tag:theconversation.com,2011:/fr/topics/freedom-of-press-18449/articlesFreedom of press – The Conversation2023-11-28T12:04:30Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2186322023-11-28T12:04:30Z2023-11-28T12:04:30ZSlapps: inside Europe’s struggle to protect journalists from malicious lawsuits<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/561882/original/file-20231127-26-a4smf9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=53%2C89%2C5937%2C3889&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock/icedmocha</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>There is a growing threat to the rule of law, democracy and human rights in Europe. It manifests as seemingly run-of-the-mill lawsuits. However, on closer inspection, many lawsuits are not as they seem.</p>
<p>Rather than attempting to remedy a wrong, lawsuits can have a much more insidious goal – to suppress truths and to silence criticism. These lawsuits are known as “strategic lawsuits against public participation” or Slapps.</p>
<p>Slapps target people who speak out on anything from climate change to money laundering. For those who would rather their critics stay silent, and their wrongdoings go unreported, there is a playbook of abusive litigation tactics readily available. </p>
<p>These tactics are enlisted by the rich and powerful to drive up the financial and psychological burden of defending a lawsuit until their opponents are left with no choice but to stop reporting or campaigning. They tend to wipe the public record clean, and to isolate the few who are able to resist attempts at censorship, sometimes with fatal consequences.</p>
<p>Such was the case for <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/search?q=Daphne+Caruana+Galizia">Daphne Caruana Galizia</a>, the Maltese investigative journalist assassinated on October 16 2017. At the time of her murder, she had dozens of lawsuits pending against her for rigorous reporting on a web of corruption – a chilling reminder of the lengths some people will go to to shut down criticism.</p>
<p>We were recently commissioned to write a <a href="https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/STUD/2023/756468/IPOL_STU(2023)756468_EN.pdf">report</a> for the EU Parliament analysing the use of such lawsuits across the EU since January 2022. What we found was unsettling.</p>
<p>We identified 47 lawsuits targeting over 100 people, including journalists and campaigners. And these were the cases we were able to identify. It’s clear from the existence of <a href="https://fpc.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Unsafe-for-Scrutiny-November-2020.pdf">anonymised data</a> that these cases are just the tip of the iceberg.</p>
<p>These 47 cases concerned over 80 public interest matters, including journalistic reporting on corruption and financial crime. If the Slapps succeed, they could wipe the public record of important information that would influence everything from how we vote to what we consume. These lawsuits thereby have a chilling effect far beyond the immediate target.</p>
<p><strong>Who gets Slapped?</strong></p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/561863/original/file-20231127-29-d7yf1y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A chart showing that journalists, media outlets and NGOs are the most common target of SLAPPs." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/561863/original/file-20231127-29-d7yf1y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/561863/original/file-20231127-29-d7yf1y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=249&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561863/original/file-20231127-29-d7yf1y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=249&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561863/original/file-20231127-29-d7yf1y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=249&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561863/original/file-20231127-29-d7yf1y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=312&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561863/original/file-20231127-29-d7yf1y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=312&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561863/original/file-20231127-29-d7yf1y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=312&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Where Slapps land.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Author provided.</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There is a clear need for the EU to protect freedom of expression and the freedom of the press by empowering people like Caruana Galizia to ask courts to strike out these abusive lawsuits at an early stage. And this is precisely what the EU is doing. EU legislators are now negotiating the final text of an Anti-Slapp directive, colloquially termed “Daphne’s law”.</p>
<p>However, our report shows some of the small changes proposed to the language of Daphne’s law could leave most Slapp victims outside its protection.</p>
<h2>Immediate stumbling block</h2>
<p>For the EU to legislate on Slapps, it first had to establish that it had the power to do so. This was confirmed via article 81 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, which allows the EU to legislate on matters with cross-border implications. So, for a Slapp to come within the scope of the proposed protections, it must first be classified as having “cross-border implications”. This is where the first problem arises.</p>
<p>There is disagreement between the EU institutions as to what amounts to a cross-border implication. The European Commission proposes that it means any civil lawsuit where at least one of the parties involved lives in a different EU member state to where the lawsuit is being heard or where the communication (for example, a newspaper article or blogpost) concerns a matter of public interest which is relevant to more than one member state or where the claimant has opened a legal action in more than one member state. </p>
<p>The Council of the European Union, which is made up of ministers from the member states’ governments, on the other hand, wants to remove any definition. This would produce uncertainty and could end up removing most cases from the scope of the directive. </p>
<p>There is a <a href="https://europeanjournalists.org/blog/2023/06/09/eu-council-adopts-watered-down-position-on-anti-slapp-directive/#:%7E:text=The%20Council%20of%20the%20European%20Union%20adopted%20today,journalists%2C%20activists%2C%20and%20other%20public%20watchdogs%20across%20Europe.">fear</a> that without a clear definition in the directive, states would be free to adopt a narrow definition of “cross-border” as only capturing cases where the defendant lives in a different country to the court hearing the case.</p>
<h2>Most cases are cross-border</h2>
<p>We found that over 85% of cases concerned public interest matters which were relevant to more than one member state. One of the cases, for example, related to the procurement of medical supplies during the COVID-19 pandemic. Another targeted three journalists reporting on alleged corruption in Bulgaria, at its border with Turkey and Greece.</p>
<p>On the other hand, the domicile of the defendant and the court differed in only 4% of cases. This means that if the second part of the Commission’s understanding is left out of the final directive, or if, as the Council suggests, the definition of cross-border implications is removed entirely, we might see a situation where only a small percentage of Slapp victims are protected by the directive.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/slapps-the-rise-of-lawsuits-targeting-investigative-journalists-169505">Slapps: the rise of lawsuits targeting investigative journalists</a>
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</em>
</p>
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<p>The other big issue is that the proposal sets too high a bar for dismissing a Slapp. The target has to prove that the Slapp is unfounded beyond any reasonable doubt. Any Slapp claimant with a competent lawyer can defeat such a challenge – and that certainly tends to be the case for the powerful actors who often bring Slapp claims. </p>
<p>The impact of this hurdle cannot be overstated. None of the cases we analysed could meet such a standard. Instead, the EU should protect people whenever these lawsuits show signs of being abusive.</p>
<p>Without freedom to genuinely report on matters of public interest, our democracies will slowly wither. As the Anti-Slapp directive makes its way through the final stages of the legislative process, now is a pivotal time to remember what is at stake. </p>
<p>Anti-Slapp laws do not only seek to protect the Slapp target – they are an attempt to ensure that information is a public resource and not one controlled by the rich and powerful.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/218632/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Francesca Farrington has consulted to the European Parliament, the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, and the Coalition Against SLAPPs in Europe (CASE). </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Justin Borg-Barthet has consulted to the European Parliament, the European Commission, the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, and the Coalition Against SLAPPs in Europe (CASE). </span></em></p>Anti-SLAPP legislation is being drawn up to protect journalists from being hounded out of reporting on corruption – but agreeing on key definitions is proving difficult.Francesca Farrington, Lecturer in Commercial Law, University of AberdeenJustin Borg-Barthet, Professor of Private International Law and EU law, University of AberdeenLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1509562020-12-04T07:02:20Z2020-12-04T07:02:20ZIntrusions on civil rights in the digital space on the rise during the pandemic<p><em>The article is part of the “Nine months of the pandemic in Indonesia” series.</em></p>
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<p>The COVID-19 pandemic has not only severely impacted public health in Indonesia but also people’s human rights. </p>
<p>The pandemic has justified governments around the world restricting certain rights. These include the imposition of quarantine or isolation, which limits freedom of movement, and intrusions on privacy in the name of “contact tracing”.</p>
<p>In March, United Nations (UN) human rights experts <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=25722">urged</a> that a declaration of emergency based on the COVID-19 outbreak should not be used as a basis for targeting specific individuals, groups or minority groups. </p>
<p>While not referring to particular countries, the experts said: “[An emergency declaration] should not function as a cover for repressive action under the guise of protecting health nor should it be used to silence the work of human rights defenders.”</p>
<p>An Amnesty International investigation revealed in June that contact-tracing apps rolled out by Bahrain, Kuwait and Norway were among <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2020/06/bahrain-kuwait-norway-contact-tracing-apps-danger-for-privacy/">the most invasive</a>. Such apps put the privacy and security of hundreds of thousands of people at risk.</p>
<p>Almost all countries face uncertainties in dealing with this outbreak and have therefore resorted to harsh measures. </p>
<p>Even countries that already have high standards of crisis management seem to have felt forced to adopt policies that tend to be <a href="https://doi.org/10.19184/jseahr.v4i1.18244">repressive</a>. <a href="https://analysis.covid19healthsystem.org/index.php/2020/05/29/what-is-the-role-of-the-military-in-covid-19-response/">Canada and Sweden</a> have used military-controlled crisis management. In Brazil, the government has been accused of <a href="https://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2020/06/09/brazil-accused-of-manipulating-coronavirus-toll.html">manipulating the death toll figures</a>.</p>
<p>In Indonesia, only a few weeks after announcing the country’s first COVID-19 cases in early March, President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo considered imposing <a href="https://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2020/03/30/jokowi-refuses-to-impose-lockdown-on-jakarta.html">civil emergency measures</a>, drawing immediate criticism.</p>
<p>At the end of March, Jokowi declared <a href="https://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2020/03/31/jokowi-declares-covid-19-health-emergency-imposes-large-scale-social-restrictions.html">a public health emergency</a>. The next month he declared the outbreak a “<a href="https://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2020/04/14/jokowi-declares-covid-19-national-disaster-gives-task-force-broader-authority.html">non-natural national disaster</a>” in a presidential decree.</p>
<p>Nine months into the pandemic, Indonesia has seen serious threats to civil liberties. These involve not only privacy but also freedom of expression and of the press in the digital realm, directed at people and institutions critical of the government’s handling of the crisis.</p>
<h2>Digital attacks</h2>
<p>We have seen infringements of human rights carried out through digital attacks. The various forms include hacking, <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-is-doxxing-and-why-is-it-so-scary-95848">doxxing</a>, prosecution and spying. </p>
<p>For example, in April, outspoken government critic Ravio Patra was <a href="https://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2020/06/04/i-was-kidnapped-govt-critic-ravio-patra-files-pretrial-motion-against-police.html">detained</a> and accused of inciting riots through a WhatsApp message following an alleged hacking of his account.</p>
<p>In May, Gadjah Mada University cancelled a planned online discussion about the constitutional mechanism for removing a president from office after students received <a href="https://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2020/05/31/ugm-students-receive-death-threats-over-discussion-on-removing-presidents-from-office.html">death threats</a> and faced other forms of intimidation.</p>
<p>In August, Pandu Riono, an epidemiologist from the University of Indonesia and vocal critic of the government’s pandemic management, reported that his <a href="https://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2020/08/20/epidemiologist-pandu-rionos-twitter-account-hacked.html">Twitter account was hijacked</a>. Prior to the hacking, he had criticised COVID-19 drug research conducted by Airlangga University in co-operation with the Indonesian Army and the State Intelligence Agency (BIN).</p>
<p>Indonesia still lacks a specific law on personal data protection. Other regulations include <a href="https://elsam.or.id/urgensi-regulasi-perlindungan-data-pribadi-di-indonesia/">special provisions</a> on personal data protection, but the mechanism is limited and the accountability doubtful. </p>
<p>This means personal data in Indonesia are vulnerable to digital attacks. </p>
<p>As internet use increased during the pandemic, attacks took many other forms. These included junk messages, “zoombombing”, and third-party applications that claim to be able to track people infected with COVID-19 but contain data-stealing malware. </p>
<p>These digital attacks are easy to launch because of the limited digital security infrastructure throughout the world.</p>
