Tag Archives: media law

July 2, 2013 · 3:15 am

‘Mindful journalism’ – introducing a new ethical framework for reporting

By MARK PEARSON

This is an abridged version of the conference paper I presented to the Media, Religion and Culture division of the International Association for Media and Communication Research Conference, Dublin City University, on Saturday, June 29, 2013.

—-

This paper explores the possibility of applying the fundamental precepts of one of the world’s major religions to the practice of truth-seeking and truth-telling in the modern era and asks whether that ethical framework is compatible with journalism as a Fourth Estate enterprise. It is not meant to be a theological exposition as I am neither a Buddhist nor an expert in Buddhist philosophy. That said, no academic paper topic like this arises in a vacuum, so I must first explain the personal and professional context from which this issue has arisen over four decades and has intensified in recent years. Most of my academic work has been in the field of media law – and its focus has been mainly upon the practical application of laws and regulations to the work of journalists. From time to time that ventures into media ethics and regulatory frameworks – the philosophical, self-regulatory and legislative frameworks that inform and relate to any examination of the actual laws impacting upon journalists.

Professional ethical codes are not religious treatises, and neither were holy scriptures spoken or written as codes of practice for any particular occupation. This paper attempts to do neither. Rather, it sets out to explore whether the foundational teachings of one religion focused upon living a purer life might inform journalism practice. At some junctures it becomes apparent that some elements of the libertarian model of journalism as we know it might not even be compatible with such principles – particularly if they are interpreted in their narrowest way. The teachings of other religions might also be applied in this way. When you look closely at Christianity (via the Bible), Islam (the Koran), Hinduism (the Bhagavad Gita), Judaism (the Torah) and throuth the Confucian canon you find common moral and ethical principles that we might reasonably expect journalists to follow in their work, including attributes of peace journalism identified by Lynch, (2010, p. 543): oriented towards peace, humanity, truth and solutions.  The Dalai Lama’s recent book – Beyond Religion – Ethics for a Whole World (2011) – explored his vision of how core ethical values might offer a sound moral framework for modern society while accommodating diverse religious views and cultural traditions. It is in that spirit that I explore the possibilities of applying some of Buddhism’s core principles to the secular phenomenon of journalism. It also must be accepted that Buddhist practices like ‘mindfulness’ and meditation have been adopted broadly in Western society in recent decades and have been accepted into the cognitive sciences, albeit in adapted therapeutic ways (Segal et. al, 2012).

We should educate journalists, serious bloggers and citizen journalists to adopt a mindful approach to their news and commentary which requires a reflection upon the implications of their truth-seeking and truth-telling as a routine part of the process. They would be prompted to pause and think carefully about the consequences of their reportage and commentary for the stakeholders involved, including their audiences. Truth-seeking and truth-telling would still be the primary goal, but only after gauging the social good that might come from doing so.  The recent inquiries triggered by poor journalism ethical practices have demonstrated that journalism within the libertarian model appears to have lost its moral compass and we need to explore new ways to recapture this.

The Noble Eightfold Path attributed to the Buddha – Siddhartha Gautama (563 BCE to 483 BCE) – has been chosen here because of the personal reasons listed above, its relative brevity, and the fact that its core elements can be read at a secular level to relate to behavioural – and not exclusively spiritual – guidelines. Gunaratne (2005, p. 35) offered this succinct positioning of the Noble Eightfold Path (or the ‘middle way’) in Buddhist philosophy:

The Buddhist dharma meant the doctrine based on the Four Noble Truths: That suffering exists; that the cause of suffering is thirst, craving, or desire; that a path exists to end suffering; that the Noble Eightfold Path is the path to end suffering. Described as the “middle way,” it specifies the commitment to sila (right speech, action and livelihood), samadhi (right effort, mindfulness, and concentration), and panna (right understanding and thoughts).

