[vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”Index on Censorship has dedicated its milestone 250th issue to exploring the increasing threats to reporters worldwide. Its special report, Truth in Danger, Danger in Truth: Journalists Under Fire and Under Pressure, is out now.”][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]
Highlights include Lindsey Hilsum, writing about her friend and colleague, the murdered war reporter Marie Colvin, and asking whether journalists should still be covering war zones. Stephen Grey looks at the difficulties of protecting sources in an era of mass surveillance. Valeria Costa-Kostritsky shows how Europe’s journalists are being silenced by accusations that their work threatens national security.
Kaya Genç interviews Turkey’s threatened investigative journalists, and Steven Borowiec lifts the lid on the cosy relationships inside Japan’s press clubs. Plus, the inside track on what it is really like to be a local reporter in Syria and Eritrea. Also in this issue: the late Swedish crime writer Henning Mankell explores colonialism in Africa in an exclusive play extract; Jemimah Steinfeld interviews China’s most famous political cartoonist; Irene Caselli writes about the controversies and censorship of Latin America’s soap operas; and Norwegian musician Moddi tells how hate mail sparked an album of music that had been silenced.
The 250th cover is by Ben Jennings. Plus there are cartoons and illustrations by Martin Rowson, Brian John Spencer, Sam Darlow and Chinese cartoonist Rebel Pepper.
You can order your copy here, or take out a digital subscription via Exact Editions. Copies are also available at the BFI, the Serpentine Gallery, MagCulture, (London), News from Nowhere (Liverpool), Home (Manchester) and on Amazon. Each magazine sale helps Index on Censorship continue its fight for free expression worldwide.
Index on Censorship magazine was started in 1972 and remains the only global magazine dedicated to free expression. It has produced 250 issues, with contributors including Samuel Beckett, Gabriel García Marquéz, Nadine Gordimer, Arthur Miller, Salman Rushdie, Margaret Atwood, and many more.
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”SPECIAL REPORT: DANGER IN TRUTH, TRUTH IN DANGER” css=”.vc_custom_1483444455583{margin-right: 0px !important;margin-left: 0px !important;border-bottom-width: 1px !important;padding-top: 15px !important;padding-bottom: 15px !important;border-bottom-color: #455560 !important;border-bottom-style: solid !important;}”][vc_column_text]
Journalists under fire and under pressure
Editorial: Risky business – Rachael Jolley on why journalists around the world face increasing threats
Behind the lines – Lindsey Hilsum asks if reporters should still be heading into war zones
We are journalists, not terrorists – Valeria Costa-Kostritsky looks at how reporters around Europe are being silenced by accusations that their work threatens national security
Code of silence – Cristina Marconi shows how Italy’s press treads carefully between threats from the mafia and defamation laws from fascist times
Facing the front line – Laura Silvia Battaglia gives the inside track on safety training for Iraqi journalists
Giving up on the graft and the grind – Jean-Paul Marthoz says journalists are failing to cover difficult stories
Risking reputations – Fred Searle on how young UK writers fear “churnalism” will cost their jobs
Inside Syria’s war – Hazza Al-Adnan shows the extreme dangers faced by local reporters
Living in fear for reporting on terror – Ismail Einashe interviews a Kenyan journalist who has gone into hiding
The life of a state journalist in Eritrea – Abraham T. Zere on what it’s really like to work at a highly censored government newspaper
Smothering South African reporting – Carien Du Plessis asks if racism accusations and Twitter mobs are being used to stop truthful coverage at election time
Writing with a bodyguard – Catalina Lobo-Guerrero explores Colombia’s state protection unit, which has supported journalists in danger for 16 years
Taliban warning ramps up risk to Kabul’s reporters – Caroline Lees recalls safer days working in Afghanistan and looks at journalists’ challenges today
Writers of wrongs – Steven Borowiec lifts the lid on cosy relationships inside Japan’s press clubs
The Arab Spring snaps back – Rohan Jayasekera assesses the state of the media after the revolution
Shooting the messengers – Duncan Tucker reports on the women investigating sex-trafficking in Mexico
Is your secret safe with me? – Stephen Grey looks at the difficulties of protecting sources in an age of mass surveillance