<p>According to International Telecommunication Union data, more than 90% of countries pay little attention to the importance of cybersecurity. </p>
<p>Indonesia is one of these countries. The <a href="https://www.itu.int/dms_pub/itu-d/opb/str/D-STR-GCI.01-2018-PDF-E.pdf">2018 Global Cybersecurity Index report</a> ranks Indonesia 41st out of 175 countries, far from safe.</p>
<p>Digital attacks have also targeted media companies with cybersecurity vulnerabilities. </p>
<p>In August, news websites <a href="https://www.tempo.co/">tempo.co</a> and <a href="https://tirto.id/">tirto.id</a> <a href="https://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2020/08/25/tempo-co-tirto-id-report-cyberattacks-to-jakarta-police.html">reported</a> cyberattacks. </p>
<p>Tirto.id reported the attacker deleted at least seven articles, including some that scrutinised the drug research involving the army and the intelligence agency. Tempo.co had its website defaced and made inaccessible.</p>
<p>These attacks show not only the media’s security weaknesses but also the direct threat to democracy and press freedom.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Baca juga:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/are-populist-leaders-a-liability-during-covid-19-135431">Are populist leaders a liability during COVID-19?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
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<h2>Authoritarian tendencies</h2>
<p>States often use emergency or conflict situations as a <a href="https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-net/2018/rise-digital-authoritarianism">political justification</a> to undermine human rights protection. </p>
<p>Without comprehensive personal data protection law and clear regulation limiting lawful surveillance action, threats and attacks against human rights in Indonesia will continue.</p>
<p>Surveillance of activists who voiced criticism of government policies increased during the pandemic. </p>
<p>To make matters worse, cybersecurity policymaking often focuses on cyber conflicts (such as the <a href="https://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2019/11/19/the-rise-of-kadrun-and-togog-why-political-polarization-in-indonesia-is-far-from-over.html"><em>cebong</em> vs <em>kampret</em> Twitter spats</a> and social media bullying) and pays less attention to the other elements of cybersecurity.</p>
<p>Another sign of the increasing tendency to take an authoritarian approach in digital policy is a bill on cyberdefence and security proposed by the House of Representatives.</p>
<p>The bill has been <a href="https://tirto.id/elsam-kritisi-isi-pasal-dalam-ruu-pertahanan-dan-keamanan-siber-ehAf">criticised</a> for giving excessive authority to the National Cyber and Encryption Agency (BSSN), which was established in 2017. </p>
<p>In the bill, some of the authority given to BSSN is to block internet contents deemed dangerous – without adequate definition – and to monitor internet and data traffic. </p>
<p>With more focus on security issues, rather than the protection of human rights, when passed into law the regulation would enable further encroachment of civil rights – especially during an emergency like the pandemic we are in today.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/150956/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Herlambang P Wiratraman tidak bekerja, menjadi konsultan, memiliki saham, atau menerima dana dari perusahaan atau organisasi mana pun yang akan mengambil untung dari artikel ini, dan telah mengungkapkan bahwa ia tidak memiliki afiliasi selain yang telah disebut di atas.</span></em></p>Nine months into the pandemic, Indonesia has seen serious threats to civil liberties, involving not only privacy but also freedom of expression and of the press in the digital realm.Herlambang P Wiratraman, Lecturer of Constitutional Law, Universitas AirlanggaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1398382020-06-03T12:17:09Z2020-06-03T12:17:09ZIt can’t happen here – and then it did<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/339300/original/file-20200602-133902-q5bng0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=6%2C1%2C1066%2C678&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">There have already been at least 100 instances of journalists being assaulted or harassed while covering recent protests.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Nick Lehr/The Conversation</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When Americans think of journalists attacked, arrested or imprisoned while doing their job, <a href="http://cdn.cnn.com/cnn/2018/images/12/19/worldwilde_round-up.pdf">they think of it happening in distant lands</a> – in places like Russia, Syria, Afghanistan, El Salvador and Mexico.</p>
<p>Freedom of speech and freedom of the press are so ingrained in the American consciousness, citizens may have been lulled into thinking that these acts of intimidation couldn’t possibly happen on American soil.</p>
<p>And then they did.</p>
<p>On May 29, police in Minnesota <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/may/29/black-cnn-reporter-arrested-on-air-minneapolis-protests-george-floyd-killing">arrested a CNN journalist</a> who was covering the Minneapolis protests, leading him and two crew members away in handcuffs. </p>
<p>This wasn’t a one-off.</p>
<ul>
<li><p>In Los Angeles, an officer <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/01/business/media/reporters-protests-george-floyd.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage">shoved a photojournalist to the ground</a> after she showed her credentials.</p></li>
<li><p><a href="https://www.boston.com/news/media/2020/05/30/fox-news-reporter-leland-vittert-attacked-protest">Protesters attacked and chased a Fox News reporter</a> near the White House.</p></li>
<li><p><a href="https://abc7.com/journalists-covering-george-floyd-protests-face-attacks-from-police/6226798/">According to Los Angeles Times reporter Molly Hennessey-Fiske</a>, she and roughly a dozen other members of the press had identified themselves to the Minnesota State Police, who nonetheless “fired tear gun canisters on us at point blank range.”</p></li>
<li><p>An officer <a href="https://twitter.com/TwitterMoments/status/1266635559310512128">aimed and fired a pepper ball</a> at a Louisville reporter on live television. </p></li>
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<p><a href="https://deadline.com/2020/05/george-floyd-protests-media-nbc-news-garrett-hake-ali-velshi-1202947944/">Between May 29 and May 31</a>, there were more than 100 reported incidents of journalists being “injured, assaulted or harassed by either protesters or police officers.”</p>
<p>These reports are shocking and chilling, compounded by the fact that Americans rarely see this happen on American soil – whether on the news, on fictional TV shows or in movies.</p>
<p>I’ve studied <a href="http://www.ijpc.org/">the image of the journalist in popular culture</a> for more than 30 years, documenting how the public forms its impressions of journalism through movies, television and novels.</p>
<p>For almost a century, popular culture has perpetuated the notion that only journalists working in foreign countries were in danger. We saw this in World War II films like “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0034507/">Berlin Correspondent</a>” and “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0032349/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0">Comrade X</a>,” in which foreign correspondents escaped brushes with death to inform the public. </p>
<p>There’s the journalist blown up while covering a nuclear submarine disaster in “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091886/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0">The Bedford Incident</a>,” and the photojournalist who commits suicide as Indonesian police close in on her in “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086617/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0">The Year of Living Dangerously</a>.”</p>
<p>In “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086510/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_3">Under Fire</a>,” journalists are shot in Nicaragua by hostile troops, while in “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091886/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0">Salvador</a>,” one photojournalist is killed while covering an aerial raid, and Salvadoran troops torture another. </p>
<p>Then there are the journalists who barely escape death but leave their sources behind to suffer at the hands of the Khmer Rouge in “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087553/">The Killing Fields</a>.” </p>
<p><a href="https://cpj.org/data/killed/?status=Killed&motiveConfirmed%5B%5D=Confirmed&type%5B%5D=Journalist&start_year=1992&end_year=2020&group_by=year">Real-life examples of journalists killed around the world</a> give credence to these images, and Americans such as Wall Street Journal reporter <a href="https://cpj.org/2020/05/family-of-wall-street-journal-reporter-daniel-pear/">Daniel Pearl</a> and video reporter <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/21/arts/design/james-foley-bradley-mccallum.html">James Foley</a> were killed while covering stories for the American news media in Pakistan and Syria, respectively. </p>
<p>In films set in America, journalists do find themselves in trouble. In “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0045267/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_3">The Turning Point</a>” and “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071970/">The Parallax View</a>,” investigative reporters are killed, while in “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107798/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0">The Pelican Brief</a>” and “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0473705/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0">State of Play</a>” journalists narrowly escape death. </p>
<p>But these domestic journalists weren’t killed by law enforcement or the military but by sinister people in the government or as a result of business cabals or organized crime. Television, meanwhile, <a href="https://www.vulture.com/2020/06/tv-cops-are-always-the-main-characters.html?utm_source=pocket-newtab">is saturated with images of cops as heroes</a>. </p>
<p>American studies scholar Jerome de Groot <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Consuming_History.html?id=73IkpYmgC5AC">has written</a> about how novels, movies and television shows offer “powerful models and paradigms” for understanding our shared past. </p>
<p>So it can be confusing and disturbing to see images that upend preconceived notions about American journalists – that overseas, they might be exposed, but here in America, they’ll be protected by the law.</p>
<p>The illusion has been shattered. As Dan Shelley, executive director of the Radio Television Digital News Association <a href="https://www.wthr.com/article/more-journalists-injured-covering-george-floyd-protests-1">explained</a>, the police “started deliberately attacking journalists who were clearly identifiable and identifying themselves as journalists. … To be a journalist in the Twin Cities last night, particularly in Minneapolis, if you were just arrested, you were lucky.”</p>
<p>Some <a href="https://www.poynter.org/newsletters/2020/attacks-on-media-covering-the-protests-are-simply-following-the-presidents-rhetoric/">have blamed</a> President Donald Trump’s broadsides against “fake news” and his rhetoric castigating the media as the “enemies of the people.” <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Hate_Inc.html?id=LTFRwgEACAAJ">Others say</a> many media outlets have ceded their role as serious news gatherers in favor of stoking sensationalism and division for profit, which has led to plummeting trust. </p>
<p>And though Trump has been notably virulent in his attacks on the news media, past presidents – including Barack Obama – haven’t always been champions of freedom of the press. Like Trump, Obama wanted to control the narrative, and during his two terms he used the 1917 Espionage Act to crack down on journalists and their sources <a href="https://theintercept.com/2016/04/06/obamas-gift-to-donald-trump-a-policy-of-cracking-down-on-journalists-and-their-sources/">by prosecuting more leakers and whistleblowers than all previous administrations combined</a>.</p>
<p>No matter the cause, I won’t be surprised if the movies catch up to the current moment, and films start to feature besieged journalists on American soil. </p>
<p>Their biggest threat won’t be a foreign power or a corporation or a mobster.</p>
<p>It’ll be their own government. </p>
<p>[<em>You’re smart and curious about the world. So are The Conversation’s authors and editors.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=youresmart">You can read us daily by subscribing to our newsletter</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/139838/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joe Saltzman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>For almost a century, American popular culture has perpetuated the idea that only journalists working in foreign countries could be in danger.Joe Saltzman, Professor of Journalism and Communication, USC Annenberg School for Communication and JournalismLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1147152019-04-12T10:40:59Z2019-04-12T10:40:59ZVenezuela’s crisis is a tragedy - but comedy gold for satire, cartoons and memes<p>Thirty-nine journalists have been <a href="https://cpj.org/blog/2019/03/venezuela-crisis-detained-journalist-weddle-maduro.php">detained</a> in Venezuela this year, far more than in <a href="https://cpj.org/reports/2018/12/journalists-jailed-imprisoned-turkey-china-egypt-saudi-arabia.php">any other Latin American country</a>, according to the Caracas-based Institute for Press and Society.</p>
<p>Their arrests are part of the government’s crackdown on journalists who report on the country’s escalating <a href="https://theconversation.com/venezuelas-power-struggle-reaches-a-tense-stalemate-as-human-suffering-deepens-114545">instability</a> as President Nicolás Maduro fights to retain power against the opposition’s internationally backed effort to oust him. </p>
<p>Local reporters have seen early morning <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/06/venezuela-journalist-cody-weddle-reports-caracas">raids of their homes</a>, arrests, rushed and legally questionable trials for charges of “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/12/venezuela-luis-carlos-diaz-journalist-taken-sebin">inciting violence</a>. They’ve been given verdicts ranging from <a href="https://cpj.org/2019/04/journalist-luis-carlos-diaz-released-from-detentio.php">self-censorship</a> to <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/venezuela-releases-german-journalist-billy-six-from-jail/a-47943133">jail time</a>. Several foreign reporters – including Univision TV anchor and U.S. citizen Jorge Ramos – have been <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/feb/25/jorge-ramos-univision-detained-venezuela-maduro-interview">deported</a> from Venezuela.</p>
<p>In this repressive environment, journalists are finding ways to <a href="https://intpolicydigest.org/2018/01/04/censorship-venezuela-fuels-social-media-growth/">avoid censorship</a> and still cover the country’s crisis. </p>
