18 Oct 2017 | News and features
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The frazzled but happy mum, single-handedly putting dinner on the table for her boisterous family, might be an advertising cliché but it’s one we’ll no longer see on our screens. Following lobbying by feminist campaigners, the Advertising Standards Association (ASA) now prohibits gender stereotypes in adverts.
According to the ASA’s chief executive, images of women doing the cleaning or men making a mess of household chores, “reinforce outdated and stereotypical views” and “play their part in driving unfair outcomes for people”. The ban on sexist stereotypes followed the 2015 protests over Protein World’s “beach body ready” adverts and London Mayor Sadiq Khan’s subsequent promise to rid the Tube of adverts presenting “a damaging attitude towards body image”.
Feminism today appears to be more concerned with images than reality. Worse, it risks portraying women as dumb enough to confuse adverts with instructions and so fragile they wilt at the sight of a skinny model. But instead of standing up to these patronising bans and insisting women can cope with adverts, many feminists argue for yet more censorship.
Khan subsequently came under fire for not taking down a different advert from the same company featuring Khloe Kardashian. Transport for London now bans all adverts that don’t promote “body positivity” although how this is defined is not clear. Most recently Heist, a company selling tights through an image of a fit, healthy and — yes — attractive woman dancer, was ordered to cover up the woman’s naked back.
To be a feminist today is, it seems, to support censorship rather than free expression. In the name of feminism university students have banned speakers, advertisements, posters, newspapers and greetings cards as well as, most famously, Robin Thicke’s hit song Blurred Lines from campuses across the UK. The Victorian idea that men will become rapacious at the sight of bare female flesh has been updated with an assumption that girls will develop anorexia if the flesh on display is too skinny. This insults men and patronises women.
There has always been an uncomfortable relationship between feminism and free expression. Early campaigners fought for women’s rights to education, to work and to vote but many had their roots in the temperance movement and, at times, appeared more concerned with civilising men than liberating women. The sexual liberation of the 1960s and 1970s sat alongside attempts by radical feminists and conservatives alike to ban pornography. Every step of the way, the demand from some women for greater freedom has been met by calls from within feminism for free speech and free expression to be restricted. Today, a censorious strand of feminism is on the ascendancy as feminism increasingly becomes blurred with identity politics.
The notion that words and images inflict not physical but psychic harm on women assumes women are innately vulnerable and have a fragile sense of themselves; it assumes that a woman is not a robust individual so much as an ‘identity’ primarily constructed — and therefore potentially dismantled — through language. Language and images become pinpointed as the source of women’s oppression.
But this censorious feminism ultimately backfires. Women who insist on trigger warnings for literature classes and swoon at the sight of a sexist advert find it difficult to present themselves as strong and powerful at the same time. Ironically, it is often women, even women who define as feminists, who find themselves the target of disinvitation campaigns or have their talks shouted down. Over the past 12 months, notable feminists such as Germaine Greer, Linda Bellos and Julie Bindel have all been no-platformed from UK universities.
Today’s censorious feminism encourages women to see themselves as vulnerable. It promotes a self-infantilisation that sets the clock back on equality. We need a liberation movement that promotes free speech, not censorship.
Joanna Williams is speaking at the Battle of Ideas to launch her new book: Women vs Feminism: Why we all need liberating from the gender wars. [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”Battle of Ideas 2017″ use_theme_fonts=”yes” link=”url:https%3A%2F%2Fwww.battleofideas.org.uk%2F|||”][vc_separator color=”black”][vc_column_text]A weekend of thought-provoking public debate taking place on 28 and 29 October at the Barbican Centre. Join the main debates or satellite events.[/vc_column_text][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/3″][vc_column_text]Political activism and protest today
Recent years have seen something of a revitalisation of political protests and marches, but just what is protest historically and today?
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/3″][vc_column_text]Women vs feminism: Do we all need liberating from the gender wars?
In many ways, it seems there has never been a better time to be a woman. But many women consider themselves disadvantaged and vulnerable.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/3″][vc_column_text]Censorship and identity: Free speech for you but not for me?
Is identity politics the new tool of censorship and, if so, how should we respond?[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][/vc_column][/vc_row]
18 Oct 2017 | Campaigns -- Featured, Malta, media freedom featured, Statements
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Daphne Caruana Galizia
Sixteen press freedom groups condemn the killing of investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia and demand an immediate and independent investigation into her death.
“The murder of a prominent investigative journalist in broad daylight in an EU Member State underscores the seriousness of this crime. Daphne Caruana Galizia’s work as a journalist to hold power to account and shine a light on corruption is vital to maintaining our democratic institutions. Her killing is a loss for her country and for Europe”, Hannah Machlin, project manager for Index on Censorship’s data platform Mapping Media Freedom, said.
Daphne Caruana Galizia was killed when the car she was driving exploded in Bidnija around 15.00 on 16 October in what is thought to have been a targeted attack..
“The barbaric murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia is an attack on journalism itself. This crime is meant to intimidate every investigative journalist,” Dr Lutz Kinkel, Managing Director of the European Centre for Press and Media Freedom, said.