It is also fruitful to explore journalism as a practice amidst the first two Noble Truths related to suffering (dukka), and this is possible because they are accommodated within the first step of the Eightfold Path – ‘right views’. The Fourth Noble Truth is also integrative. It states that the Noble Eightfold Path is the means to end suffering. Here we consider its elements as a potential framework for the ethical practice of journalism in this new era.

 

Application of the Noble Eightfold Path to ethical journalism practice

Each of the constituent steps of the Noble Eightfold Path – understanding free of superstition, kindly and truthful speech, right conduct, doing no harm, perseverance, mindfulness and contemplation – has an application to the modern-day practice of truth-seeking and truth-telling – whether that be by a journalist working in a traditional media context, a citizen journalist or a serious blogger reporting and commenting upon news and current affairs. Smith and Novak (2003, p. 39) identified a preliminary step to the Buddha’s Noble Eightfold Path that he saw as a precondition to its pursuit – the practice of ‘right association’. This, they explained, acknowledged the “extent to which we are social animals, influenced at every turn by the ‘companioned example’ of our associates, whose attitudes and values affect us profoundly” (Smith & Novak, 2003, p. 40). For journalists this can apply at a number of levels. There is the selection of a suitable mentor, an ethical colleague who might be available to offer wise counsel in the midst of a workplace dilemma. There is also the need to acknowledge – and resist – the socialization of journalism recruits into the toxic culture of newsrooms with unethical practices (McDevitt et. al, 2002). Further, there is the imperative to reflect upon the potential for the ‘pack mentality’ of reportage that might allow for the combination of peer pressure, competition and poor leadership to influence the core morality of the newsgathering enterprise, as noted by Leveson (2012, p. 732) in his review of the ethical and legal transgressions by London newspaper personnel. Again, there is a great deal more that can be explored on this topic, but we will now concentrate on a journalistic reading of the steps of the Eightfold Path proper. Kalupahana (1976, p. 59) suggests its constituent eight factors represent a digest of “moral virtues together with the processes of concentration and the development of insight”.

1. Right views. Smith and Novak (2003, p. 42) explained that the very first step in the Eightfold Path involved an acceptance of the Four Noble Truths. Suffice it to say that much of what we call ‘news’ – particularly that impacting on audiences through its reportage of change, conflict and consequence – can sit with Smith and Novak’s (2003, p. 33) definition of dukka, namely “the pain that to some degree colors all of finite existence”. Their explanation of the First Noble Truth – that life is suffering – is evident when we view the front page of each morning’s newspaper and each evening’s television news bulletin:

The exact meaning of the First Noble Truth is this: Life (in the condition it has got itself into) is dislocated. Something has gone wrong. It is out of joint. As its pivot is not true, friction (interpersonal conflict) is excessive, movement (creativity) is blocked, and it hurts (Smith & Novak, 2003, p. 34).

This is at once an endorsement of accepted news values and a denial of the very concept of there being anything unusual about change. As Kalupahana (1976, p. 36) explains, a fundamental principle of Buddhism is that all things in the world are at once impermanent (anicca), unsatisfactory (dukkha) and nonsubstantial (anatta). News, too, is about the impermanent and the unsatisfactory. It is premised upon identifying to audiences what has changed most recently, focusing especially on the most unsatisfactory elements of that change. Yet given Buddhism’s premise that all things are subject to change at all times and that happiness is achieved through the acceptance of this, it might well erode the newsworthiness of the latest upsetting accounts of change in the world since we last looked. Yet in some ways this step supports the model of ‘deliberative journalism’ as explained by Romano (2010, p. 11), which encourages reports that are ‘incisive, comprehensive and balanced’, including the insights and contributions of all relevant stakeholders. Most importantly, as Romano suggests:

Journalists would also report on communities as they evaluate potential responses, and then investigate whether and how they have acted upon the resulting decisions (Romano, 2010, p. 11).

Thus, the notion of ‘right views’ can incorporate a contract between the news media and audiences that accepts a level of change at any time, and focuses intention upon deeper explanations of root causes, strategies for coping and potential solutions for those changes prompting the greatest suffering.