<p>Digital news sites and social media platforms, in particular, have become key platforms for informing the public. Using <a href="https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/mar/4/nicolas-maduro-media-control-censors-news-venezuel/">humorous memes</a> and <a href="https://qz.com/1282733/venezuela-under-maduro-the-crisis-as-told-by-its-version-of-the-onion/">political satire</a>, they publicize government abuses, protest daily humiliations like water shortages and blackouts and resist Maduro’s <a href="https://knightcenter.utexas.edu/blog/00-20426-venezuela-leads-latin-america-most-journalists-jailed-because-their-work-according-cpj">autocratic regime</a>.</p>
<h2>Laugh so you don’t cry</h2>
<p>Government pressure on the Venezuelan media dates back to the late <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Hugo-Chavez">President Hugo Chávez</a>, who took office in 1999. Over three administrations, Chávez used his power and immense popularity to chip away at the <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/03/31/venezuelas-crumbling-facade-democracy">separation of powers</a> and undermine press freedom.</p>
<p>Maduro has continued this tradition since <a href="https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2013/04/nicolas-maduro-hugo-chavez-s-handpicked-successor-declared-victory-in-venezuela.html">succeeding Chávez</a>, his political mentor, in 2013. He has also overseen Venezuela’s slide into humanitarian crisis, <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevehanke/2019/01/01/venezuelas-hyperinflation-hits-80000-per-year-in-2018/#67bce7e74572">economic collapse</a> and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/may/23/venezuela-dictator-democracy-nicolas-maduro-venezuelans">political chaos</a>. To quash protests, his government has turned <a href="https://www.hrw.org/report/2017/11/29/crackdown-dissent/brutality-torture-and-political-persecution-venezuela">increasingly authoritarian</a>, violently repressing dissent and silencing journalists. </p>
<p>Under such circumstances, Venezuela’s turn toward <a href="https://knightcenter.utexas.edu/blog/00-18674-make-humor-anger-satirical-news-reveals-absurd-venezuelan-politics">satirical news</a> recalls an old saying that’s grown popular in these difficult days: "Me río para no llorar” – laugh so you don’t cry.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/268691/original/file-20190410-2914-1cy7hb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/268691/original/file-20190410-2914-1cy7hb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/268691/original/file-20190410-2914-1cy7hb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268691/original/file-20190410-2914-1cy7hb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268691/original/file-20190410-2914-1cy7hb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268691/original/file-20190410-2914-1cy7hb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268691/original/file-20190410-2914-1cy7hb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268691/original/file-20190410-2914-1cy7hb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Several power outages in Venezuela have disabled electric water pumps, forcing people to fill up buckets of river water.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Week-That-Was-In-Latin-America-Photo-Gallery/5da464e9363549d7a2ccb67c4dc8dbab/73/0">AP Photo/Fernando Llano</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A satirical website called “El chigüire bipolar” – the bipolar capybara, a name that references a giant South American rodent – <a href="https://www.elnuevoherald.com/noticias/mundo/america-latina/venezuela-es/article148660919.html">recently won an international prize</a> for “creative dissidence.” </p>
<p>Its animated series, “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npUI1vOA_fI">La isla presidencial</a>,” “The Presidential Island,” which began in 2010, has Venezuela’s leftist strongman leader – <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DSqp_oO5-Y">first Hugo Chávez</a>, now Nicolás Maduro – stranded on a desert island with other presidents of Mexico, Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Nicaragua, Colombia and with the king of Spain. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/HNTnNWJK0cM?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The English language trailer for the Venezuelan web series ‘Presidential Island.’</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>“The Presidential Island” portrays Maduro as illiterate and overweight, a blundering simpleton who is overly proud of his mustache and incessantly invokes the late Hugo Chávez.</p>
<p>In <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PgPvcc6G2Co">one episode from the current season</a>, Maduro takes it upon himself to ration water during a drought. His poor handling of water distribution leads the other presidents to revolt. They find water sources of their own. </p>
<p>Maduro declares it a “coup d'etat” and insists that it’s all an “imperialist” plot – just as he has done during Venezuela’s repeated recent national blackouts.</p>
<p>Political cartoonists are another front of the Venezuelan media’s resistance to oppression by the Maduro regime. </p>
<p>Cartoonist and graphic artist Rayma Suprani was <a href="https://elpais.com/elpais/2014/09/22/inenglish/1411401634_302890.html">dismissed</a> from the national newspaper El Universal in 2014 after a drawing that mocked Maduro’s authority. She portrayed Chávez’s signature as a flatline on a hospital heart-rate monitor, as if to say, “Venezuela’s Socialist revolution is dead.” </p>
<p>Being fired didn’t stop Suprani from drawing. Today, her <a href="https://www.raymasuprani.com/">satirical cartoons</a> and drawings are widely circulated online, offering powerful visual depictions of the country’s always worsening news.</p>
<h2>Juan Guaidó, meme hero</h2>
<p>Venezuela has a long history of satire during times of political and economic crisis. </p>
<p>First published in 1892, “<a href="http://200.2.12.132/SVI/hemeroteca/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=292&Itemid=433">El cojo illustrado</a>” – “The Illustrated Cripple” – was a Venezuelan magazine that used satirical drawings and articles to address political topics without explicitly referring to the government in power. </p>
<p>During its 23 years in circulation, the publication skewered everything from current events to Venezuelan identity politics – always obliquely, using sly humor.</p>
<p>Today, stand-up comics are more explicit, using dark humor to expose the government’s policy missteps and predictable rhetoric.</p>
<p><a href="http://laureanomarquez.com/">Laureano Márquez</a>, a Venezuelan humorist, political scientist and author with 3.43 million <a href="https://twitter.com/laureanomar">Twitter followers</a>, irritates the government from the safety of Spain, where he now lives.</p>
<p>“Russia votes at UN against intervention in Venezuela,” he <a href="https://twitter.com/laureanomar/status/1101464632143810561">tweeted</a> on March 1. “Except if it’s Russian, Chinese or Cuban.” </p>
<p>Communist Russia, China and Cuba are the Maduro regime’s three most powerful international allies. More than 50 countries – including the United States, Colombia and Canada – back National Assembly leader Juan Guaidó’s bid to unseat the president.</p>
<p>Even Guaidó, who appears to have massive popular support for his challenge to Maduro, has also been the target of online ribbing in Venezuela. </p>
<p>On Jan. 22, security footage from the Hotel Lido in Caracas surfaced that appeared to show Guaidó <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-politics-video/under-pressure-over-video-venezuelas-guaido-says-met-officials-idUSKCN1PL00L">meeting with officials from the Maduro regime</a>. That would have been an unpopular move among opposition supporters. </p>
<p>But the grainy video simply showed an unidentified person wearing a baseball cap and gray hoodie, walking with his hands in his pockets, followed by Guaidó’s aide Roberto Marrero. It could be anyone, Guaidó’s supporters reasoned.</p>
<p>The hashtag <a href="https://noticiasya.com/2019/01/25/viral-de-que-trata-el-guaidochallenge/">#GuaidoChallenge</a> quickly went viral on Instagram as users posted photographs and videos of themselves, cartoon characters and random people posing in hats and hoodies. One Instagram user dressed up his dog in a hat and sweatshirt and quipped, “It’s a GuaiDog!” </p>
<p>Even former Florida Governor Jeb Bush and U.S. Senator <a href="https://www.instagram.com/marcorubiofla/p/BtGiQfbHaWb/">Marco Rubio</a> joined the #GuaidoChallenge. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="InstagramEmbed" data-react-props="{"url":"https://www.instagram.com/marcorubiofla/p/BtGiQfbHaWb","accessToken":"127105130696839|b4b75090c9688d81dfd245afe6052f20"}"></div></p>
<p>Guaidó eventually admitted that he had in fact meet with the Maduro regime, hoping to persuade them to hold a new presidential election. </p>
<p>That had been unacceptable to Maduro. The next day, Guaidó declared himself interim president of Venezuela, triggering the power struggle that has plunged the country into chaos. </p>
<p>There’s nothing funny about Venezuela’s tragedy. But humor is among the few ways Venezuelans have left to cope with their desperation and frustration. </p>
<p>They’re laughing, as the saying goes, so they don’t cry.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/114715/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Juan-Carlos Molleda is affiliated with Institute for Public Relations, as an academic trustee; with the LAGRANT Foundation, as a board member; with the HIV Alliance, as a board member; and with the Latin American Communication Monitor, as a co-director. </span></em></p>The rise of black comedy to explain Venezuela’s chaos recalls an old saying in the crisis-stricken South American country: ‘Laugh so you don’t cry.’Juan-Carlos Molleda, Edwin L. Artzt Dean and Professor, School of Journalism and Communication, University of OregonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/963932018-06-08T10:52:03Z2018-06-08T10:52:03ZMissing Saudi journalist a reminder that reporters worldwide face much worse than Trump’s tweets<p>President Donald Trump spoke with the ruler of Saudi Arabia on Oct. 16 about its role in the disappearance of the Saudi-born journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a Washington Post contributor and critic of Saudi leadership who appears to have been <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/world/middleeast/missing-saudi-journalist-jamal-khashoggi.html">killed in Turkey</a>. By late that day, <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/15/middleeast/saudi-khashoggi-death-turkey/index.html?utm_term=image&utm_medium=social&utm_content=2018-10-15T19%3A47%3A36&utm_source=twCNN">CNN reported</a>, the Saudi government was preparing a statement saying Khashoggi had died accidentally during an interrogation by Saudi officials.</p>
<p>Trump, an outspoken critic of journalists and their work, has repeatedly <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/26/business/media/stephen-bannon-trump-news-media.html">accused</a> the “mainstream media” of spreading “<a href="https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2018/05/23/leslie_stahl_trump_told_me_he_uses_term_fake_news_to_discredit_the_media.html">fake news</a>” and <a href="https://www.npr.org/2017/02/17/515630467/with-fake-news-trump-moves-from-alternative-facts-to-alternative-language">distorting information</a> about his administration.</p>
<p>These presidential attacks do not seem to be undermining press freedom in the United States. American journalists continue to scrutinize Trump’s every action and tweet without hesitation, serving as an effective <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0002716295537000010">watchdog of government and society</a>.</p>
<p>But Trump’s rhetoric may have more dangerous consequences abroad. </p>
<p>In January 2018, the independent nonprofit <a href="https://cpj.org/">Committee to Protect Journalists</a> awarded the president for “<a href="https://cpj.org/blog/2018/01/press-oppressor-awards-trump-fake-news-fakies.php">Overall Achievement in Undermining Global Press Freedom</a>,” saying that Trump “has consistently undermined domestic news outlets and declined to publicly raise freedom of press with repressive leaders.” </p>
<h2>Not number one</h2>
<p>As a <a href="https://www.libarts.colostate.edu/people/kkodrich/">journalism professor</a> and former reporter who studies <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=search_authors&mauthors=kris+kodrich&hl=en&oi=ao">international mass media</a>, I find the challenges facing U.S. journalists today disturbing. But, on a global scale, they are relatively minor.</p>
<p>The United States ranks 45th out of 180 countries in <a href="https://rsf.org/en">Reporters Without Borders’</a> 2018 <a href="https://rsf.org/en/ranking">World Press Freedom Index</a>, which measures pluralism, media independence, self-censorship, transparency and other conditions that support news production. </p>
<p>The ranking, published in April by the Paris-based not-for-profit, puts the U.S. well behind top-ranking Norway and Sweden and <a href="https://rsf.org/en/united-states">down two spots from 2017</a>, but still far from bottom-of-the-pack Syria, Turkmenistan, Eritrea and North Korea.</p>
<p>As I tell my students, the U.S. press system has its faults, including <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=K7NhhNVDG2cC&printsec=frontcover&dq=alex+jones&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj80-q-sbvbAhXI44MKHbNTCuMQ6AEIPTAE#v=onepage&q=alex%20jones&f=false">concentration of ownership by huge corporations</a>, which can homogenize national news, and continual <a href="https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=K09NAgAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PR9&dq=robert+mcchesney&ots=0wLlvvR8Lp&sig=2jgMsvJFfxo3uJrhJ1mExmectcM#v=onepage&q=robert%20mcchesney&f=false">cutbacks of resources</a>. </p>
<p>But they probably won’t <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=eOMbBgAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=william+hachten&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi2navjsbvbAhXj64MKHSDBAF0Q6AEITzAG#v=onepage&q=william%20hachten&f=false">have to worry about being threatened, jailed or killed</a> for doing their jobs.</p>
<h2>Mexico: Reporters beware</h2>
<p>That’s not true in Mexico, which has become the <a href="https://rsf.org/en/mexico">deadliest country in the Western Hemisphere for reporters</a>. </p>
<p>Mexican journalists, who face threats from everyone from drug cartels to government authorities, have been under siege for years. </p>
<p>Six journalists were <a href="https://cpj.org/data/killed/2017?status=Killed&motiveConfirmed%5B%5D=Confirmed&type%5B%5D=Journalist&cc_fips%5B%5D=MX&start_year=2017&end_year=2017&group_by=location">murdered in Mexico in 2017</a>, and <a href="https://cpj.org/data/killed/2018?status=Killed&motiveConfirmed%5B%5D=Confirmed&type%5B%5D=Journalist&cc_fips%5B%5D=MX&start_year=2018&end_year=2018&group_by=location">two have been killed so far in 2018</a>. </p>
