21 Jul 23 | News and features, Opinion, Ruth's blog, Spain
Threats to freedom of speech can come from a variety of places. Sometimes it is tyrants seeking to crush dissent. But it can also come from well-meaning attempts to improve society, that come with unintended consequences. The European Union is currently discussing ways of regulating online political advertising and is in danger of creating mechanisms which will have a chilling effect on freedom of speech.
So as Spain assumes the rotating presidency of the EU, now is the time to take stock, reflect on debates so far and recommit the European Union as an ally of freedom of expression. I’ve written to the Prime Minister of Spain urging a rethink.
Dear Senor Sanchez,
With Spain having assumed the Presidency of the Council of the European Union, it is an opportune moment for the European Union to reflect on the draft Political Advertising regulations.
Index on Censorship has raised a series of concerns about the impact that the proposals will have on free speech and the power that it places in the hands of tech companies to arbitrate on what is and what isn’t legitimate free expression.
We know that countering disinformation and bringing transparency to political processes is good for democracy. We support that activity around the world where dissidents are using their voice to stand up against totalitarian regimes.
Unfortunately, the draft proposals which are currently being considered in trialogue have the potential to have a chilling effect on free speech across the European Union.
We have welcomed the recognition by the European Union that any new rules governing political advertising in the digital sphere should only apply to content promoted through paid-for political advertising services.
The original “catch-all” proposals would have wrongly sought to impose restrictions on journalists, individual citizens expressing their own point of view and/or civil society campaigns seeking to promote a cause or policy.
It would have seen unacceptable interference into free speech and free expression with the work of journalists, reporting on elections or referendums, subject to state-determined censorship administered by algorithms within big tech corporations.
Imagine if, in your own upcoming general election, a citizen wishing to express how they intend to vote via their own social media had to be regulated? It would reduce the citizen’s right to speak their mind.
However, while some advancement has been made on the scope of the proposals, we still have serious concerns about the processes for flagging content, how that should be regulated and how the proposals will safeguard against bad faith actors.
Platforms are risk adverse and when faced with new rules requiring them to consider concerns raised about content or face fines themselves, bad faith actors will overwhelm those systems and subsequently content will be removed while it is assessed.
Misuse and these unintended consequences will be the tools of censorship for those seeking to silence dissent and close down campaigns and campaigners they disagree with.
As you assess your priorities for the Spanish Presidency of the Council of the European Union, I would urge you to be an ally for freedom of expression.
Yours sincerely
Ruth Anderson
23 Jun 23 | News and features, Opinion, Ruth's blog
The cornerstone of any functioning democracy is the ability to speak freely without fear or favour and to be confident that your right to say it is inalienable.
Index on Censorship has spent years working with dissidents in repressive countries where speaking out can lead to anything from banishment from your home to state-sponsored abduction and execution. Our work started with materials smuggled out of the USSR – published and translated – and smuggled back into the Soviet bloc so that different opinions and divergent points of view could have a platform on which they could be heard.
Today, we do the same in Hong Kong, Russia, Belarus, Iran and Afghanistan where we support the rights of citizens to use their freedom of speech and freedom of expression to challenge those who seek to crush dissent and disagreement.
The principle of free speech is one worth fighting for and defending whenever it comes under attack.
This principle is even greater when engaging in lawful and legitimate democratic activities whether that be campaigning on a single issue or seeking voter support in elections.
In recent years, the way we engage with voters has changed – dramatically. Long gone are the days when town hall meetings, articulate speakers and well-designed printed materials were the best mechanisms for getting your message out.
Now a huge amount of the activity is digital, undertaken from a computer screen with complex and sophisticated targeting of bespoke policy offers to the exact voters needed to build a winning coalition. The advancement of technology has greatly outpaced existing political regulations and opened new opportunities for bad faith actors and unfriendly foreign governments to interfere in domestic elections.
Rightly, governments around the world are looking at how they create a level playing field against the new platforms available and secure the integrity of their election processes.
However, any new regulation has the possibility of impinging on free speech and free expression, usually as an unintended consequence of a well-intentioned proposal.
And this is where there exist dangers in the proposals by the European Union to regulate political advertising.
The proposals for regulations on the transparency and targeting of political advertising are now in the critical trialogue phase, with the European Commission, Council and Parliament thrashing out compromises to reach a series of new rules they all broadly agree on.
The problems arise from the broad scope of what is being proposed and mechanisms that will be built into the regulations to enforce it. Both offer huge challenges to freedom of speech and freedom of expression and require considered thought by lawmakers in the EU.