“Because Prime Minister Joseph Muscat and parts of Malta’s political elite were targets of Galizia’s disclosures, we strongly recommend an independent investigation of this case. The killers have to be found and put on trial.”
The blast left her vehicle in several pieces and threw debris into a nearby field. Half an hour before the powerful explosion, the journalist posted a comment about a libel claim the prime minister’s chief of staff had brought against a former opposition leader over comments the latter made about corruption.
Galizia filed a police report 16 days ago saying she was being threatened.
Galizia had conducted a series of high profile corruption investigations and has been subject to dozens of libel suits and harassment. Because of her research, in February, assets were frozen following a request filed by Economic Minister Chris Cardona and his EU presidency policy officer Joseph Gerada.
On 24 August opposition leader Adrian Delia filed a lawsuit against her over stories linking him to offshore accounts totalling to £1 million earned from alleged prostitution in London flats. On 11 March Silvio Debono, owner of the real estate investment company DB Group, filed 19 libel cases against her after Caruana Galizia published a number of articles about his deals with the Maltese government to take over a large tract of high value public land.
Galizia also conducted an investigation linking the Prime Minister Joseph Muscat and his wife Michelle to secret offshore bank accounts to allegedly hide payments from Azerbaijan’s ruling family, which were unveiled in the Panama Papers. She worked on this investigation with her son Matthew Caruana Galizia, a journalist for the Pulitzer prize winning International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, who has had his posts on allegations of wrongdoing by Prime Minister Joseph Muscat and his associates censored on Facebook.
On 17 October 2017, her family filed an urgent application for the Duty Magistrate Consuelo Scerri Herrera to abstain from investigating Caruana Galizia’s murder because of the court’s “flagrant conflict of interest”. In 2011, the magistrate initiated court proceedings against the journalist over comments she had made about Magistrate Herrera.
Seven reports of violations of press freedom were verified in Malta in 2017, according to Index on Censorship’s Mapping Media Freedom project. Five of those are linked to Caruana Galizia and her family.
The murder has brought widespread condemnation from the international community including statements from Council of Europe Secretary General Thorbjørn Jaglan and OSCE’s Media Freedom Representative Harlem Désir.
We, the undersigned press freedom organisations call for:
— An independent and transparent investigation into the killing of Daphne Caruana Galizia
— Protection for her family members and for other Maltese journalists who have been under threat
— Measures to protect the environment for independent and critical journalism to ensure that reporters can work freely
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Article 19
The Association of European Journalists (AEJ)
The Center for Investigative Reporting
Committee to Protect Journalists
The European Centre for Press and Media Freedom
The European Federation of Journalists (EFJ)
Freedom of the Press Foundation
Index on Censorship
International News Safety Institute (INSI)
International Federation of Journalists (IFJ)
International Press Institute (IPI)
Osservatorio Balcani e Caucaso Transeuropa (OBCT)
Ossigeno per I’nformazione
Platform of Independent Journalism (P24)
Reporters Sans Frontieres (RSF)
South East Europe Media Organisation (SEEMO) [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_basic_grid post_type=”post” max_items=”12″ style=”load-more” items_per_page=”4″ element_width=”6″ grid_id=”vc_gid:1508321261018-6a10a188-6c0b-6″ taxonomies=”8996″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
17 Oct 2017 | Europe and Central Asia, Mapping Media Freedom, Media Freedom, media freedom featured, News and features, Russia
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Alexei Navalny arrested in Moscow during protests on 26 March 2017. Credit: Evgeny Feldman
At least nine media workers were detained across Russia on 8 October during protests organised by Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny.
Photojournalist David Frenkel was detained in St. Petersburg, while eight media workers – six journalists and two bloggers – were detained in Moscow.
“The arrest of journalists covering these protests is unacceptable and raises concerns that journalists will think twice about covering such demonstrations in future,” Hannah Machlin, project manager for Mapping Media Freedom, said. “The Russian government must cease detaining journalists, a clear breach of media freedom and the right of Russian citizens to receive information of public interest.”
In all, the demonstrations coinciding with president Vladimir Putin’s birthday resulted in more than 250 arrests. According to independent TV channel Dozhd, one of their reporters, Sonya Groisman was detained along with Life journalist Roman Vdovichenko and two reporters from Daily Storm, Rostislav Bogushevsky and Ilya Gorshkov.
Despite carrying their press cards, they were detained near Kitay Gorod metro station in the city centre. While others were taken to a police department, the reporters for Dozhd and Life were quickly released. Popular bloggers Georgiy Malets and Pavel Ryzhevsky, who were broadcasting live via Periscope during the protests, and a reporter for Open Russia were also detained in Moscow. [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_basic_grid post_type=”post” max_items=”4″ element_width=”6″ grid_id=”vc_gid:1508246490261-0eb7753e-faac-7″ taxonomies=”15″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
16 Oct 2017 | Campaigns -- Featured, Digital Freedom, Digital Freedom Statements, Statements
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Dear President Juncker,
Dear President Tajani,
Dear President Tusk,
Dear Prime Minister Ratas,
Dear Prime Minister Borissov,
Dear Ministers,
Dear MEP Voss, MEP Boni
The undersigned stakeholders represent fundamental rights organisations.
