows, Turkey’s public has been stripped of its right to know and cut off from its right to debate.
Journalism gagged means not only an end to the country’s democratic transition, but also all bridges of communication with its allies collapsing into darkness.
A version of this article originally appeared in Süddeutsche Zeitung. It is posted here with the permission of the author.
Turkey Uncensored is an Index on Censorship project to publish a series of articles from censored Turkish writers, artists and translators.
02 Jun 16 | Mapping Media Freedom, News and features, Russia
In Russia, business interests are protected by the state. When human rights violations or environmental damage are reported, nepotism and corrupt dealings between officials and business usually plays a large role. In these cases, no matter how serious the allegations or how strong the evidence, business owners skirt trouble while journalists and bloggers face real problems.
When copper and nickel ore deposits were discovered on the banks of the Khopyor River near a nature reserve in the Voronezhskaya oblast in 2012, the Ural Mining and Metallurgic Company (UGMK) was selected to exploit the deposits. Local residents and environmentalists protested when the company began prepping the site for extraction. Opponents were convinced that the development would cause environmental damage to the reserve and the river. Despite the objections, regional authorities granted UGMK permission to proceed with the project. In summer 2013 protests turned violent with clashes between the protesters and police and security hired by the company.
Research conducted by environmental activists and journalists uncovered alleged ties between UGMK’s owners, Iskander Makhmudov and Andrey Bokarev, and Kremlin-connected businessmen including Gennadi Timchenko and Vladimir Yakunin, close friends of the Russian president Vladimir Putin. The investigators also disclosed the involvement of several European companies.
Following the disclosures, two local activists, Mikhail Bezmensky and Igor Zhitenev, who published the information were accused of attempting to solicit a bribe from the company in order to halt the protests. Both were arrested and jailed. One more blogger, who faced threats, fled Russia and received political asylum in the EU.
Local mass media controlled by the department of property relations of the Voronezh region began spreading the allegation that a group of outsiders was trying to destabilise the situation. A Volgograd MP and businessman Oleg Pakholkov, sponsored by UGMK, launched Khozyaistvo Chernozyemya, a weekly newspaper with a circulation of about 60,000.
The paper routinely devoted five or six pages to laudatory coverage of nickel mining on the Khopyor, while the public protests were presented as a dirty competitive technique, an anti-state provocation, or a personal PR campaign of the protest activists. Other articles were about the positive experience of the Ural Mining and Metallurgic Company, the benefit of the project for the regional economy and its environmental safety.
Despite the ongoing protests mounted by opponents and periodic disclosures of corruption revealed by independent investigations UGMK continues to work on extracting the ore. The local activists still hope that Russia’s economic crisis, the collapse of commodity prices and their protests will help them stop the mining.
The UGMK investigations is just one example of the potential risks that journalists and bloggers face when they start publishing about Russia’s businesses.
In fact, a considerable part of the media rights violations in Russia reported to Mapping Media Freedom are against journalists who are prevented from reporting about corporations.
Officials and Putin-connected business owners who have been named in the Panama Papers leak have so far received full protection in the Kremlin-backed media while independent journalists and bloggers who reported on the disclosures have been accused of “undermining Russian interests for Western money” and face legal charges.
Aleksei Navalnyi, an opposition leader and the author of dozens of high-profile investigations into misconduct and corruption committed by state corporations has been charged three times since 2012 with crimes that he has not committed, including defamation and fraud.
The state has almost officially recognised that Navalnyi has been persecuted for his investigations. In 2013 Vladimir Markin, a spokesperson for Russia’s investigative committee, told the pro-Kremlin newspaper Izvestia that accusations against Navalnyi would not have been raised had the blogger not “teased power”.
In the last two months, three cases of journalists being targeted by corporate interests have been reported to Mapping Media Freedom.
On 12 April, while covering truckers who were protesting against the actions of transport company Omega, its director Evgeni Rutkovski attacked journalist Anton Siliverstov. When Siliverstov asked Rutkovski to comment on the protest, Rutkovsky forced Siliverstov from the office. The journalist said he would record the incident on his phone, at which point Rutkovski snatched the journalist’s device, refused to give it back and called security.
Two days later, reporter Igor Dovidovich was assaulted by the head of Gaz-Service, a gas company he was investigating. His TV crew was also attacked by the firm’s employees.
