23 Mar 21 | News and features, Slapps, Statements, Sweden
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Twenty-four organisations express their solidarity with the Swedish business and finance publication, Realtid, its editor, and the two journalists being sued for defamation in London. Realtid are due before the High Court tomorrow for a two-day remote hearing that will decide whether England and Wales is the appropriate jurisdiction for the case to be heard.
Realtid is being sued by Swedish businessman, Svante Kumlin, and his group of companies Eco Energy World (EEW), for eight articles that they published last year. Realtid had been investigating EEW ahead of an impending stock market launch in Norway, a matter of clear public interest. Prior to publication, the journalists contacted Kumlin and EEW to request an interview and reply, but neither were provided. In November 2020, Kumlin and EEW filed a defamation lawsuit at the High Court in London against Realtid, its editor-in-chief, and the two reporters behind the investigations.
“We are concerned about the use of litigation tactics to intimidate journalists into silence,” five international freedom of expression and media freedom organisations wrote in a statement last December, which condemned the legal action and deemed it a strategic lawsuit against public participation (Slapp). Slapps are a form of vexatious legal action used to silence public watchdogs, including journalists.
The hearing is expected to conclude at lunchtime on Thursday 25 March, but the judgement that will decide whether England and Wales is an appropriate jurisdiction for the case to be heard is likely to be reserved for a later date. Although Realtid is a Swedish-language outlet based in Sweden and Kumlin is domiciled in Monaco, Kumlin and EEW claim to have “significant business interests” in England that, they claim, provide sufficient grounds for the case being brought in the UK.
Ahead of the hearing we, the undersigned organisations, express our solidarity with Realtid. We are extremely concerned that this Slapp appears to be an effort to discredit the journalists and force them to remove their investigative articles.
Signed:
Index on Censorship
ARTICLE 19
Civil Liberties Union for Europe (Liberties)
European Centre for Press and Media Freedom (ECPMF)
IFEX
International Press Institute
OBC Transeuropa
Reporters without borders (RSF)
National Union of Journalists in the UK and Ireland (NUJ)
Justice for Journalists Foundation
Swedish Union of Journalists
Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project
Mighty Earth
PEN International
European Federation of Journalists (EFJ)
English PEN
Swedish PEN
Blueprint for Free Speech
Protect
Media Defence
International Media Support
The Daphne Caruana Galizia Foundation
Global Witness
Publicistklubben[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]
08 Dec 20 | Media Freedom, News and features, Slapps, Sweden
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”115804″ img_size=”full”][vc_column_text]Index on Censorship has joined with other press freedom organisations to strongly condemn the legal action that has been filed at the London High Court against the Swedish business and finance publication, Realtid, in connection with their investigation on the financing of energy projects involving a Swedish businessman.
We, along with Reporters Without Borders, Article 19, Media Defence and European Centre for Press and Media Freedom (ECPMF), are concerned about the use of litigation tactics to intimidate journalists into silence. The organisations consider the case, which was filed in November, to be a strategic lawsuit against public Participation (Slapp), which is aimed at intimidating publications, and the journalists who write for them, into silence.
Realtid is being sued by Svante Kumlin, a Swedish businessman, domiciled in Monaco. Realtid had been investigating Kumlin’s group of companies, Eco Energy World (EEW), ahead of an impending stock market launch in Norway, a matter of clear public interest. The investigation began in September when Realtid’s reporters wrote about another stock market launch and discovered off-market sales of shares in EEW. Prior to publishing, the journalists contacted the company for an interview and for reply but did not receive a response.
In October, after publishing the report, the journalists once more tried to contact the people behind the company, including Kumlin to exercise their right of reply. After Kumlin declined to be interviewed, the journalists sent 14 questions that Kumlin could answer in writing, but Kumlin answered that his legal counsel “will respond to you directly”.
This was followed by several emails and attached letters from both a law firm in the United Kingdom, TLT Solicitors, and from Monaco, Gardetto. The firms threatened legal action in both countries if Realtid continued to investigate and to publish its investigations into the company and its owners.