<p>In March, unknown assailants shot Veracruz crime reporter <a href="https://cpj.org/data/people/leobardo-vazquez-atzin/index.php">Leobardo Vázquez Atzin</a> at his own restaurant in a town east of Mexico City. A month before, the 26-year-old magazine satirist and political columnist Pamela Montenegro was <a href="https://cpj.org/data/people/leslie-ann-pamela-montenegro-del-real/index.php">killed in Acapulco</a>. </p>
<p>Reporters Without Borders <a href="https://rsf.org/en/ranking">ranks Mexico 147th</a> in this year’s Press Freedom Index. </p>
<h2>North Korea: Worst in show</h2>
<p>In <a href="https://rsf.org/en/north-korea">dead last place</a> on the list is totalitarian North Korea, whose leader, Kim Jong Un, may <a href="https://www.vox.com/world/2018/6/6/17431264/trump-kim-jong-un-north-korea-summit">soon meet Trump</a> in a highly anticipated summit in Singapore. </p>
<p>In North Korea, the state-run Korean Central News Agency provides the only news that citizens are permitted to watch. The regime uses technology to control all domestic communications, including what goes out over the national intranet. There is <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-37426725">no real internet</a>.</p>
<p>Citizens caught accessing information from outside the country can be <a href="https://rsf.org/en/north-korea">sent to concentration camps</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://rsf.org/en/news/international-campaign-support-independent-north-korean-media">No independent journalism exists within North Korea’s borders</a>. </p>
<p>The international democracy watchdog Freedom House gives it the lowest score in its <a href="https://freedomhouse.org/report/table-country-scores-fotp-2017">Freedom of the Press index</a>. </p>
<h2>Russia: Jail time and assassinations</h2>
<p>Russia, which ranks 148th in Reporters Without Borders’ global index, is a bad place for people who value independent, hard-hitting news. </p>
<p>Stories <a href="https://rsf.org/en/russia">critical of President Vladimir Putin and his allies</a> will often land a reporter in jail. <a href="https://cpj.org/data/imprisoned/2017/?status=Imprisoned&start_year=2017&end_year=2017&group_by=location">Five journalists were imprisoned in 2017</a>, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. In early June a Russian court <a href="https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/ukrainian-journalist-jailed-for-12-years-by-russia-on-espionage-charge-1862406">sentenced a Ukrainian journalist to 12 years in prison</a> on espionage charges, which his lawyers said were politically motivated. </p>
<p>Not infrequently, Russian journalists are also killed as a result of their work. In 2017, <a href="https://cpj.org/data/people/dmitry-popkov/index.php">the editor of an independent newspaper in Siberia</a> – who was known for reporting on corruption – was found dead in his backyard with five bullet wounds. Another St. Petersburg journalist who exposed police brutality <a href="https://cpj.org/data/people/nikolai-andrushchenko/index.php">was beaten and died weeks later in the hospital</a>.</p>
<h2>Philippines: Presidential threats</h2>
<p>Four reporters were killed in the Philippines last year – the most of any Asian country.</p>
<p>The government of President Rodrigo Duterte has pressured journalists through such means as licensing and public criticism. Before he was sworn in as president in 2016, Duterte also issued the <a href="https://rsf.org/en/philippines">grim warning</a> that “Just because you’re a journalist, you are not exempted from assassination.” </p>
<p>In April 2018, radio journalist Edmund Sestoso died after being <a href="https://cpj.org/2018/05/radio-reporter-killed-in-the-philippines.php">shot by an unidentified gunman</a>. Authorities have <a href="https://rsf.org/en/news/rsf-condemns-fatal-shooting-philippine-radio-journalist">said</a> his murder may have been connected to his work as a journalist. </p>
<p>Trump’s <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/13/world/asia/trump-duterte-philippines.html">praise of Duterte</a> – with whom he says he has a “<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-boasts-of-great-relationship-with-philippines-duterte-at-first-formal-meeting/2017/11/13/e6612f14-c813-11e7-b0cf-7689a9f2d84e_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.3d5957b12695">great relationship</a>” – offers a tacit endorsement of this hard-line regime.</p>
<p>The Philippines <a href="https://rsf.org/en/philippines">ranks 133rd of 180 on the global press index</a>.</p>
<h2>Turkey: Worst jailer of reporters worldwide</h2>
<p>Reporters in Turkey are more likely to end up in jail than journalists in virtually any other country in the world. </p>
<p>Last year, Turkey locked up 73 journalists on charges that included disseminating terrorist propaganda and other anti-state activities. As a result, it dropped two spots on the <a href="https://rsf.org/en/turkey">2018 World Press Freedom Index</a>, from 155th to 157th. </p>
<p>The Committee to Protect Journalists awarded President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan two prizes this year: “Most Outrageous Use of Terror Laws Against the Press” and “Most Thin-Skinned” leader. </p>
<p>“Turkish authorities have repeatedly charged journalists, news outlets, and social media users for insulting Erdoğan, insulting other Turkish leaders, and insulting <a href="https://cpj.org/blog/2018/01/press-oppressor-awards-trump-fake-news-fakies.php">‘Turkishness’ in general</a>,” the group says. The Turkish judicial system heard 46,000 cases along those lines in just one year. </p>
<p>President Trump was runner-up in that “thin-skinned” category because of his threats to reconsider libel laws and sue news outlets. </p>
<p>Will freedom of the press endure his regular attacks on <a href="https://cpj.org/blog/2018/01/press-oppressor-awards-trump-fake-news-fakies.php">journalism</a>? I believe it will, but reporters and First Amendment defenders alike should keep a close watch on this president.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/96393/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kris Kodrich has participated in the past in Reporters Without Borders surveys distributed to academics, journalists and others concerning levels of threats to press freedom in the United States.</span></em></p>Trump may rhetorically attack the media, but the US still ranks 45th of 180 countries in terms of press freedom. North Korea ranks last. And Mexico is the world’s most dangerous place for reporters.Kris Kodrich, Associate Professor of Journalism & Media Communication, Colorado State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/941902018-04-10T13:21:35Z2018-04-10T13:21:35ZWhy Iraqi Kurdistan could be on the brink of revolution<p>After years of misrule and repression, the people of Iraqi Kurdistan have had enough. In March 2018, protesters began taking to the streets to demand deep reforms from a government they can no longer tolerate. Led by teachers, university lecturers, doctors and the like, and including large numbers of women, these peaceful demonstrations soon spread across the region. </p>
<p>They began when the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) drastically cut public sector salaries in the name of reform – but there are deeper issues at work in Iraqi Kurdistan. 15 years after the US-led invasion <a href="https://theconversation.com/i-lived-through-saddam-husseins-fall-and-the-horror-that-came-next-94522">toppled Saddam Hussein</a>, the region is plagued by unresolved internal political struggles that have arisen from what protesters call the KRG’s undemocratic, unconstitutional and illegal actions.</p>
<p>Iraqi Kurdish politics reached a critical point in September 2017, when the Kurdish region held a long-awaited independence referendum. The KRG and the then-president of the Kurdistan region, <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2012/12/14/world/meast/massoud-barzani---fast-facts/index.html">Masoud Barzani</a>, used the referendum to dispel a mood of dissatisfaction and indignation by stirring up a hopeful Kurdish nationalism and dreams of nationhood, something in which all Kurds are invested. But the hopes they raised have since been dashed: despite an <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/sep/27/over-92-of-iraqs-kurds-vote-for-independence">overwhelming vote for independence from Baghdad</a>, Iraqi Kurdistan seems no closer to full statehood than before.</p>
<p>As the referendum’s promise faded, attention turned back to the failures of the Kurdish ruling elite. The KRG is dominated by two nepotistic ruling parties, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (<a href="https://thekurdishproject.org/history-and-culture/kurdish-democracy/kdp-kurdistan-democratic-party/">KDP</a>) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (<a href="https://thekurdishproject.org/history-and-culture/kurdish-nationalism/puk-patriotic-union-of-kurdistan/">PUK</a>). The two have been <a href="http://www.newsweek.com/war-iraq-oil-trump-saddam-hussein-kurds-kurdish-erbil-isis-islamic-state-791771">siphoning off oil revenue</a> since the inception of the KRG. Their corrupt misrule has financially crippled Iraqi Kurdistan; they govern the region undemocratically, and in defiance of the values of the 2005 Constitution of Iraq. Both parties control their own security forces, and both have <a href="http://carnegieendowment.org/2015/12/16/kurdistan-s-political-armies-challenge-of-unifying-peshmerga-forces-pub-61917">abused them for political ends</a>.</p>
<h2>Dirty politics</h2>
<p>To take one example, in 2015, the KDP used its personal security forces to obstruct its rivals from government buildings. Parliament Speaker Yousif Mohammed, a member of the main rival opposition party <a href="https://thekurdishproject.org/history-and-culture/kurdish-nationalism/gorran-movement-for-change/">Gorran</a>, was prevented from entering Iraqi Kurdistan’s capital city, Erbil; other Gorran ministers were <a href="http://www.iraqoilreport.com/news/krg-ruling-party-ejects-rivals-escalating-political-crisis-16709/">blocked from entering government buildings</a>. The incident saw the region’s parliament <a href="http://www.rudaw.net/english/kurdistan/100920171">closed for nearly two years</a>.</p>
<p>A few years later, the KRG is still incompetent and stubborn. It introduced its new austerity measures despite the fact that civil service salaries had not been paid in full since July 2015. The KRG had hitherto blamed Iraq’s central government for the ongoing wage crisis, accusing Baghdad of withholding the Kurdish region’s <a href="https://uk.reuters.com/article/kurds-iraq/baghdad-money-squeeze-tests-limits-of-iraqi-kurdistans-autonomy-idUKL6N0MC03S20140317">required 17% budget allocation</a>. </p>
<p>For its part, the Iraqi government accused the KRG of corruption, stating that its oil revenues should be <a href="http://www.rudaw.net/english/middleeast/iraq/040120175">sufficient to cover civil servant salaries</a>. Baghdad even <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/mideast-crisis-iraq-abadi/iraqi-pm-offers-to-pay-kurds-salaries-in-exchange-for-oil-idINKCN0VO2D3">offered to pay the outstanding civil salaries</a> in return for taking control of the oil revenues in the region. The Iraqi prime minister, Haider al-Abadi, called on the KRG to release data on its finances, pointing out that his government shares its figures with the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.</p>
<p>The latest protests are part of a bottom-up movement for change since 2011 – one that’s met with not just government intransigence, but violent repression.</p>
<h2>Iron fists</h2>
<p>While Iraq’s 2005 constitution protects freedom of speech, the reality of everyday life in Kurdistan falls far short. Those who dissent, whether in print or in the street, are targeted and often killed.</p>
<p>Journalists who criticise the KRG have been attacked and in some cases killed in the Kurdistan region. Amnesty International called for investigations into the deaths of journalists by the KRG in <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/reg01/003/2011/en/">2011</a>, and <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/mde14/023/2013/en/">2013</a>. In <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/mde14/2711/2015/en/">2015</a> it also requested that in addition to investigating deaths of journalists, armed political party militias should also be investigated. This was also the case in <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/mde14/4764/2016/en/">2016</a> and <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/mde14/7460/2017/en/">2017</a>. </p>
<p>The UN Human Rights office of the High Commission recorded unfair imprisonments and killings of journalists in their year-end reports of <a href="http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Countries/IQ/IraqUNAMI-OHCHR_HR_Report2011_en.pdf">2011</a>, <a href="http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Countries/IQ/HRO_July-December2012Report.pdf">2012</a>, <a href="http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Countries/IQ/HRO_July-December2013Report_en.pdf">2013</a> (featuring the big case of the death of <a href="https://www.alaraby.co.uk/english/comment/2016/8/17/atrocities-against-journalists-undermine-global-reputation-of-the-kurds">Kawa Garmyani</a>, who was gunned down in front of his mother for his anti-corruption journalism) and <a href="http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Countries/IQ/HRO_Jan-Jun2014Report_en.pdf">2014</a>.</p>
<p>Over the years, KRG security forces have violently attacked and killed many protesters demanding an end to corruption. In 2011 alone, <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/press-releases/2011/04/iraqi-authorities-must-halt-attacks-protesters/">ten people died in protests</a> that lasted 62 days. Among them was 15-year-old Rezhwan Ali, who was shot in the head when security services fired live rounds into the protesting crowds. On February 17 2012, around 200 peaceful demonstrators and protesters were <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2013/02/09/iraqi-kurdistan-free-speech-under-attack">approached by civilian-clothed security services</a> who violently attacked them with batons, while KDP security forces watched without intervening. In <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2015/10/21/iraqi-kurdistan-ruling-party-forces-fire-protesters">2015</a> and <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/03/30/iraq/kurdistan-region-iraq-troops-shot-protesters">2017</a>, the security service opened fire on protesters again. </p>
<p>But memories of these incidents haven’t quelled the protests; instead, they have fuelled them. With two failed ruling parties, violent repression of dissent, no democracy or justice, and a redundant constitution, it’s no wonder the Kurdish region’s residents are up in arms. To try and defuse the crisis, the opposition leaders of Gorran have called for <a href="http://www.rudaw.net/english/kurdistan/201220174">free and fair parliamentary and presidential elections</a>. The corrupt and ruthless KRG is hardly amenable – but if the crisis isn’t immediately addressed, then a full-scale revolution could be on the cards.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/94190/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Bamo Nouri does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Saddled with a repressive government that cuts their wages in the name of austerity, Iraq’s Kurds are demanding something better.Bamo Nouri, Research Associate, City, University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/850262017-10-31T11:11:55Z2017-10-31T11:11:55ZIraq’s rushed and divisive constitution was always doomed to fail<p>Iraqi democracy hasn’t come far since 2003. The outside powers who invaded, occupied and eventually departed left the country with a political system democratic on paper, but profoundly flawed in practice – and that failure is not an accident of history. This is the inevitable effect of the rushed and poorly written <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/12/AR2005101201450.html">Iraqi Constitution of 2005</a>.</p>