The original scope drew little distinction between political advertising and political speech. Some changes along the legislative pathway have constrained, slightly, the scope, but Article 2 still defines political advertisement as:
“the preparation, placement, promotion, publication or dissemination, by any means, of a message: (a)by, for or on behalf of a political actor, unless it is of a purely private or a purely commercial nature; or (b)which is liable to influence the outcome of an election or referendum, a legislative or regulatory process or voting behaviour.”
Such a wide-ranging scope would mean that any attempt to promote this article – an opinion piece by a campaign group on a subject of regulation – would fall into the scope of the regulations and, ironically, a free speech organisation could find themselves either censored or denied our right to express our views.
Of course, every campaign attracts media attention and there has been little commentary or clarification as to how these regulations would apply. Does a journalist discussing the latest policy announcement by an opposition political party now count as ‘disseminating a message by a political actor’? Does live coverage of a climate protest or a campaign stunt by pro-life groups constitute ‘promotion of a political actor which is liable to influence the outcome of an election or referendum’?
Do we really want to be concerned that our news outlets are resorting to self-censorship through fear of state-mandated regulation? I am certain that no EU member state would wish for that but the unintended consequences of attempts to regulate free speech could do just that.
But Article 2 is not the only place where freedom of speech is undermined by these proposals.
The enforcement of these rules will, in part, be down to individuals ‘flagging’ content that they believe is in breach of the rules. Big tech platforms will then have to ‘examine and address’ the notifications they receive.
While having mechanisms to allow for content to be considered – again new rules are sensible – these proposals make big tech platforms the arbiter of what is and what isn’t acceptable political speech. It places a huge amount of power to regulate our freedom of speech in the hands of very large online platforms with little clarity or transparency of how they will consider the flags they receive.
During regulated periods ahead of elections, those platforms will have to process those flags within 48 hours – with failure to consider the flags or enforce the rules opening them to potential liability and penalty.
The inevitable outcome of this is that during elections, big tech platforms will act overly cautiously, and flagged materials will be removed to prevent the platform from being exposed. And once that happens, the floodgates will open for retaliatory ‘flagging’ between rival positions.
Bad-faith actors will happily target politicians and those whose political positions they oppose with vexatious and numerous flags in order to silence them. You can easily foresee a situation where political content from smaller groups are mass-flagged and their views and opinions removed from the digital sphere while they are examined and considered.
The protection of freedom of speech is a core tenet of our political systems just as much as ensuring transparency and accountability in political activity. One need not be at the expense of the other.
The Commission, Council and Parliament can find a solution that protects the founding principles of the Union – fair elections and freedom of speech.
03 Mar 23 | Opinion, Ruth's blog
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President of the French Republic Emmanuel Macron at the European Parliament in 2022. Photo: France Diplomatie
Threats to free speech and freedom of expression can come from a range of different places. Most often it is the despotic tyrants who use fear and violence to crush dissent but sometimes, it comes from the unintended consequences of those trying to control something new.
With advancements in AI, online advertising and digital news outlets, those with both the power and responsibility to regulate the internet are grappling with complex new challenges at a time when more and more people want to protect their online rights.
We’ve seen this happen in the UK as the Online Safety Bill slowly grinds through Westminster and lawmakers try to find new ways of protecting both users and free speech.
But it’s not just the UK which is struggling to find that balance: there is another piece of proposed regulation in Europe that is rapidly becoming a potential threat to freedom of speech and freedom of expression.
Since 2016, post the Brexit referendum and the election of Donald Trump, there has been much discussion about proposals to regulate political advertising online. Seven years later, the European Union is finally taking its first steps into this tangled web and trying to come up with rules which will seek to regulate exactly how political advertising can work inside the union.
As it is currently drafted, Europe’s political ads regulation could have a huge chilling effect both for Europeans and for those who rely on the EU’s protection of expression. We would all agree that scrutiny of, and transparency in, political campaigning is a cornerstone of a thriving and functioning democracy. To be able to hold political parties and their leaders to account for what they say and do is integral to democratic societies.
Paid-for political advertising is nothing new. It has been a part of traditional campaigning across Europe for years. From newspapers to billboards, political actors have always paid to get their message across to the electorate.
But the EU is proposing to go much further than regulate just paid political online advertising, their draft regulation could include any content that could be deemed to advance a political view.
This sweeping definition would include unpaid content, created by citizens or grassroots campaigners, regardless of whether someone has paid for the content to be placed.
Online content including YouTube videos and tweets from members of the public could suddenly become subject to strict rules on what they can and cannot say, with legal consequences for platforms if content deemed to be political is not removed within a tight 48-hour window.