2. Right intent. The second ingredient relates to refining and acting upon that very ‘mission’, ‘calling’ or drive to ‘make a difference’ which is the very human motivation for selecting some occupations. For some, it is a religious calling where they feel spiritually drawn to a vocation as a priest, an imam, a rabbi or a monk. But for others it is a secular drive to aid humanity by helping change society in a positive way – a career motivation shared by many teachers, doctors and journalists. It becomes the backbone to one’s professional enterprise. Smith and Novak (2003, p. 42) describe it thus:

People who achieve greatness are almost invariably passionately invested in some one thing. They do a thousand things each day, but behind these stands the one thing they count supreme. When people seek liberation with single-mindedness of this order, they may expect their steps to turn from sliding sandbank scrambles into ground-gripping strides.

In journalism, this might necessitate a change in mindset from bringing news ‘first’ in a competitive sense but ‘best’ and most meaningfully to an audience in a qualitative sense. Of course, it would not be ‘news’ if were not delivered relatively soon after its occurrence, but in this era of instant communication this step reinforces the notion of ‘responsible truth-seeking and truth-telling’ – authoritative and credible news, obtained ethically, and delivered as soon as possible to retain its relevance and utility without losing its veracity.

3. Right speech. This step relates to both truthful and charitable expression and, interpreted narrowly, that second element of ‘charitable expression’ could present a fundamental challenge to the very concept of journalism as we know it. It certainly places serious questions about the celebrity gossip orientation of many news products today. The notion of telling the truth and being accurate lies at the heart of journalism practice and is foremost in most ethical codes internationally. It is an unquestionable truth that, while a single empirical fact might be subject to scientific measurement and verification, any conclusions drawn from the juxtaposition of two provable facts can only constitute what a scientist would call a ‘theory’ and the rest of us might call ‘opinion’. In defamation law, collections of provable facts can indeed create a meaning – known as an ‘imputation’ – that can indeed be damaging to someone’s reputation (Pearson & Polden, 2011, p.217). Thus, it becomes a question of which truths are selected to be told and the ultimate truth of their composite that becomes most relevant.

Smith and Novak (2003, p. 42) suggest falsities and uncharitable speech as indicative of other factors, most notably the ego of the communicator. In journalism, that ego might be fuelled in a host of ways that might encourage the selection of certain facts or the portrayal of an individual in a negative light: political agendas, feeding populist sentiment, peer pressure, and corporate reward. They state:

False witness, idle chatter, gossip, slander, and abuse are to be avoided, not only in their obvious forms, but also in their covert ones. The covert forms – subtle belittling, ‘accidental’ tactlessness, barbed wit – are often more vicious because their motives are veiled (Smith and Novak, 2003, p. 42).

This calls into question the very essence of celebrity journalism for all the obvious reasons. Gossip about the private lives of the rich and famous, titillating facts about their private lives, and barbed commentary in social columns all fail the test of ‘right speech’ and, in their own way, reveal a great deal about the individual purveying them and their employer, discussed further below under ‘right livelihood’. Taken to its extreme, however, much news might be considered ‘uncharitable’ and slanderous about an individual when it is in fact revealing their wrongdoing all calling into question their public actions. If the Eightfold Path ruled out this element of journalism we would have to conclude it was incompatible even with the best of investigative and Fourth Estate journalism. Indeed, many uncomfortable truths must be told even if one is engaging in a form of ‘deliberative journalism’ that might ultimately be for the betterment of society and disenfranchised people. For example, experts in ‘peace journalism’ include a ‘truth orientiation’ as a fundamental ingredient of that approach, and include a determination “to expose self-serving pronouncements and representations on all sides” (Lynch, 2010, p. 543).