<p>Almost 12 years since it was ratified and approved, the constitution is, in short, an abject failure. It has failed to deliver on the promises of human rights, freedom and democratic integrity, the very values invoked to justify first the US-led invasion and then the construction of a new government. Its vagueness has been taken advantage of. Its lack of provisions has been manipulated, and sectarian divisions have been exacerbated, resulting in a fractured and chaotic country. </p>
<p>The constitution is a highly divisive text. The first ever official document in Iraq’s history to enshrine ethnic differences into law, its drafters hoped to achieve national unity by having all sects participate in government and public life. To do so, they created a system that allocates public sector roles based on sect and ethnicity. To this day, this principle permeates all Iraq’s institutions from the central government downwards.</p>
<p>The result is a climate of nepotism and clientalism, in which uneducated, unqualified and corruption-prone individuals take key posts that ultimately affect the lives of millions of Iraqis. These individuals are only making Iraq’s shortcomings worse, and paralysing its politics. They are not competing to advance the nation, but instead engaged in the sectarian warfare that pervades civic life from top to bottom. </p>
<p>These are the same corrosive forces, corrupt decisions and misguided policies that <a href="http://time.com/3900753/isis-iraq-syria-army-united-states-military/">contributed</a> to the rise of the so-called Islamic State in 2014 – and the parties responsible are rarely, if ever, held accountable.</p>
<h2>Hopes dashed</h2>
<p>One of the ways the constitution tried to balance the concerns of different groups was by giving regional governments a good deal of local control. As with other of its noble aims, some of the ways it tried to do this have backfired badly. </p>
<p>Under articles 115, 121 and 126 of the constitution, where regional and national legislation contradict each other on matters outside exclusive federal authority, the regional power has the right to amend the application of the national legislation within that region. In practice, these ambiguous provisions mean that when it comes to making and implementing policy, regional governments can do as they please. </p>
<p>The unpleasant implications are particularly visible in Kurdistan, which is host to an unaccountable, ruthless and very manipulative political class of two dominant parties. Just like the government in Baghdad, the authorities in Kurdistan variously obstruct, manipulate and regulate their political opposition as they see fit. And regardless of the suffering and tough ordeals that Iraqis living in the Kurdish region face, Baghdad is hard pressed to intervene until things reach a dangerous peak.</p>
<p>Sure enough, on September 25 2017, after 14 years of failed dialogue, the Kurdish Region of Iraq held a referendum for statehood through independence from Iraq. The vote will hardly settle the question of Kurdistan’s future, but that it was held at all is a sign that the federal system has failed.</p>
<p>What happened next was even worse. After more than 92% voted “yes” to statehood, the Iraqi prime minister, Haider Al-Abadi, called in the Iranian <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-iraq-security-iran-insight/irans-elite-guards-fighting-in-iraq-to-push-back-islamic-state-idUSKBN0G30GE20140803">Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps</a> and Iraq’s <a href="http://carnegie-mec.org/2017/04/28/popular-mobilization-forces-and-iraq-s-future-pub-68810">Popular Mobilisation Forces</a>, an umbrella group of militias, to take back the historically disputed Kurdish capital, Kirkuk, from Kurdish Peshmerga forces. </p>
<p>The offensive displaced hundreds of thousands of Sunnis and Kurds; many of their homes were looted and destroyed. The fighters who turfed them out carried both Iraqi and Shia flags, a sign that national security is increasingly left up to sectarianised religious militias. And even though Al-Abadi ostensibly deployed these forces to curb Kurdistan’s secessionist aims, his move will do more to divide Iraq than to protect the integrity of its borders. </p>
<h2>Silenced and crushed</h2>
<p>All the while, Iraqi political life remains in a sad state of violent repression. The constitution’s framers had high hopes for the security of civil society, but in vain. </p>
<p>While article 38 of the constitution protects freedom of speech, as far as the civilian population and journalists are concerned, it might as well never have been drafted. Those who dissent, in print or in the street, are targeted and often killed. Since 2005, numerous organisations have documented consistent violations of constitutional rights: <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2013/08/iraqi-authorities-must-not-block-peaceful-protests/">Amnesty International</a>, <a href="https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2017/country-chapters/iraq#5b498e">Human Rights Watch</a>, the <a href="https://www.state.gov/documents/organization/265710.pdf">US Department of State</a>, the <a href="http://www.uniraq.org/index.php?option=com_k2&view=itemlist&layout=category&task=category&id=161&Itemid=626&lang=en">UN Assistance Mission for Iraq</a> and the <a href="http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Countries/IQ/IraqUNAMI-OHCHR_HR_Report2011_en.pdf">Office for the High Commissioner for Human Rights</a> have all have reported extensively on violations of freedom of press, expression and peaceful assembly.</p>
<p>More than a decade after it was invaded in the name of spreading democracy, Iraq is a democratic state only on paper, and even the letter of the law is questionable. It’s time for the same outside forces that helped create this new order to help Iraq through this most critical period. In the meantime, the next generation of Iraqis are watching their hopes for a better country wither away.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/85026/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Bamo Nouri does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A decade and a half after it was invaded in the name of spreading democracy, Iraq turns out to have been set up to fail.Bamo Nouri, Research associate, City, University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/699592017-01-16T04:44:49Z2017-01-16T04:44:49ZWhat does Trump’s election mean for digital freedom of speech?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/152720/original/image-20170113-11803-9i24i1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/man-covering-his-mouth-hand-imprint-513537250">Via shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>As the shock of Donald Trump’s election victory is giving way to analysis about <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/topics/2016-us-presidential-election-23653">how his presidency will affect Americans’ lives</a>, our digital freedom of speech deserves special consideration. The ability to express ourselves freely is a fundamental right guaranteed to us all.</p>
<p>There are three major elements that determine how free we are in our online expression: The press must be <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/first_amendment">free to publish</a> anything newsworthy about public officials without fear of serious reprisals. Online communications must be able to reach broad audiences <a href="http://www.theverge.com/2017/1/13/14266168/tom-wheeler-final-speech-net-neutrality-defense">without discrimination by internet service providers</a>. And the government <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/fourth_amendment">must not be able to spy indiscriminately</a> on ordinary law-abiding Americans.</p>
<p>Before and during the campaign, Trump made pronouncements that suggest deep and widespread implications for digital freedom of speech if those ideas end up guiding his administration. As a scholar of digital communication, I am concerned about what he and his administration will do once in office. Trump’s actions could result in weaker protections for our free press, less competition and higher prices for online consumers, certain forms of online censorship and a return to an intrusive online surveillance regime. The public must prepare to stand up to oppose these infringements on our rights.</p>
<h2>Attacking the press</h2>
<p>During his presidential bid, Donald Trump ran as much against the press as against his Republican primary opponents and Hillary Clinton. This was despite the fact that many press outlets were only doing what they usually do during campaigns: scrutinize both parties’ front-runners and nominees.</p>
<p>Most candidates simply grin and bear the ritual press grillings, but not Trump. He showed an <a href="http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2016/10/why-is-trumps-skin-so-much-thinner-than-clintons.html">unusually thin skin</a> for a presidential contender, directly attacking the press during raucous rallies and routinely <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2016/06/13/trump-washington-post-banned-list/85842316/">banning certain news outlets</a> from covering his campaign.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Y2vozC_kP6Q?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Donald Trump attacks the media in this CNN clip.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But he also went beyond even these extraordinary steps, suggesting that he would <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/news/why-donald-trump-wants-to-change-libel-laws/">“open up” libel laws</a> to make it easier for public figures to sue news outlets: “[W]hen people write incorrectly about you and you can prove that they wrote incorrectly, we’re going to get them through the court system to change and we’re going to get them to pay damages,” said Trump.</p>
<p>This is, in fact, what <a href="http://www.rcfp.org/digital-journalists-legal-guide/libel">current libel law</a> already allows. Strikingly, Trump has combined his seeming ignorance of libel law (despite his many years in the public eye) with a sense that today’s existing restrictions on the press are too loose. This suggests that he may seek to enshrine in law or policy his particular animosity toward the press.</p>
<p>He also has been willing to attack any and all critics, including <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/this-is-what-happens-when-donald-trump-attacks-a-private-citizen-on-twitter/2016/12/08/a1380ece-bd62-11e6-91ee-1adddfe36cbe_story.html">private citizens</a>. Combined, these elements raise questions about the degree, if any, to which Trump values freedom of the press, digital or otherwise. </p>
<p>His Cabinet appointments do not inspire confidence in his support of this principle, either. During his confirmation hearing, Trump’s nominee for attorney general, Sen. Jeff Sessions, <a href="http://www.politico.com/blogs/on-media/2017/01/sessions-not-sure-whether-he-would-prosecute-journalists-233431">dodged questions</a> about his willingness to prosecute journalists based on their reporting, including handling leaks from government employees. He has also <a href="http://www.rcfp.org/reporters-committee-releases-report-attorney-general-nominee-jeff-sessions">opposed a federal shield law</a> that would protect journalists against such prosecutions.</p>
<h2>Threatening an open internet</h2>
<p>Network neutrality was not a hot topic during this presidential election, but that may change during a Trump administration.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"532608358508167168"}"></div></p>
<p>During the <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/net-neutrality">debate over net neutrality</a> in 2014, <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/532608358508167168?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">Trump tweeted</a> that the policy was a “top down power grab” that would “target conservative media.” He appears to have conflated net neutrality’s nondiscrimination principle with the now-defunct <a href="http://www.museum.tv/eotv/fairnessdoct.htm">Fairness Doctrine</a>. That policy, discontinued in 1987, required broadcasters to devote equal time to opposing views about controversial public issues. It’s hard to know which is more worrying: his early antipathy toward net neutrality, or his objections despite not knowing what it actually means.</p>
<p>Whatever Trump himself understands, his appointments look like bad news for supporters of an open internet. President-elect Trump has <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-fcc-idUSKBN13H02B">named Jeffrey Eisenach and Mark Jamison</a> to oversee the transition at the Federal Communications Commission, which oversees internet communications policy. Both are <a href="https://www.aei.org/scholar/jeffrey-eisenach/">staff members</a> at the conservative <a href="https://www.aei.org/scholar/mark-jamison-2/">American Enterprise Institute</a> and <a href="http://warrington.ufl.edu/centers/purc/docs/bio_MarkJamison.pdf">former lobbyists</a> for <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/12/us/politics/trump-campaigned-against-lobbyists-now-theyre-on-his-transition-team.html">major telecommunications companies</a>. Both are also <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/11/29/donald-trump-s-transition-team-wants-to-end-net-neutrality.html">vocal opponents of net neutrality</a>. Also on his FCC transition team are Roslyn Layton, <a href="http://thehill.com/policy/technology/307924-trump-taps-another-net-neutrality-critic-for-fcc-transition">another staff member at AEI and vocal net neutrality opponent</a>, and <a href="http://fortune.com/2016/12/29/trump-fcc-morken-net-neutrality/">North Carolina telecom entrepreneur David Morken</a>. </p>
<p>Morken is not on record as opposing net neutrality, but so far its supporters seem outnumbered. Those signs suggest that a Trump administration could enable an internet where wealthy people and companies can afford to distribute their content everywhere quickly, while regular people and small businesses can’t attract an audience or deliver content efficiently.</p>
<h2>Perpetuating the surveillance state</h2>
<p>During the campaign, candidate Trump supported <a href="http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/261673-trump-sides-with-rubio-over-cruz-in-nsa-surveillance">keeping or restoring the NSA’s secret surveillance programs</a>, which former agency contractor <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/the-nsa-files">Edward Snowden revealed in 2013</a>. Those programs, with a <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-nsa-surveillance-idUSKCN0HO1YQ20140929">questionable legal basis</a>, collected <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/06/nsa-phone-records-verizon-court-order">internet and telephone communications</a> from all Americans, <a href="http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/11/29/457779757/nsa-ends-sept-11th-era-surveillance-program">storing them in a massive government database</a>.</p>