Stripsearch cartoon – Martin Rowson depicts a fat-cat politician quashing questions
Scoops and troops – Kaya Genç interviews Turkey’s struggling investigative reporters
A world away from Wallander – An exclusive extract of a play by late Swedish crime writer Henning Mankell
“I’m not prepared to give up my words” – Norman Manea introduces Matei Visniec, a surreal Romanian play where rats rule and humans are forced to relinquish language
Posting into the future – An extract from Oleh Shynkarenko’s futuristic new novel, inspired by Facebook updates during Ukraine’s Maidan Square protests
The lost art of letters – Vicky Baker looks at the power of written correspondence and asks if email can ever be the same
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”SUBSCRIBE” css=”.vc_custom_1481736449684{margin-right: 0px !important;margin-left: 0px !important;border-bottom-width: 1px !important;padding-bottom: 15px !important;border-bottom-color: #455560 !important;border-bottom-style: solid !important;}”][vc_column_text]Index on Censorship magazine was started in 1972 and remains the only global magazine dedicated to free expression. Past contributors include Samuel Beckett, Gabriel García Marquéz, Nadine Gordimer, Arthur Miller, Salman Rushdie, Margaret Atwood, and many more.[/vc_column_text][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/2″][vc_single_image image=”76572″ img_size=”full”][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]In print or online. Order a print edition here or take out a digital subscription via Exact Editions.
Copies are also available at the BFI, the Serpentine Gallery, MagCulture, (London), News from Nowhere (Liverpool), Home (Manchester), Calton Books (Glasgow) and on Amazon. Each magazine sale helps Index on Censorship continue its fight for free expression worldwide.
Hungarian NGOs are facing a rough summer: The Government Control Office (KEHI) has launched a series of investigations into grants they received from the Norway Financial Mechanism. Now the Council of Europe’s Commissioner for Human Rights, Nils Muižnieks, has written to János Lázár, Minister of the Prime Minister’s Office to express concern over the situation.
In the letter, Muižnieks told Lázár that he had been informed by several parties that audits were being conducted over the grants. A forthcoming report will further detail the monitoring that Muižnieks was conducting around media freedom in the country. For his part, Lázár has responded to the letter from the COE commissioner.
As Index reported on July 8, the government controls come after a long smear campaign with members of the Fidesz government accusing these NGOs to be proxies for “foreign interests”, and that Norway is using the program to exert direct political influence on Hungary.
“There is panic and uncertainty in the Hungarian civil society. In this respect, the controls are very effective, even if there will be no consequences,” says Tamas Bodoky, editor-in-chief of Atlatszo.hu, an investigative journalism outlet also targeted by the KEHI audit.
Atlatszo.hu decided not to comply with the government inspection, regarding it as unlawful. They say that KEHI is an agency overseeing government financial matters, and does not have the authority to investigate financing for NGOs. However, they have nothing to hide, so they published all relevant records concerning the use of funds on the website of their partner organisation, Asimov Foundation.
A number of NGOs followed Atlatszo’s example, but it is unclear what the repercussions of this decision might be. According to Bodoky, KEHI could freeze their bank accounts, suspend their VAT number, and fine them as well.
It is difficult to portray these NGOs as strongly opposing the Fidesz rule. Some of the organisations receiving grants from the Norway Financial Mechanism have been involved in anti-government protests, but others have fruitful cooperation with the government. The vast majority of grant recipients have no political involvement at all.
Bodoky believes the government controls are a small-time retaliation for the decision of the Norwegian government to suspend the payments from the EEA and Norway Grants. This fund represents the financial contribution of Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein towards reducing economic and social disparities in the European Economic Area (EEA).
Hungary was set to receive 20 billion euros in the 2014-2020 period from this fund. However, the Hungarian government recently made important changes to the system by which EU and Norway development grants are administered. They did not consult with the donors. As a result the Norwegian government suspended the payments.