4. Right conduct. The fourth step of ‘right conduct’ goes to the core of any moral or ethical code. In fact, it contains the fundamental directives of most religions with its Five Precepts which prohibit killing, theft, lying, being unchaste and intoxicants (Smith and Novak, 2003, p. 44). Many journalists would have problems with the final two, although the impact upon their work would of course vary with individual circumstances. And while many journalists might have joked that they would ‘kill’ for a story, murder is not a common or accepted journalistic tool. However, journalists have often had problems with the elements of theft and lying in their broad and narrow interpretations. The Leveson Report (2012) contains numerous examples of both, and the extension of the notion of ‘theft’ to practices like plagiarism and of ‘lying’ to deception in its many guises have fuelled many adverse adjudications by ethics committees and courts.

Importantly, as Smith and Novak (2003, p. 43) explain, the step of right conduct also involves ‘a call to understand one’s behavior more objectively before trying to improve it’ and ‘to reflect on actions with an eye to the motives that prompted them’. This clearly invokes the strategic approach developed by educationalist Donald Schön, whose research aimed to equip professionals with the ability to make crucial decisions in the midst of practice. Schön (1987, p. 26) coined the expression ‘reflection-in-action’ to describe the ability of the professional to reflect upon some problem in the midst of their daily work.  The approach was adapted to journalism by Sheridan Burns (2013) who advised student journalists:

You need a process for evaluating your decisions because a process, or system, lets you apply your values, loyalties and principles to every new set of circumstances or facts. In this way, your decision making will be fair in choosing the news (p. 76).

Even industry ethical codes can gain wider understanding and acceptance by appealing to fundamental human moral values and not just offering a proscriptive list of prohibited practices. A recent example is the Fairfax Media Code of Conduct (undated) which poses questions employees might ask themselves when faced with ethical dilemmas that might not be addressed specifically in the document, including:

  • Would I be proud of what I have done?
  • Do I think it’s the right thing to do?
  • What will the consequences be for my colleagues, Fairfax, other parties and me?
  • What would be the reaction of my family and friends if they were to find out?
  • What would happen if my conduct was reported in a rival publication?

While this specific approach seems to focus on the potential for shame for a transgressor, it offers an example of a media outlet attempting to encourage its employees to pause and reflect in the midst of an ethical dilemma – what Schön (1987, p. 26) called ‘reflection-in-action’. Such a technique might offer better guidance and might gain more traction if it were founded upon a socially and professionally acceptable moral or ethical scaffold, perhaps the kind of framework we are exploring here.

5. Right living. The Buddha identified certain livelihoods that were incompatible with a morally pure way of living, shaped of course by the cultural mores of his place and time. They included poison peddler, slave trader, prostitute, butcher, brewer, arms maker and tax collector (Smith and Novak, 2003, p. 45). Some of these occupations might remain on his list today – but one can justifiably ask whether journalism would make his list in the aftermath of the revelations of the Leveson Inquiry (2012). That report did, of course, acknowledge the important role journalism should play in a democratic society, so perhaps the Buddha might have just nominated particular sectors of the media for condemnation. For example, the business model based upon celebrity gossip might provide an avenue for escape and relaxation for some consumers, but one has to wonder at the overall public good coming from such an enterprise. Given the very word ‘occupation’ implies work that ‘does indeed occupy most of our waking attention’ (Smith and Novak, 2003, p. 44), we are left to wonder how the engagement in prying, intrusion and rumor-mongering for commercial purposes advances the enterprise of journalism or the personal integrity of an individual journalist who chooses to ply that trade. The same argument applies to the sections of larger media enterprises who might sometimes produce journalism of genuine social value, but on other occasions take a step too far with intrusion or gossip without any public benefit. This is where journalists working in such organisations might apply a mindful approach to individual stories and specific work practices to apply a moral gauge to the actual tasks they are performing in their work and in assessing whether they constitute ‘right living’.