On 20 November, Kumlin and TLT Solicitors filed a defamation lawsuit at the High Court in London against Realtid, its editor-in-chief and the two reporters behind the story.
In their letters the lawyers accuse the editor-in-chief, Camilla Jonsson, and the reporters, Per Agerman and Annelie Östlund, of defamation for publishing false information, and breaching a non-disclosure agreement by sharing, what the lawyers claim to be, confidential information. They also claim that Realtid violated Swedish press ethics and laws. If the latter claim is accurate, there are existing procedures to handle the case through the Swedish Media Ombudsman.
It is our assessment that it is inappropriate to threaten the magazine and the journalists with legal action in two jurisdictions, including by citing large fines and prison sentences.
“The fact that investigative journalists in Sweden, publishing in Swedish, for a Swedish readership could be inundated with threatening legal letters from other jurisdictions is outrageous,” said Jessica Ní Mhainín, senior policy and advocacy officer at Index on Censorship. “Realtid’s courage in the face of these threats has been incredible, but whether or not a newsworthy investigation is published shouldn’t come down to individual courage. We need to put an end to Slapps with legislation.”
“The email conversations between the lawyers and Realtid are unpleasant reading”, says Erik Halkjaer, president of Reporters Without Borders Sweden (RSF Sweden). “It is obvious that these types of legal threats, or Slapps can be used as a threatening tool, as sharp as any weapon, to silence journalists. I strongly condemn the actions of Kumlin, who should know better. The people at Realtid should know that they have our and several other Swedish organisations strong support in this.”
Despite the continuous threats, Realtid has continued its solid journalistic investigations. Between 29 September and 13 November, the newspaper published ten articles on this investigation. Kumlin repeatedly declined to answer questions, despite the reporters having digital recordings and public documents proving the content of their articles.
“We know that over half of the cross-border Slapp suits facing journalists from Europe emanate from London. As anti-Slapp measures are being introduced in Brussels, there is an urgent need for the UK to reform its plaintiff-friendly system in line with its stated commitments to uphold and promote media freedom globally,” said Sarah Clarke, head of Europe for Article 19.
After taking an interest in the coverage of Realtid, the Norwegian financial paper Dagens Naeringsliv started its own investigation on the same story. Shortly after doing so, they too were contacted by TLT Solicitors, who used their legal action against Realtid to issue similar threats.
“Investigative journalism is essential to holding people in positions of power and responsibility to account. Journalists who do this work should not be subject to aggressive legal claims in plaintiff-friendly jurisdictions designed to intimidate and oppress. Any dispute between the parties should be resolved before the appropriate forum, in Sweden,” said Padraig Hughes, legal director of Media Defence.
Norway and Sweden are ranked 1st and 4th out of 180 countries in RSF´s 2020 Press Freedom Index. The United Kingdom is ranked 35th out of 180.
For press inquiries contact:
Jessica Ní Mhainín, [email protected];
Erik Halkjaer, [email protected];
Sarah Clarke, [email protected] [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]
17 Apr 20 | Volume 49.01 Spring 2020, Volume 49.01 Spring 2020 Extras
Our Index on Censorship spring 2020 podcast features the Miami Herald journalist Mary Ellen Klas talking about being denied access to a press briefing in Florida on coronavirus and how reporting in the country under Trump has become even more difficult in the crisis, Moa Petersén, senior lecturer at Lund University, discusses the Swedish microchipping phenomenon, while the journalist Noelle Mateer speaks about living in China as everyone around her embraced surveillance cameras.
Print copies of the magazine are available on Amazon, or you can take out a digital subscription via Exact Editions. Each magazine sale helps Index on Censorship continue its fight for free expression worldwide.
24 Aug 18 | Europe and Central Asia, European Union, Media Freedom, media freedom featured, News and features, Sweden
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An image from the website of the right-wing populist Sweden Democrats, who changed their logo from a National Front-esque torch to a flower in an effort to clean up their image.