<p>Although Congress <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/14/us/house-votes-to-end-nsas-bulk-phone-data-collection.html?_r=0">voted across partisan lines to eliminate these programs</a> in 2015, Trump’s election may help revive them. He has named Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-Kansas), a supporter of the NSA surveillance programs Congress eliminated, as the <a href="http://www.sfchronicle.com/nation/article/Trump-s-CIA-pick-would-reinstate-US-collection-10628986.php">next CIA director</a>. </p>
<p>The programs are <a href="http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/05/29/what-americans-think-about-nsa-surveillance-national-security-and-privacy/">unpopular with Americans</a>: It is perhaps no coincidence that interest in technologies that would make government surveillance more difficult, such as <a href="http://www.theverge.com/2016/11/11/13603000/protonmail-encrypted-email-service-donald-trump-nsa-surveillance">encrypted email</a> and <a href="http://fortune.com/2016/12/02/donald-trump-signal-app/">encrypted instant messaging apps</a>, has surged since Trump’s election.</p>
<h2>How successful could Trump be?</h2>
<p>We are not necessarily doomed to lose our digital freedom of speech. As with any public policy question, the answer is more complicated. Should Trump begin to wage on a full-fledged assault on digital expression, the degree to which he can succeed may be limited.</p>
<p>One factor is his ability to navigate the extremely complex and time-consuming obstacle course that is the American system of government. With its separation of powers, bicameral legislature, multiple layers of jurisdiction and <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/194257?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">endless veto points</a>, the American system strongly favors inertia over just about any course of action.</p>
<p>But a highly motivated president with an authoritarian streak could potentially cut through this inertia by, for example, embracing a <a href="http://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=12368&context=journal_articles">strong unitary executive</a> view of the presidency.</p>
<p>When the public gets involved, even seemingly entrenched plans can be derailed, or even reversed. For example, a mass of public involvement (with a little assistance from <a href="https://www.cnet.com/news/john-olivers-net-neutrality-rallying-cry-swamps-fcc/">comedian John Oliver</a>) <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2015-02-26/how-john-oliver-transformed-the-net-neutrality-debate-once-and-for-all">transformed the initial net neutrality debate</a>.</p>
<p>This power the public holds – if it chooses to wield it – can be used in two ways: First, it can resist unwelcome changes, by reinforcing the political tendency toward inertia and the status quo. And second, it can drive policymakers to better serve the public who employ them. It’s unclear at present which tactic protecting our digital freedom of speech will require – or whether we’ll need both. In American politics, elections may have consequences, but they’re never the end of the story.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/69959/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Luis Hestres does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The public must prepare to stand up for a free press, and against online censorship and surveillance.Luis Hestres, Assistant Professor of Digital Communication, The University of Texas at San AntonioLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/600972016-05-30T01:00:40Z2016-05-30T01:00:40ZDoes billionaire-funded lawsuit against Gawker create playbook for punishing press?<p>Word <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/ryanmac/2016/05/24/this-silicon-valley-billionaire-has-been-secretly-funding-hulk-hogans-lawsuits-against-gawker/#65c83d867805">last week</a> that Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/26/business/dealbook/peter-thiel-tech-billionaire-reveals-secret-war-with-gawker.html">bankrolled</a> wrestler Hulk Hogan’s invasion-of-privacy <a href="http://www.latimes.com/nation/nationnow/la-na-gawker-hulk-hogan-motion-denied-20160525-snap-story.html">lawsuit</a> against Gawker added a wrinkle to a case already featuring <a href="https://theconversation.com/gawker-and-first-amendment-may-receive-body-blow-from-another-thin-skinned-wrestler-44179">colorful characters</a> and a US$140 million jury verdict. </p>
<p>At a sensational and personal level, the story highlights the animus between PayPal co-founder Thiel and Gawker founder Nick Denton stemming from a 2007 <a href="http://gawker.com/335894/peter-thiel-is-totally-gay-people">gossip item</a> that publicly outed Thiel as gay. Thiel sees Denton as “<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/26/business/dealbook/peter-thiel-tech-billionaire-reveals-secret-war-with-gawker.html">a singularly terrible bully</a>” who invades privacy for profit. In turn, Denton sympathetically portrays Gawker, in an <a href="http://gawker.com/an-open-letter-to-peter-thiel-1778991227">open letter</a> to Thiel, as “a small New York media company” being bullied by a man with “a net worth of more than $2 billion.”</p>
<p>But regardless of whether it’s framed as a personal battle between Thiel and Denton or a larger one between protecting privacy and a free press, the revelation raises important questions about third-party financed litigation targeting U.S. news media outlets that are safeguarded under the <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/first_amendment">First Amendment</a>.</p>
<p>Most importantly, should third-party-funded litigation against news organizations be banned by lawmakers? This is the kind of issue I explore at the <a href="http://firstamendment.jou.ufl.edu">Marion B. Brechner First Amendment Project</a> at the University of Florida, which I’ve directed for the past six years, and in my book about <a href="http://www.suffolk.es/documents/jhtl_book_reviews/murray03.pdf">privacy</a> and articles about various threats to a <a href="http://digitalcommons.lmu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1493&context=elr">free press</a>. </p>
<h2>Threats to a free press</h2>
<p>The fear from First Amendment advocates in the press advocates is palpable. They see Thiel as creating a playbook for other billionaires and millionaires to take on and silence members of the news media. As Vox correspondent Timothy B. Lee <a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/5/26/11772856/peter-thiel-gawker-war">writes</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The threat to freedom of the press is obvious. Any news organization doing its job is going to make some enemies. If a wealthy third party is willing to bankroll lawsuits by anyone with a grudge, and defending each case costs millions of dollars, the organization could get driven out of business even if it wins every single lawsuit. </p>
</blockquote>
<p><a href="http://fortune.com/2016/05/25/thiel-gawker/">Others agree</a> that Thiel has “created a model where any thin-skinned billionaire can ruin a media company without even telling anyone.”</p>
<p>In other words, billionaires who feel they have been libeled or had their privacy invaded by a news organization can score legal victories against the press via third-party funding of lawsuits in one of two different ways. </p>
<p>First, the sheer fear of such lawsuits may result in self-censorship by news organizations who choose not to criticize a wealthy individual rather than risk fighting a potentially expensive and protracted legal battle. </p>
<p>Second, even if such a chilling effect does not occur and a critical story actually is published, the costs of defending a lawsuit arising from it can be enormous. </p>
<h2>Leveling the playing field</h2>
<p>Indeed, Thiel has been villainized in some media quarters for his “<a href="http://mashable.com/2016/05/26/gawker-thiel-hogan-future-media-intimidation/#tIw6JcbaUaqs">cloak-and-dagger tactics</a>” and <a href="http://www.wired.com/2016/05/three-cheers-for-peter-thiel/">satirized</a> in others since it was discovered he funded Hogan’s lawsuit. </p>
<p>Denton blasts Thiel as someone who, “despite all the success and public recognition that a person could dream of, seethes over criticism and plots behind the scenes to tie up his opponents in litigation he can afford better than they.” </p>
<p>But has Thiel broken any laws? Apparently not. Professor Eugene Kontorovich of Northwestern University, for example, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2016/05/26/peter-thiels-funding-of-hulk-hogan-gawker-litigation-should-not-raise-concerns/">emphasizes</a> that what Thiel did “is well within the parameters of third-party involvement in lawsuits.” </p>
<p>In fact, some scholars <a href="http://mobile.nytimes.com/2010/11/15/business/15lawsuit.html">contend</a> that third-party financing of plaintiff lawsuits actually represents “another step in leveling the playing field between plaintiffs and defendants.” </p>
<p>Why might that be true in a libel or privacy case against the news media? Because most plaintiffs’ attorneys in such cases work on a contingency fee basis. That puts plaintiffs at a disadvantage because it means their lawyers collect money down the road only if they win – aside from, perhaps, a modest retainer upfront to cover the initial costs of getting the case going. </p>
<p>Rather than billing clients by the hour, as media defense attorneys do, plaintiffs’ attorneys in libel and privacy cases thus take a large financial risk that they may not collect any money if they lose. This, in turn, may make them less likely to take such a case in the first place.</p>
<h2>Nobility of purpose?</h2>
<p>The practice of <a href="http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/champerty">champerty</a>, in which a person or company steps in to help fund a case in return for a cut of the potential payoff, thus allows some lawsuits to go forward that otherwise might not because an attorney doesn’t want to take on the cost or the risk of not recovering anything.</p>
<p>Thiel’s lawsuit distorts this concept because he does not seek money but rather has a personal motive. Thus, at least one major litigation funding firm, <a href="http://www.burfordcapital.com/blog-hulk-hogans-litigation-funding-isnt-burford-style-litigation-funding/">Burford Capital</a>, has distanced itself from the current fracas. As CEO Chris Bogart notes in a blog posting: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>What Burford and other commercial litigation financiers do is part of a large and pretty boring business around commercial litigation – businesses suing each other… That world is miles away from professional wrestling, sex tapes and “revenge litigation.” We don’t have anything to do with that other, more salacious world. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Third-party litigation funding by the likes of Burford Capital is far from rare today and, <a href="http://www.cardozolawreview.com/content/36-3/SHANNON.36.3.pdf">in fact</a>, “is prevalent in litigation and arbitration both domestically and internationally.”</p>
<p>Had, however, Thiel been funding a lawsuit for a more noble cause – one not for revenge against an entity that is part of the media – we might see it differently. As First Amendment defense attorney Marc Randazza <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2016/05/26/opinions/peter-thiel-gawker-hulk-hogan-randazza/">observes</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>When the ACLU represents a party in an important civil rights case, isn’t that a third party funding a case to promote an agenda? What about the NRA? It happens all the time. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Northwestern’s Kontorovich <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2016/05/26/peter-thiels-funding-of-hulk-hogan-gawker-litigation-should-not-raise-concerns/">concurs</a>, noting that “anyone who donates to the ACLU or a Legal Aid fund is basically underwriting third-party litigation.”</p>
<p>For Thiel’s part, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/26/business/dealbook/peter-thiel-tech-billionaire-reveals-secret-war-with-gawker.html?_r=0">he emphasizes</a> that his motives are “less about revenge and more about specific deterrence.”</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I saw Gawker pioneer a unique and incredibly damaging way of getting attention by bullying people even when there was no connection with the public interest… I thought it was worth fighting back.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>The real danger</h2>
<p>In any case, is the sky now suddenly going to fall on the mainstream news media? Are the odds in favor of Thiel or others like him striking a future $140 million jackpot against a media defendant? </p>
<p>It is highly doubtful. As <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2016/05/should_peter_thiel_be_allowed_to_finance_hulk_hogan_s_lawsuit.html">Slate’s</a> Mark Joseph Stern points out, Thiel essentially:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>lucked out with Hogan’s judge and jury — it’s hard to imagine a court more sympathetic to Hogan’s claims — but there’s no reason to think future plaintiffs will be so wildly fortunate. Yes, deep-pocketed donors could theoretically finance frivolous yet costly nuisance lawsuits and pester publications into oblivion. But most such suits would be dismissed early on, and an attorney who brings overtly frivolous claims risks court sanction. In short, it is exceedingly rare for the stars to align as neatly as they did for Hogan.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Yet, even if a media defendant ultimately prevails in court against a third-party financed lawsuit, it still has rung up potentially massive bills to pay its attorneys and other costs in fighting that battle. That is the real danger here.</p>
<p>Ultimately, however, the First Amendment protects the press against government censorship, not private third-party funding of lawsuits that target it. If change is to occur, then, because of the fear of another billionaire running the Thiel playbook against a media organization, it will take legislation. </p>
<p>A first baby step, as it were, for such legislation might concentrate on transparency. It would require attorneys who accept third-party funding for cases to file documents in public court files related to those cases to acknowledge and identify all sources of funding beyond those coming directly from clients. </p>
<p>Completely banning the practice of third-party litigation seems impractical, however, given both how well instantiated it now is in the U.S. and that it can support legitimate plaintiffs who might not otherwise possess the fiscal resources to do battle in court. But openness, regarding who funds whom, will make the public aware about the individuals or businesses that hold a vested monetary stake or, in Thiel’s case, a non-pecuniary one, in the outcome.</p>