 

6. Right effort. The step of ‘right effort’ was directed by the Buddha in a predominantly spiritual sense – a steady, patient and purposeful path to enlightenment. However, we can also apply such principles to the goal of ethical journalism practice in a secular way. Early career journalists are driven to demonstrate success and sometimes mistake the hurried scoop and kudos of the lead story in their news outlet as an end in itself. There can also be an emphasis on productivity and output at the expense of the traditional hallmarks of quality reportage – attribution and verification. Of course, all news stories could evolve into lengthy theses if they were afforded unlimited timelines and budgets. Commercial imperatives and deadlines demand a certain brevity and frequency of output from all reporters. Both can be achieved with continued attention to the core principle of purposeful reflection upon the ethics of the various daily work tasks and a mindful awareness of the underlying mission – or backbone – of one’s occupational enterprise – striving for the ‘right intent’ of the second step.

Institutional limitations and pressure from editors, reporters and sources will continually threaten a journalist’s commitment to this ethical core, requiring the ‘right effort’ to be maintained at that steady, considered pace through every interview, every story, every working day and ultimately through a full career. As the Dalai Lama wrote in Beyond Religion (2011, p. 142):

The practice of patience guards us against loss of composure and, in doing so, enables us to exercise discernment, even in the heat of difficult situations.

Surely this is a useful attribute for the journalist.

7. Right mindfulness. This is the technique of self-examination that Schön (1987) and Sheridan Burns (2013) might call ‘reflection in action’ and is the step I have selected as central to an application of the Eightfold Path to reportage in the heading for this article – ‘Mindful Journalism’. Effective reflection upon one’s own thoughts and emotions is crucial to a considered review of an ethical dilemma in a newsgathering or publishing context. It is also essential to have gone through such a process if a journalist is later called to account to explain their actions. Many ethical decisions are value-laden and inherently complex. Too often they are portrayed in terms of the ‘public interest’ when the core motivating factor has not been the greater public good but, to the contrary, the ego of an individual journalist or the commercial imperative of a media employer. Again, the Leveson Report (2012) detailed numerous instances where such forces were at play, often to the great detriment to the lives of ordinary citizens.

As Smith and Novak (2003, p. 48) explain, right mindfulness ‘aims at witnessing all mental and physical events, including our emotions, without reacting to them, neither condemning some nor holding on to others’. Buddhists (and many others) adopt mindfulness techniques in the form of meditation practice – sometimes in extended guided retreats. While I have found this practice useful in my own life, I am by no means suggesting journalists adopt the lotus position to meditate in their newsrooms or at the scene of a breaking news event to peacefully contemplate their options. The extent to which individuals might want to set aside time for meditation in their own routines is up to them, but at the very least there is much to be gained from journalists adopting the lay meaning of ‘being mindful’. In other words, journalists might pause briefly for reflection upon the implications of their actions upon others – the people who are the subjects of their stories, other stakeholders who might be affected by the event or issue at hand, the effects upon their own reputations as journalists and the community standing of others, and the public benefits ensuing from this particular truth being told in this way at this time. Most ethical textbooks have flow charts with guidelines for journalists to follow in such situations – but the central question is whether they have an embedded technique for moral self-examination – a practiced mindfulness they can draw upon when a circumstance demands.

There is a special need for journalists to be mindful of the vulnerabilities of some individuals they encounter in their work. Many have studied the interaction between the news media and particular ‘vulnerable groups’, such as people with a disability, those with a mental illness, children, the indigenous, the aged, or those who have undergone a traumatic experience. Our collaborative Australian Research Council Linkage Project on ‘Vulnerability and the News Media’ (Pearson et. al, 2010) reviewed that research and examined how journalists interacted with those who might belong to such a ‘vulnerable group’ or who might simply be ‘vulnerable’ because of the circumstances of the news event. We identified other types of sources who might be vulnerable in the midst or aftermath of a news event involving such a ‘moment of vulnerability’ and assessed the question of ‘informed consent’ to journalistic interviews by such individuals. Ethical journalists are mindful of such potential vulnerabilities and either look for alternative sources or take considered steps to minimise the impact of their reportage.