Sweden baked in record temperatures this summer, matched only by the increasingly heated political climate as it gears up for an unprecedentedly bitter and divisive general election. Front page stories about raging wildfires and drought have given a poll boost to the Swedish Green Party as climate change has leapt up the agenda. For populist media critics, however, the attention given to the fires is part of a conspiracy to keep the Greens in government and to give the governing left-wing bloc a victory in September’s vote.
Edward Riedl, a conservative member of parliament for the opposition Moderate Party accused major newspapers of “agenda setting” by giving such prominent coverage to the environment, with one if his party colleagues calling out newspapers for being pro-Green.
The far right meanwhile maintains a longstanding animosity with Sweden’s established print and public service media, which they accuse of being a cosy cartel.
Marie Grusell, a media researcher at Gothenburg University, has compared the attacks to the ongoing deligitimisation of the press in the USA by the White House.
“It is a tactic to undermine journalism. I think this is beneath contempt,” she said in an interview with the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet.
This bizarre challenging of factual environmental journalism takes place against a backdrop of an increasingly contentious news landscape, in which the fragmentation and polarisation of the Swedish political system has made it increasingly difficult to maintain the balance of the media.
Over the past decade – and in common with other European countries – Sweden has seen the emergence of a powerful populist and anti-immigration party, the Sweden Democrats. The Sweden Democrats have deployed a familiar cocktail of anti-media conspiracism, welfare nationalism and climate scepticism, as well as anti-feminist and anti-Islamic rhetoric, to move from a fringe group to a major parliamentary force with ambitions to form a government. Although they have their roots in the 1990s white power movement, the Sweden Democrats have tried to soften their image by shunning some of their more extreme members and, in 2006, changed their logo from a torch — similar to that once used by the British far-right National Front — to a cartoonish anemone hepatica, a flower in the buttercup family.
Public trust in the Swedish media is still holding up but has diminished among those drifting towards the Sweden Democrats. This section of voters have become resistant to large sections of the established media and have instead turned to social network news groups and fringe sites which claim to expose what is really happening in Swedish society, as well as foreign news sites from the USA and Russia. In an attempt to increase the amount of freely available objective media outlets, the daily Dagens Nyheter recently removed its paywall for the duration of the election campaign, but as with other established media, it may be too late for readers who have already moved on.
Increased extremism
The dangerous situation is compounded by movements operating at the political fringes who have targeted journalists. The Nordic Resistance Movement (NMR), a neo-Nazi white power group, regularly marches in shows of force, intimidating journalists, minority groups and other members of the public. In May Swedish security services raided the home or prominent NMR member Peter Holm and found a suitcase they believed had been adapted for assassinations, along with a hard drive containing details on two journalists.
NMR activists also marched at this year’s Almedalen politics festival, a high point of the political calendar where journalists, civic and business groups and politicians get together to discuss contemporary issues. The investigative anti-fascist magazine EXPO uncovered instructions for NMR activists to attend speeches by politicians and others and to shout “traitor to the people” at politicians, and confront journalists in public. At the previous year’s event, the TV journalist Jan Scherman was called a “disgusting Jew” by an NMR member while filming.
Officially there is no link between the Sweden Democrats and groups like the NMR, but several SD politicians have voiced support for the organisation in the past and the increased support for SD in opinion polls has seemingly emboldened NMR activists to take more direct action on the streets according to data compiled by EXPO.
An uncertain future climate
A glimpse into what might happen should Sweden elect a government that includes the far right is provided by Denmark, where the hardline Danish People’s Party have cut state support to public broadcasting and consistently attacked its content as being leftist and unpatriotic. If a Sweden Democrat supported government becomes a reality, journalists could find themselves pressed by an increasingly powerful and emboldened populist movement that sees journalists as scapegoats for deeper seated problems, and where objective reporting of social challenges such as the environment and integration are dismissed as politically correct opinion rather than society-wide issues of critical importance.
It now falls to the press to fight its corner as a foundational part of the country’s democracy. Sweden, long considered a uniquely stable and tolerant democracy, is about to find out whether it really is safe from anti-democratic populism.[/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:1535101855192-df766193-d628-5″ taxonomies=”9008, 507″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