<p>Indeed, it seems to be the secretiveness of Thiel’s funding that has <a href="https://pando.com/2016/05/25/peter-thiels-secret-attack-gawker-even-worse-his-support-donald-trump/">so many</a> taken aback.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/60097/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Clay Calvert does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The revelation that PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel financed the Hulk’s lawsuit against Gawker raises important questions in the battle between privacy and a free press.Clay Calvert, Brechner Eminent Scholar in Mass Communication, University of FloridaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/505472015-12-08T04:17:13Z2015-12-08T04:17:13ZMorocco’s war on free speech is costing its universities dearly<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/104628/original/image-20151207-2973-9h5ejt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Professor Maati Monjib has become the face of Morocco's war on freedom of expression.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Morocco frequently turns to the courts when it doesn’t like what its critics have to say. The charges <a href="http://www.mediasupport.org/press-freedom-groups-urge-morocco-court-dismiss-charges-journalists/">levelled against</a> journalist and historian Professor Maati Monjib reinforce just how common this tendency, which emerged during the 1970s, is in Morocco. The State tries to quash critique among journalists and other public intellectuals by using the judicial system and imposing extraordinary fines.</p>
<p>Professor Monjib and six others have been <a href="https://www.freepressunlimited.org/en/news/these-seven-moroccan-human-rights-defenders-are-on-trial">accused of</a> “threatening the internal security of the State” and “receiving foreign funding without notifying the government”. He has staged two very <a href="http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=20151105152530244">public hunger strikes</a> to protest the allegations. Monjib has been a fervent supporter of investigative journalism in the country and an <a href="http://www.alaraby.co.uk/english/politics/2015/10/19/travel-bans-prison-and-fines-moroccos-media-under-siege">outspoken critic</a> of the very restrictive state.</p>
<p>Several journalists have <a href="http://ahmedbenchemsi.com/about/">left the country</a> in the face of state censorship. Others have <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?id=9FCatSXmYIYC&pg=PA102&lpg=PA102&dq=Driss+Ksikes+quits+journalism&source=bl&ots=D371T44pxu&sig=yst4Kg119DFvioe1GwkP0Xpkeog&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj1qrrUp8nJAhUKhhoKHau3AscQ6AEIKTAD#v=onepage&q=Driss%20Ksikes%20quits%20journalism&f=false">quit the profession</a>.</p>
<p>In an age of digital media and the rapid flow of information, the state’s campaign against freedom of expression serves mostly to generate international attention to Morocco’s human rights record. When one journalist or intellectual is arrested, articles <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/free-speech-goes-on-trial-in-morocco/2015/11/20/9eaea2d2-8f9e-11e5-baf4-bdf37355da0c_story.html">published abroad</a> inevitably list the charges against other intellectuals and journalists. These charges are sometimes <a href="https://cpj.org/2015/04/morocco-jails-press-freedom-advocate-hicham-mansou.php">completely unrelated</a> to their profession.</p>
<p>One blogger <a href="http://www.moroccoworldnews.com/2015/10/170846/moroccos-embassy-in-washington-should-riposte-to-new-york-times-editorial/">wrote</a> of the case against Monjib:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The campaign against Maati Monjib is incomprehensible … His views may be unorthodox, but hardly a menace that would explain the level of persecution he has endured. The level of negative international press coverage his case is generating has done a great harm to Morocco’s image. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Morocco was a French Protectorate until 1956, when it <a href="http://www.historyworld.net/wrldhis/PlainTextHistories.asp?historyid=ac97">became</a> independent again. The country has one of the oldest monarchies in the world, and the King still retains substantial power in the constitution and in governing. Morocco has an elected parliament led since 2011 by the Islamist party Parti de Justice et Developpement. </p>
<p>Morocco has an important geopolitical role as a conduit between sub- Saharan Africa and Europe. While there is a long history of protest and leftist and Islamist opposition in Morocco, the Arab Spring did not have the same depth as in other countries in the region, aside from the 20 Fevrier <a href="http://www.refworld.org/docid/53732a104.html">movement</a>. </p>
<h2>Universities under pressure</h2>
<p>The case against Monjib and his co-accused also damages academia and university research in Morocco.</p>
<p>There is very little funding available for research at the public universities that dominate the North African country. Most private higher education colleges and universities focus overwhelmingly on teaching, particularly vocational or professional degree programmes like business management. For now, this takes the place of research or training in research skills. </p>
<p>Morocco has also, particularly over the past five or seven years, followed the lead of the US and Europe when drafting education policies. Recent policy strategies to reform higher education and research have adopted a <a href="http://www.researchgate.net/profile/David_Hursh/publication/250184852_Assessing_No_Child_Left_Behind_and_the_Rise_of_Neoliberal_Education_Policies/links/540220900cf2bba34c1b7d28.pdf">neoliberal approach</a>. This means treating students like consumers who need to be satisfied with a product, as well as strengthening oversight of “product” sales – that is, teaching – and trying to align skills with job market demand. </p>
<p>Some American and British <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/2015/dec/07/universities-as-markets-we-shouldnt-be-valued-just-in-economic-terms">academics</a> have <a href="http://www.henryagiroux.com/online_articles/vocalization.htm">criticised</a> this trend in their own countries. They <a href="https://mitpress.mit.edu/index.php?q=books/undoing-demos">argue</a> that students’ ability to think critically declines and they acquire less general knowledge when they are treated like consumers. </p>
<p>In Morocco, the language of higher education has become very much about categorising students as customers in an expanding marketplace. </p>
<h2>Freedom to think differently</h2>
<p>What connects restrictions on freedom of expression for journalists and the motivation and ability of researchers to practice their trade with independence and free thought? Quite simply, without the freedom to think differently, research cannot address real issues: poverty, unemployment and public health. Those who want to do such research or use their education to find practical solutions may try to leave. Those who want to stay in Morocco often leave academia.</p>
<p>Instead, what research and critical thinking does exist in Morocco often comes from foreign academics. Moroccan academic Youssef Chiheb has <a href="http://www.ccme.org.ma/en/opinions-en/37329">criticised</a></p>
<blockquote>
<p>the lock that foreign experts and consultants have on the process of finalising public policy or strategies while graduates are not eligible or trained to take on the challenge because of a lack of mastery of a section of knowledge and a firm grip on foreign languages, French and English in this case.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Opening up new spaces</h2>
<p>The threat of legal action may effectively narrow public debate within Morocco, but the growth of online news and blogs, often based abroad, has more than compensated. Access to Internet reporting and diverse, often critical, viewpoints means that an alternative public sphere exists. This is especially true for younger generations. </p>
<p>In <a href="http://meta-journal.net/article/view/1324">my research</a> in Morocco, and in Europe, individuals and groups find satisfaction in initiating social change in their local areas. This suits local governments that lack the resources to address social problems. Individuals and community-based organisations abandon the notion that they can affect change at a national level. They may try to have an influence beyond their country’s borders through the Internet and participation in international movements, whether mainstream or radical. </p>
<p>Professor Monjib and other journalists and public intellectuals work at a national level. They contribute to building a public sphere in Morocco that welcomes debate and new ideas organic to the country rather than imposed from elsewhere. Importantly, they provide an example for expressing different points of view, encouraging especially young people to believe they can make a difference, rather than seeking other outlets to prove themselves – such as becoming radicalised. </p>
<p>If Monjib and his colleagues cannot do this work, their other options are to go elsewhere – or quit. Neither is good for Morocco.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/50547/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Shana Cohen received funding from the Leverhulme Trust for research on Morocco.
</span></em></p>The Moroccan state’s case against a leading academic could have far reaching ramifications for academic freedom and research at the country’s universities.Shana Cohen, Senior Research Associate, University of CambridgeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/512252015-11-24T19:39:16Z2015-11-24T19:39:16ZAre the rules of engagement the same for journalists when terror strikes at home?<p>When the entire neighbourhood of Saint-Denis, a town north of Paris, was cordoned off by the police, journalists’ cameras were kept at bay. Inside, French SWAT teams had surrounded terrorists hiding out after the attacks five days before. </p>
<p>No journalist was allowed to enter the exclusion zone around the building where the assault was taking place. The reason given? “Operational security”. </p>
<p>The police had simple objectives. To guarantee that no information could escape that might endanger the success of the operation. Ensure that no individuals or equipment were present that might negatively affect the security forces or the local population. Remove the need for police to ensure the safety of journalists. In short, eliminate everything that didn’t have a direct role in the mission at hand.</p>
<h2>The cats of #BrusselsLockdown</h2>
<p>The ethical debate over the presence of the media during police operations began after the Charlie Hebdo attacks in January. In France it is now accepted that the presence of the media and the dissemination of information can make a dangerous situation even riskier.</p>
<p>In this context, the widespread enthusiasm for sharing cat pictures on Twitter the night of November 22 and 23 – rather than information about <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/23/deep-anxiety-pervades-brussels-as-lockdown-continues">ongoing security operations in Brussels</a> – was revealing. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"668590681091371009"}"></div></p>
<p>Few people challenged the information blackout, but Guillaume Auda, a reporter for I-Télé, <a href="https://twitter.com/GuillaumeAuda/status/668614748209070080">did raise some concerns</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The 2.0 silence demanded by Belgian police – and respected – raises questions. Many cats, fewer sources, less info …</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>War comes home</h2>
<p>When a war suddenly breaks out at home, rights that would seem to be self-evident no longer are, despite the fact that journalists have long covered distant conflicts in which their soldiers are engaged.</p>
<p>In January 2013, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jan/20/french-forces-advance-northern-mali">Operation Serval</a> was launched on Malian territory. The longer the intervention lasted, the more the journalists on the ground <a href="http://www.liberation.fr/planete/2013/02/17/medias-contre-soldats-un-duel-de-guerre-lasse_882506">become frustrated</a>. The country’s geography and operating conditions made it difficult to cover the conflict without some support from the military. </p>
<p>However, the French army did precisely nothing (to put it mildly) to make the journalists’ jobs easier, and the early action took place far removed from the eyes of the media.</p>
<p>During military actions, the communication arm of the <a href="http://www.defense.gouv.fr/ema">Army’s general staff</a> is in charge of media policy. Its criteria are the same as those announced by higher authorities for the operations in Brussels or in Saint-Denis: guarantee the success of the operation, don’t jeopardise military security or civilian safety, avoid getting into a situation where you have to keep journalists safe.</p>
<p>Are all these rules justified? In part, they’re as valid in Saint-Denis as they are in Mali. The difference? When these rules are issued by the Army communications group, they will be discussed and any unstated motivations will be examined. </p>
<p>In response to the military’s position, some journalists can respond, in effect, by saying, “We are capable of understanding your rules and will take them into account. Therefore, you need give us access to the zone of operations.”</p>
<p>In Mali, journalists who tried to circumvent the rules were often praised for their boldness by their peers. This was particularly the case during an edition of French TV show <a href="http://www.france5.fr/emissions/medias-le-magazine/sommaire_36213">Media Magazine</a>, which lauded the work of Thomas Hofnung, then at Libération and now at The Conversation France, and Anne-Claire Coudray, then a reporter for TF1.</p>
<p>A week after the November 13 attacks in Paris, two programs examined how the media covered the events. <a href="http://www.franceculture.fr/emission-le-secret-des-sources-la-couverture-mediatique-des-attentats-du-13-novembre-apres-la-contro">The Confidentiality of Sources</a> on France Culture on November 21, and <a href="http://www.france5.fr/emissions/medias-le-magazine/diffusions/22-11-2015_435838">Media Magazine</a> again on November 22.</p>
<p>This time, the guests on the show agreed: the police restrictions on the diffusion of sensitive information were fair and reasonable. The appropriateness of showing images of dead bodies was discussed, as was the question of how certain words – “war”, “Islam”, and others – should be used. In the coming weeks, will the question of the lack of media access to the police operations be raised as well?</p>
<h2>What’s good for Mali …</h2>
<p>The difference between the media rebellion in Mali and the praise for journalists’ calm obedience in France is worthy of analysis. </p>
<p>Is there a parallel between the situation in northern Mali, in which journalists had little access early on, and the streets of Saint-Denis, where police roadblocks prevented all journalists from accessing the scene? If the police were right to do so, why was there a debate on the military’s choices in Mali? And what about the fact that the only available images from Saint-Denis were either from “official” channels or those from the general public put directly on social media while working journalists were denied all access?</p>