Fundamental rights, justice and the rule of law are intrinsically linked and constitute core values on which the EU is founded. Any attempt to disregard these values undermines the mutual trust between member states required for the EU to function. Any such attempt would also undermine the commitments made by the European Union and national governments to their citizens.
Article 13 of the proposal on Copyright in the Digital Single Market include obligations on internet companies that would be impossible to respect without the imposition of excessive restrictions on citizens’ fundamental rights.
Article 13 introduces new obligations on internet service providers that share and store user-generated content, such as video or photo-sharing platforms or even creative writing websites, including obligations to filter uploads to their services. Article 13 appears to provoke such legal uncertainty that online services will have no other option than to monitor, filter and block EU citizens’ communications if they are to have any chance of staying in business.
Article 13 contradicts existing rules and the case law of the Court of Justice. The Directive of Electronic Commerce (2000/31/EC) regulates the liability for those internet companies that host content on behalf of their users. According to the existing rules, there is an obligation to remove any content that breaches copyright rules, once this has been notified to the provider.
Article 13 would force these companies to actively monitor their users‘ content, which contradicts the ‘no general obligation to monitor’ rules in the Electronic Commerce Directive. The requirement to install a system for filtering electronic communications has twice been rejected by the Court of Justice, in the cases Scarlet Extended (C 70/10) and Netlog/Sabam (C 360/10). Therefore, a legislative provision that requires internet companies to install a filtering system would almost certainly be rejected by the Court of Justice because it would contravene the requirement that a fair balance be struck between the right to intellectual property on the one hand, and the freedom to conduct business and the right to freedom of expression, such as to receive or impart information, on the other.
In particular, the requirement to filter content in this way would violate the freedom of expression set out in Article 11 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights. If internet companies are required to apply filtering mechanisms in order to avoid possible liability, they will. This will lead to excessive filtering and deletion of content and limit the freedom to impart information on the one hand, and the freedom to receive information on the other.
If EU legislation conflicts with the Charter of Fundamental Rights, national constitutional courts are likely to be tempted to disapply it and we can expect such a rule to be annulled by the Court of Justice. This is what happened with the Data Retention Directive (2006/24/EC), when EU legislators ignored compatibility problems with the Charter of Fundamental Rights. In 2014, the Court of Justice declared the Data Retention Directive invalid because it violated the Charter.
Taking into consideration these arguments, we ask the relevant policy-makers to delete Article 13.
Civil Liberties Union for Europe (Liberties)
European Digital Rights (EDRi)
Access Info
ActiveWatch
Article 19
Associação D3 – Defesa dos Direitos Digitais
Associação Nacional para o Software Livre (ANSOL)
Association for Progressive Communications (APC)
Association for Technology and Internet (ApTI)
Association of the Defence of Human Rights in Romania (APADOR)
Associazione Antigone
Bangladesh NGOs Network for Radio and Communication (BNNRC)
Bits of Freedom (BoF)
BlueLink Foundation
Bulgarian Helsinki Committee
Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT)
Centre for Peace Studies
Centrum Cyfrowe
Coalizione Italiana Libertà e Diritti Civili (CILD)
Code for Croatia
COMMUNIA
Culture Action Europe
Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)
epicenter.works
Estonian Human Rights Centre
Freedom of the Press Foundation
Frënn vun der Ënn
Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights
Hermes Center for Transparency and Digital Human Rights
Human Rights Monitoring Institute
Human Rights Watch
Human Rights Without Frontiers
Hungarian Civil Liberties Union
Index on Censorship
International Partnership for Human Rights (IPHR)
International Service for Human Rights (ISHR)
Internautas
JUMEN
Justice & Peace
La Quadrature du Net
Media Development Centre
Miklos Haraszti (Former OSCE Media Representative)
Modern Poland Foundation
Netherlands Helsinki Committee
One World Platform
Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI)
Open Rights Group (ORG)
OpenMedia
Panoptykon
Plataforma en Defensa de la Libertad de Información (PDLI)
Reporters without Borders (RSF)
Rights International Spain
South East Europe Media Organisation (SEEMO)
South East European Network for Professionalization of Media (SEENPM)
Statewatch
The Right to Know Coalition of Nova Scotia (RTKNS)
Xnet
CC: Permanent and Deputy Permanent Representatives of the Members States to the EU
CC: Chairs of the JURI and LIBE Committees in the European Parliament
CC: Shadow Rapporteurs and MEPs in the JURI and LIBE Committees in the European Parliament
CC: Secretariats of the JURI and LIBE Committees in the European Parliament
CC: Secretariat of the Council Working Party on Intellectual Property (Copyright)
CC: Secretariat of the Council Working on Competition
CC: Secretariat of the Council Research Working Party[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_basic_grid post_type=”post” max_items=”12″ style=”load-more” items_per_page=”4″ element_width=”6″ grid_id=”vc_gid:1508140671158-363c6122-72fc-4″ taxonomies=”16927″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