This measure did not affect the considerably smaller NGO Fund, operated by a Hungarian consortium of NGOs. The overall objective of this fund is to “strengthen civil society development and enhance contribution to social justice, democracy and sustainable development”.
The programme focuses on projects dealing with the human rights of minorities, good governance, combating racism and xenophobia, combating discrimination, social exclusion, gender inequalities and gender-based violence.
Some members of the NGOs administering the fund appear to have links to Politics Can Be Different (LMP), a small liberal party. Apparently this was the reason why State Secretary Janos Lazar, the “strong man” of the Fidesz government decided to write an open letter to the official representative of the Fund’s donors, Vidar Helgesen, Norway’s Minister of EEA and EU Affairs, accusing the Norway government of intervention into the internal affairs of Hungary.
Deputy State Secretary Nandor Csepreghy said in an interview that the Hungarian government would prefer Norway’s Civil Fund to provide financial support through the Hungarian government, whose “legitimacy comes from society and the voters”. Csepreghy believes that any other scheme can be interpreted as a direct involvement into Hungary’s internal political affairs.
If the ignominy of coming last in the Eurovision Song Contest was not enough, Norway suffered a further humiliation when it was alleged that a journalist from their official delegation was threatened, stripped to his underwear and told to stamp on an Iranian flag by police at Baku airport. Norway’s Tooji received only seven points on Saturday’s final for his song “Stay”, ensuring that Englebert Humperdinck did not come last. However, this poor showing apparently did not quell the Azerbaijani authorities’ interest in the country.
On Friday, a crew from Norwegian Broadcasting (NRK) arrived at Baku airport to catch a flight back to Oslo, among them was Iranian-Norwegian comedian Amir Asgharnejad. Asgharnejad apparently attracted the ire of figures in the Caspian state with his satirical videos around Baku during the week of the Eurovision. Playing a character called Bijan Samami, reminiscent of Sacha Baron Cohen’s creation “Borat”, he jokingly extolled the virtues of Iran and maligned neighbouring Azerbaijan. In a clip of him performing a dance routine, his foot appears to touch a nearby Azerbaijani flag. At passport control, Asgharnejad was taken to a room for questioning while his three colleagues were taken to the plane.
Director of Communications at NRK, Tommy Hansen said: “Between six and seven uniformed police questioned Amir for ninety minutes. They first accused him of possessing narcotics, before ordering him to strip down to his underwear. They then forced him to stamp and spit on the Iranian flag.” Mr Asgharnejad also claims that the officers filmed this event and just before he left the interrogation, he was informed: “If you tell anybody in Norway about this, we will hunt you down and kill you.” A spokesman for the Azerbaijan government, Elman Abdullayev, called the allegations “lies” and “fabrications”.
“This was a routine security procedure because Mr Asgharnejad’s passport photo was taken fifteen years ago and he looked different. This journalist made a video where he kicked the Azerbaijan flag and for this reason, he should not be taken seriously. If someone kicked the British flag, what would you do?”
Tommy Hansen added: “We are curious as to whether this is official policy of Azerbaijani authorities or just a group of police officers behaving badly. We consider this inappropriate to the working conditions of journalists and against human rights.” If true, the incident will no doubt sour relations between Norway and the oil-rich post-Soviet nation, to say nothing of the frosty situation with Iran. Recently the two neighbouring countries have traded insults after Ayatollah Sobhani, a senior cleric, accused Azerbaijan of organising a “gay parade” alongside the song contest. Ali Hasanov, an Azerbaijani government official, retorted: “Azerbaijan does not even have a word for ‘gay parade’. Unlike Iran.” Subsequent demonstrations outside the Iranian embassy in Baku, where protesters allegedly held placards insulting supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei, caused Tehran to withdraw its ambassador on Tuesday. Norwegian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hanne Melfald referred to the alleged treatment of Mr Asgharnejad as a “serious incident”.
Andrew Connelly is a freelance journalist based in London and currently in Baku. You can follow him at @connellyandrew.
There is a dilemma for journalists covering the trial of Anders Behring Breivik — the man who has admitted killing 77 people on 22 July in Norway last summer.