Imagine the silencing of online public commentary during the French Presidential debates or the Irish Dail elections if platforms are suddenly required to regulate every comment offered by every pundit, every journalist or every citizen. Such a broad definition would likely lead to the zealous over-removal of any content deemed political for fear of penalty, opening the door for manipulation by tyrants, bad-faith actors and political opponents looking to limit freedom of speech online.
Even analysis about a political party’s electoral fortunes might be caught in the net and that is before we even know what the Commission plans for citizen journalism or those who run third-party campaigns against extremists.
What is more, citizens and campaigners in countries where freedom of speech is not afforded the same protections as in the EU often rely on European media outlets for access to real news. If news commentary and debate in the run-up to elections is undermined then this poses a direct threat to Europe’s role as a human rights leader. Suddenly, voices of democracy based in Europe would be silent and all as a consequence of the EU trying to protect the integrity of their own democracy.
Allowing people to express their political views is a fundamental component of freedom of expression. Not only that, restricting online content in this way goes much further than any offline restriction on freedom of speech. Much like the Digital Services Act that we campaigned on in 2021, the unintended consequences of trying to regulate our digital world appears to affect our real-world freedoms.
Index’s position then, as it is now, is clear: what is legal to say offline should be the benchmark for what is legal to say online. Content created online to promote a legitimate political ideology, viewpoint or authorised candidacy should be afforded the same freedom of speech protection that it would enjoy offline.
We should all be more cautious about believing what we read on the internet – just as we should approach our daily newspaper reports with a healthy dose of scepticism. But, if politicians and political actors have a message they wish to promote, they should be free to do so, however much we might disagree with their view. If campaigners want to support or oppose what they see and hear online, we should welcome the discourse and accept that in a vibrant democratic society there will be differences.
Ultimately, the people who will properly regulate political advertising are the voters themselves. If they think they are being conned or hoodwinked, they will show that at the ballot box.
By all means, let’s ensure that the rules governing online adverts are the same as the rules governing offline campaigning. Let’s bring in the transparency and the openness that ensures a level playing field and a fair fight for politics offline but let’s not imperil political advertising or push out the marginal voices who so often rely on digital ads to be heard.
The EU must reconsider their online political ads regulation and use it as a chance to embed transparency, not eliminate debate.
At the end of the day, voters will have the final word but before then, they have a right to hear what is being said.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][three_column_post title=”You may also wish to read” category_id=”41669″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
16 Sep 22 | Europe and Central Asia, News and features
Photo: flyvancity
The undersigned journalists’, media freedom, and human rights organisations welcome the European Commission’s initiative to strengthen the free and pluralistic media system and the commitment to protect journalists and editorial independence within the European Union. These values directly link to fundamental rights, such as freedom of expression, the right to access to information, the formation of opinion, and making informed choices in elections, as enshrined in the Charter of Fundamental Rights.
Matters relating to the media have traditionally been the competence of member states, however such is the threat posed to media freedom that an EU-wide action has become necessary to protect Europe’s democratic values.
Therefore we support the European Media Freedom Act (EMFA), which breaks significant new ground in our efforts to protect media freedom in Europe. The EMFA has identified many of the key issues where the EU and member states must urgently act in order to protect media freedoms. This statement of intent, alone, is very welcome.
However, if the EMFA is to become effective in the struggle to guarantee media pluralism, to protect journalists’ rights and ensure editorial independence from the impact of vested commercial and political interests, it should strengthen efforts to increase the transparency in media ownership with clear rules instead of soft-law Recommendations; introduce rules governing all financial relations between the state and media and removing the limit on state advertising transparency for over one million inhabitants; guarantee the independence of national regulators as well as the independence of the European Board for Media Services; and should expand measures against surveillance of journalists and ensure a general guarantee for the protection of sources.
The undersigned organisations look forward to continuing to engage with the institutions of the European Union to ensure that the text of the European Media Freedom Act is as robust and effective as possible and helps provide a foundation for generations of journalists to come.
Association of European Journalists (AEJ)
Civil Liberties Union for Europe (Liberties)
Coalition for Creativity (C4C)
Committee to Protect Journalists
European Centre for Press and Media Freedom (ECPMF)
European Federation of Journalists (EFJ)
Free Press Unlimited (FPU)
Global Forum for Media Development (GFMD)
Index on Censorship
International Press Institute (IPI)
Media Diversity Institute, Belgium (MDI)
OBC Transeuropa (OBCT)
Ossigeno.info
Reporters WIthout Borders (RSF)
Society of Journalists, Warsaw
South East Europe Media Organisation (SEEMO)
The Daphne Caruana Galizia Foundation
Transparency International EU
World Association Community Radio Broadcasters (AMARC Europe)