<p>If journalists consider the authorities’ instructions in Saint-Denis to be appropriate, do they also agree that it was right for them to have concealed what was going on? Or that there’s no interest in looking into anything that might have been suspect about the information revealed by the government and police? If so, why does the media give these rights to police and the Ministry of the Interior, but not the French Army and the Ministry of Defence?</p>
<p>All the frames of reference that journalists use to present information to the public, including those imposed upon them, are at issue here – they can give rise to trust, but also distrust of institutions. Politicians have established a continuum between distant countries and the home front in the war in which we are now fully engaged. Could this lead to a continuum of journalistic practices between external conflict zones, where French soldiers are involved, to the internal conflict zones, where the police are engaged?</p>
<p>Shifts in the debate about press access are certainly to be expected. It’s a safe bet that the way young journalists cover defence questions will not be the same after the attacks in France.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Translated from the French by Leighton Walter Kille.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/51225/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Bénédicte Chéron received funding from the CEHD (Centre d'études d'histoire de la Défense) for her thesis between 2006 and 2009 and from IRSEM (Institut de recherches stratégiques de l'Ecole militaire) for post-doctoral studies between 2011 and 2012. </span></em></p>As is distant wars, journalists in France are now kept away from areas where security forces intervene against terrorists. Should this be welcomed?Bénédicte Chéron, Historienne, chercheur-partenaire au SIRICE, Sorbonne UniversitéLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/441792015-07-06T08:41:42Z2015-07-06T08:41:42ZGawker — and First Amendment — may receive body blow from another thin-skinned wrestler<p>Who knew that professional wrestlers could be so sensitive? And that their antics could have potentially grave First Amendment implications? </p>
<p>Hulk Hogan’s lawsuit against Gawker Media over the publication of the former professional wrestler’s sex tape is the latest case that pits a celebrity’s privacy rights against the Bill of Rights. </p>
<p>A ruling against Gawker could not only destroy the media empire built on trafficking in gossip but could mean the First Amendment will be less likely to protect journalists, even in situations in which the subject matter is more clearly a matter of legitimate public interest. </p>
<p>Before we get to the guts of the Hogan case, whose trial had been set to begin this week but has been <a href="http://tbo.com/news/crime/hulk-hogan-sex-tape-trial-postponed-after-appellate-ruling-20150702/">postponed</a>, let’s consider a similar one – also involving a colorful wrestler – that could hint at where the jury might be headed. </p>
<h2>Body v SEAL</h2>
<p>In July 2014, Jesse “The Body” Ventura, wrestling Hall of Fame inductee, former governor of Minnesota and professional conspiracy theorist, <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2014/07/30/jesse-ventura-vs-chris-kyle-a-case-where-no-one-won/">spent</a> three weeks convincing eight jurors in federal court in Minneapolis that his reputation was damaged by former Navy SEAL Chris Kyle’s <a href="http://www.people.com/article/jesse-ventura-blasts-american-sniper-chris-kyle">account</a> of a bar fight in his book, American Sniper. </p>
<p>Kyle described how he punched a man identified as “Scruff Face” after he said he “hated America,” that Navy SEALS “were killing men and women and children and murdering” and that they “deserved to lose a few” in the war in Iraq. </p>
<p>Ventura said the encounter never happened and that Kyle’s book had destroyed his reputation in the SEAL community and his career as a television personality. He <a href="http://www.startribune.com/july-30-ventura-says-he-s-overjoyed-reputation-restored/269042071/">told</a> the Minneapolis Star Tribune that if he lost his libel case, he would be so distraught that he would move to Mexico. </p>
<p>Ventura sought millions of dollars in damages, not only for defamation, but also for Kyle’s use of his name and image to promote the book. Although Kyle never identified “Scruff Face” in the book itself, he did tell interviewers that he was referring to Ventura. </p>
<p>Because Kyle was killed in a shooting in Texas about a year after Ventura filed his suit in 2012, the evidence about what really happened in the bar came from contradictory testimony by Ventura himself and a parade of witnesses produced by the attorneys for both sides. </p>
<p>The jury deliberated for six days and appeared to be deadlocked. The lawyers agreed to accept an 8–2 verdict. And then the jury awarded Ventura US$500,000 in damages for the defamation claim and $1.3 million for the unjust enrichment claim. The <a href="http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/sniper_first_amendment.pdf">case</a> is currently on appeal before the US Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. (Full disclosure: I am one of the signatories to a friend-of-the-court brief supporting the Kyle estate in its appeal.) </p>
<h2>Hulk Hogan’s sex tape</h2>
<p>Fast-forward to a year later and another wounded wrestler is poised to try to vindicate his honor in a court of law. But this time, the issue is privacy, not reputation. </p>
<p>Hulk Hogan, who once wrestled Ventura, is scheduled to go to trial on July 6 in St Petersburg, Florida, seeking damages of $100 million from Gawker, operator of the online blog and celebrity gossip network. Gawker <a href="http://gawker.com/tag/hulk-hogan-sex-tape">posted</a> a videotape of Hogan having sex with Heather Cole Clem, then-wife of a satellite radio personality who uses the moniker Bubba the Love Sponge. </p>
<p>Hogan says the tape was made without his knowledge or consent. He originally sued Gawker in federal court, but, after a variety of procedural maneuvers, the case against the media company ended up in state Circuit Court, where Hogan’s related suits against Heather Cole and Bubba Clem eventually settled.</p>
<p>Hogan claims that Gawker invaded his privacy by posting the videotape, revealing offensive private facts about him, causing him emotional distress and violating his right to control the use of his name and image. Earlier this year, a state appeals court rejected his attempt to force Gawker to remove the video from its website, <a href="http://www.lskslaw.com/documents/DCA%20Opinion%20--%20Clean%20Copy%20(00693029).PDF">finding</a> that it would be an unconstitutional prior restraint. </p>
<p>However, the trial judge <a href="http://www.tampabay.com/news/courts/civil/hulk-hogan-settles-case-against-former-wife-of-bubba-the-love-sponge/2235722">announced</a> on July 1 that only the jurors – not the media or the public – will be able to watch the video when it is shown in the courtroom at trial. Gawker’s lawyers have argued that this action could prejudice the jury as it considers whether or not the public has a legitimate interest in seeing the tape. </p>
<h2>Legitimate public interest?</h2>
<p>Gawker generally revels in controversy and seems to especially relish acquiring contraband videotapes of celebrities misbehaving. </p>
<p>For example, Gawker reporters <a href="http://gawker.com/another-rob-ford-crack-video-is-for-sale-here-are-stil-1570134492">made several attempts</a> in 2013 and 2014 to purchase recordings allegedly showing Toronto mayor Rob Ford smoking crack cocaine.</p>
<p>But in these instances, as with the Hogan tape, no one has accused Gawker of making or inducing someone else to make the illicit recordings. Under US Supreme Court precedent, if they did nothing illegal to obtain the tapes, publication would be <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/99-1687.ZS.html">protected</a> by the First Amendment, provided the contents are a matter of public interest and concern. </p>
<p>But what does that mean? It seems that the Hogan tape certainly interests the public. The New York Times <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/14/business/media/gawker-nick-denton-moment-of-truth.html?_r=0">reported</a> that it has generated more than five million clicks for Gawker’s site. But are the contents really a matter of legitimate public interest? </p>
<p>Hogan says they are not, even though, as the appeals court in Florida observed, he voluntarily <a href="http://www.tmz.com/2012/03/07/hulk-hogan-sex-tape-partner-tmz-live/">chose</a> to discuss the tape at length with TMZ and on The Howard Stern Show.</p>
<h2>A celebrity’s right to privacy</h2>
<p>Hogan’s case isn’t the first to involve publication of stolen or surreptitious recordings of celebrities, including Paris Hilton, Kim Kardashian and Jennifer Lopez, having sex with their spouses or significant others. But most of their privacy lawsuits were either settled, like Hogan’s suits against everyone but Gawker, or were dismissed by a judge. </p>
<p>In 1997, former Baywatch star Pamela Anderson and her husband <a href="http://www.rcfp.org/browse-media-law-resources/news/celebrity-couple-lose-fight-over-publication-photos">lost</a> their bid to sue Penthouse magazine for publishing sexually explicit photos. A federal court in California concluded that the couple had already voluntarily disclosed intimate information about themselves to the media, and that the photos were “newsworthy” and therefore protected by the First Amendment. </p>
<p>But courts have also recognized that celebrities do not necessarily give up all their rights to privacy simply because they have chosen to reveal some aspects of their lives to the public. As a federal judge court <a href="http://www.internetlibrary.com/pdf/Michaels-Internet-Entertainment-Group.pdf">wrote</a> in a case involving yet another sex tape of Pamela Anderson (this time with singer Bret Michaels), “even people who voluntarily enter the public sphere retain a privacy interest in the most intimate details of their lives.” </p>
<p>Will Hogan – who operates businesses in the nearby Tampa Bay area – be able to convince a St Petersburg jury that Gawker has exploited his sex life for crass financial gain? Or will the jurors conclude that Hogan couldn’t have any legitimate right to hide the amorous adventures he bragged about elsewhere and that are intensely interesting to at least some of the public? </p>
<p>Will they agree with Gawker founder and defendant Nick Denton, who <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/06/16/will-hulk-hogan-pin-nick-denton-the-lawsuit-that-could-destroy-gawker.html#">told</a> the Daily Beast, “In the Internet Age, you might once in a while have something come out if you’re going to be that indiscriminate in your pursuit of celebrity perks”? </p>
<p>It will be interesting to find out. And given the colorful personalities involved in this case, we can count on lots of media coverage, even though trial judge Pamela Campbell <a href="http://www.tampabay.com/news/courts/civil/hulk-hogan-trial-against-gawker-set-for-next-week/2235524">has declared</a> that the trial “is not going to be a carnival.”</p>
<p>Perhaps, but I wouldn’t bet on it. Even though Judge Campbell has promised the parties “judicial serenity and calm” in the courtroom, she can’t really control how the media reports the case outside it. </p>
<p>Moreover, a flamboyant and charismatic celebrity can have a powerful effect on jurors. They may rally to protect a local hero from what they regard as the actions of an irresponsible press. They can do that by awarding him millions of dollars in damages.</p>
<h2>What does it mean for Gawker?</h2>
<p>Although in the Daily Beast interview, Denton seemed confident about Gawker’s prospects for victory, predicting that “there’s a one in 10 chance of disaster,” the reality is that juries in state courts are notorious for handing down big libel judgments. This could threaten the company’s very survival. </p>
<p>Gawker Media is reportedly worth about $200 million. Hogan is seeking an award for half that. Even though statistically, massive jury awards are often <a href="http://www.medialaw.org/images/stories/FAQ/Libel_FAQ/top_ten_libel_awards_2010.pdf">reduced</a> or set aside by an appeals court, Florida law <a href="http://www.floridabar.org/DIVCOM/JN/JNJournal01.nsf/c0d731e03de9828d852574580042ae7a/2e129f3b5fd9aea085257ac300506870!OpenDocument&Highlight=0,appellate,stays*%20target=">will require</a> Gawker to post a bond for the full amount of damages, plus interest, pending appellate review, which could take years. </p>
<p>In the meantime, Gawker would have to find some financial resources to keep afloat.</p>
<h2>What it means for the rest of news</h2>
<p>This wouldn’t be the first time a news organization was driven to the brink of destruction by a huge damages award. </p>
<p>In 1982, the Alton (Illinois) Telegraph
<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1982/04/15/us/settlement-due-in-alton-telegraph-libel-case.html">declared</a> bankruptcy after it lost its appeal of a $9.2 million judgment. That ruling had been based on a memorandum its reporters sent to prosecutors about a local contractor’s alleged ties with organized crime – a story that never even appeared in the newspaper. </p>
<p>In this case, of course, Hogan isn’t suing for libel. He couldn’t, because there is no dispute that the tape is genuine. Truthful speech, no matter how offensive, cannot be the basis for a defamation suit. </p>
<p>Here Hogan is arguing that intimate facts about his private life were made public in a way that would be highly offensive to a reasonable person. </p>
<p>Jurors are likely to identify with the plaintiff, on a very visceral level. They wouldn’t want a tape of themselves to be posted online, and they could agree that Hogan shouldn’t have to put up with it, either. </p>
<p>A ruling for Hogan could send a strong message that online sites should be very wary of posting videos of celebrities misbehaving, even if they think the content is newsworthy.</p>
<p>So, although he will appear in court using his real name (Terry Bollea), when the guy <a href="http://www.thetoptens.com/wwe-wrestlers/hulk-hogan-22820.asp">some call</a> the greatest wrestler of all time strides into court wearing his signature bandanna, there is a chance he might take down Gawker – and maybe part of the First Amendment as well. </p>
<p>Stranger things have happened. Just ask Jesse Ventura.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/44179/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jane E Kirtley is a signatory to a friend of the court brief submitted to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit by First Amendment scholars,supporting the appellants in the Jesse Ventura case. She received funding from the U.S. Department of State to write an international Media Law Handbook, published in 2010. For the past 15 years, she has delivered lectures and conducted workshops on press freedom, ethics, and freedom of information in various countries as a recipient of State Department Speaker and Specialist grants. </span></em></p>Hulk Hogan is suing Gawker for $100 million in a case that not only could bankrupt the media empire known for its gossip but could erode the First Amendment as well.Jane E. Kirtley, Silha Professor of Media Ethics and Law, University of MinnesotaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.