On the one hand, Breivik is gaining another bout of publicity for his crimes. On the other, the journalist’s role is to document a trial which inevitably has attracted significant public attention.
Although Twitter’s use in court is not new, this is a particularly high profile case which also presents a wealth of potential ethical issues for journalists using the microblogging tool to cover the trial.
Reporting Breivik’s trial: Banning “old'”broadcasting while allowing “new” broadcasting
Some parts of the trial are being broadcast by Norway’s NRK television, although a number of key elements will not be shown.
Some of the haunting recordings of those who lost their lives are not being aired. Breivik’s own testimony yesterday was not televised. And the evidence given by witnesses will not be broadcast in the future either.
In yesterday’s press conference, the prosecution was asked how the media should report Breivik’s evidence.
“Q: Is it right for him to testify in court about his political agenda? How should the media report it?
A: It is important that he explain his views and many other people share those views. It also impacts on whether he is sane or insane. We don’t want his testimony to be directly broadcast because it needs to be digested after being put in context by media organisations.”
If the point of not allowing the evidence to be broadcast is to allow an opportunity to put everything in context, it leaves question marks over whether journalists should still be allowed to use Twitter from court.
In short, does it make sense to ban the cameras but not the tweeters?
Twitter updates: Stripping context?
A number of journalists have been using Twitter to provide updates from the trial.
Tweeting Breivik’s evidence inevitably strips away even more context from it. We lose the audio-visual context of a live broadcast and I would suggest that even the best live tweeters won’t be able to relay a verbatim account.
It could be argued that this can be allayed if a number of journalists are tweeting from court as they will provide different tweets on the trial.
In theory, they could also offer additional contextual tweets which might help audiences make sense of Breivik’s rants against Islam, multiculturalists, Marxists, and feminists; the evils of the Labour party; and his justification of mass murder as necessary for the salvation of Norway.
But I would hypothesise that because journalists are likely to tweet news lines they will probably tweet similar things. There also won’t be much time for fact-checking or the broader context while they are live-tweeting.
Paul Brannan, tweeting for Al Jazeera English, offered this caveat to his followers during the afternoon, for example:
*IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER* I am tweeting the evidence directly. I do not vouch for whether what #Breivik is saying is true.
Of course, tweets stripped of context can be reclothed by their incorporation into more detailed live blogs by media organisations and then articles and longer pieces.
Arguably, when taken as a whole, a stream of Twitter updates from a journalist at a trial may contain more context than a short broadcast report for radio or TV.
It is also not unreasonable to expect people to be aware of the limits of Twitter as a medium. (Is it?)
And if people want more context, they will obviously look elsewhere; but the same could be said of live television coverage.
The case for live tweeting over live TV
Twitter has an advantage, of course, over television in that discerning journalists can exercise their judgement to decide which aspects to cover in an attempt to avoid unnecessary harm.
It was notable earlier today that the Guardian’s reporter covering the trial, Helen Pidd, decided she did not want to provide updates during some parts of Breivik’s evidence:
I’m not tweeting all of Breivik’s statement because some of what he is saying is too heartless
Pidd explained that she would “put it in context in a story at lunchtime”, adding that it “seems irresponsible to just put it out on Twitter unadulterated.”
Twitter users who replied to Pidd’s comments were divided over whether she was making the right call.
When I asked her about this decision, Pidd said she does not think she has a duty to report everything Breivik says:
“In any news broadcast or story there is always an element of selection – whether for reasons of brevity, ethical reasons, concerns about those you are writing about [or other considerations].”
Pidd had also discussed tweeting the proceedings prior to the trial with colleagues at the Guardian.
They had agreed that it was “not morally wrong to live tweet the trial” but that they “needed to be careful”.
There are plenty of things to consider here, but perhaps that is the bottom line at the moment. At least until we have a better understanding of how audiences consume this sort of coverage.
Daniel Bennett recently completed his PhD at the War Studies Dept, KCL. His thesis considered the impact of blogging on the BBC’s coverage of war and terrorism. He writes the Reporting War blog for the Frontline Club.
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