The month ended with state oil company Rosneft filing a judicial complaint against BiznessPress for an article which, the firm said, is “false and represents baseless fantasies of journalists or their so-called sources”.
Without support from news organisations or media laws to look to for protection, bloggers are often more vulnerable than journalists. While those reporting these crimes are often defenceless, those committing them often benefit.
27 May 16 | Europe and Central Asia, Mapping Media Freedom, mobile, News and features, Spain
When Axier López, the 37-year-old reporter for the Basque-language magazine Argia, opened the mailbox at his home in Barakaldo early April, he discovered he’d become the first journalist in Spain to be punished under the Public Security Law.
He was ordered to pay €601 (£466) for photos of an arrest he published on Twitter without state permission on 7 March.
“It is a fine similar to a parking ticket,” López told Mapping Media Freedom. “Signed by a local government representative, it claims I committed a crime by putting on-duty police officers in danger.”
The photos in question were taken when López was in the city of Eibar covering the arrest of a woman who had previously refused to appear in court. In 2007 she had participated in a protest against the forced closure of a local youth organisation which the state and court linked to a Basque separatist terrorist group. The woman was accused of blocking a road.
The so-called “gag law” under which López was fined came into force on 1 June 2015. It bans coverage of on-duty police officers without prior police permission and prohibits the publication of any clue as to their identity. The Spanish centre-right government said the purpose of the law is to protect officer security.
“What is the problem if we track and inform the public about events involving police officers?” López asked. “Policemen are paid with public money, so I don’t see a problem if they appear in media content.”
“Almost every day you can see arrests of different people on TV, where police officers appear in front of the camera, but they punished only us,” he added.
Journalists in Spain have recently come under mounting legal pressures related to their work.
In April two journalists from the daily newspaper ABC, Pablo Muñoz and Cruz Morcillo, were facing two-and-a-half-year prison sentences for publishing a telephone conversation between members of the Italian mafia, who were talking about Luis Bárcenas, former treasurer of Partido Popular. After an avalanche of support for the journalists, the general attorney in Madrid dropped the charges in May.
The journalists had published their article in July 2014, a year after police investigators intercepted the phone conversation between two mafioso. The general attorney had claimed they revealed details of a secret police investigation.
“Charges, in this case, were really severe,” said Elsa González, president of the Spanish Federation of Journalist Associations (FAPE), the main journalist body in the country. “A journalist has to publish information if it’s in the public interest.”
González added that according to a poll by Madrid’s Association of Journalist (APM), last year only 23.2% of reporters with permanent contracts and 22.2% of freelancers said they never received pressure to modify information in their reports. APM said the pressure could come from multiple angles, including political and corporate powers, public institutions and advertisers.
A group of Spanish media companies has also recently been threatened with legal action after online newspapers El Confidencial and Eldiario.es, along with private TV channel La Sexta reported that Juan Luís Cebrián, president of the Prisa media group, publisher of the national newspaper El País and sports daily AS, appeared in the Panama Papers.
On 26 April Prisa issued a statement on its website stating that its president had taken legal action against the outlets for “clear defamatory intent” by linking Cebrián to the Panama Papers “in which he categorically does not appear”.
The centre-right daily newspaper El Mundo, a competitor of Prisa’s left-leaning daily El País, then reported that journalists who work for Prisa publishing house were prohibited from engaging with the three media outlets.
Nacho Cardero, director of El Confidencial, told Mapping Media Freedom that Cebrián has yet to take any formal action.
“At the moment there are no actions against any of the three media sources and furthermore, the intention to expel contributors of El Confidencial, La Sexta or Eldiario.es from his group, hasn’t occurred,” said Cardero. “However, Prisa has closed the door to Ignacio Escolar, director of Eldiario.es.”
López believes all these cases serve to spread fear among journalists. Meanwhile, his appeal against his fine has been refused. It could have been reduced to €300 (£232) if he had paid in 15 days. “However, we are not going to pay because we were doing our job,” he said.
“I don’t know where we can go in the legal process,” López added. “But it is important that the debate on this law is open and that we resist in order to prevent possible fear in other journalists.”
Mapping Media Freedom approached Cebrián for comment but received no response.