This concern for others also invokes the notion of compassion for other human beings, a tenet central to the teachings of all major religions, and a hallmark of Buddhism. The Dalai Lama has explained that it is often mistaken for a weakness or passivity, or ‘surrender in the face of wrongdoing or injustice’ (Dalai Lama, 2011, p. 58). If that were the case, then it would be incompatible with Fourth Estate journalism which requires reporters to call to account those who abuse power or rort the system. However, the Dalai Lama explains that true compassion for others requires that sometimes we must do exactly that:

Depending on the context, a failure to respond with strong measures, thereby allowing the aggressors to continue their destructive behaviour, could even make you partially responsible for the harm they continue to inflict (Dalai Lama, 2011, p. 59).

Such an approach is perfectly compatible with the best of foreign correspondence and investigative journalism conducted in the public interest – and is well accommodated within the peace journalism model explained by Lynch (2010, p. 543).

8. Right concentration. Some have compared ‘right concentration’ to being in ‘the zone’ in elite sporting terminology – so focused on the work at hand that there is a distinctive clarity of purpose. Smith and Novak (2003, p. 48) explain that concentration exercises – often attentive to a single-pointed awareness of breathing – are a common prelude to mindfulness exercises during meditation.

Initial attempts at concentration are inevitably shredded by distractions; slowly, however, attention becomes sharper, more stable, more sustained (Smith and Novak, 2003, p. 48).

It is such concentrated attention that is required of consummate professionals in the midst of covering a major news event. It is at this time that top journalists actually enter ‘the zone’ and are able to draw on core ethical values to produce important reportage and commentary within tight deadlines, paying due regard to the impact of their work upon an array of individual stakeholders and to the broader public interest. It is in this moment that it all comes together for the mindful journalist – facts are verified, comments from a range of sources are attributed, competing values are assessed, angles are considered and decided and timing is judged. And it all happens within a cool concentrated focus, sometimes amidst the noise and mayhem of a frantic newsroom or a chaotic news event.

Towards a secular ‘mindful journalism’

This paper does not propose a definitive fix-all solution to the shortcomings in journalism ethics or their regulation. Rather, it is an acknowledgment that the basic teachings of one of the world’s major religions can offer guidance in identifying a common – and secular – moral compass that might inform our journalism practice as technology and globalization place our old ethical models under stress.

Leveson (2012) has identified the key ethical and regulatory challenges facing the British press and Finkelstein (2012) has documented the situation in Australia. One of the problems with emerging citizen journalism and news websites is that their proponents do not necessarily ascribe to traditional journalists’ ethical codes. The journalists’ union in Australia, the Media Alliance, has attempted to bring them into its fold by developing a special “Charter of Excellence and Ethics” and by the end of April already had 12 news websites ascribe to its principles, which included a commitment to the journalists’ Code of Ethics (Alcorn, 2013). This might be a viable solution for those who identify as journalists and seek a union affiliation, but many do not, and in a global and multicultural publishing environment the challenge is to develop models that might be embraced more broadly than a particular national union’s repackaging of a journalists’ code.

I have written previously about the confusion surrounding the litany of ethical codes applying to a single journalist in a single workplace. There is evidence that in many places such codes have failed to work effectively in guiding the ethics of the traditional journalists for whom they were designed, let alone the litany of new hybrids including citizen journalists, bloggers, and the avid users of other emerging news platforms.

My suggestion here is simply that core human moral principles from key religious teachings like the Noble Eightfold Path could form the basis of a more relevant and broadly applicable model for the practice of ‘mindful journalism’.

References

Alcorn, G. (2013, April 29). ‘Want to be a journalist? Bloggers, online media sites invited to sign on to journalism code of ethics’. The Citizen. Retrieved from http://www.thecitizen.org.au/media/want-be-journalist-bloggers-online-media-sites-invited-sign-journalism-code-ethics

Allan, S. (ed). (2010). The Routledge Companion to News and Journalism. Routledge: London.

Dalai Lama, (2011). Beyond Religion – Ethics for a whole world. Rider: London.

Dutt, R. (2010). The Fiji media decree: A push towards collaborative journalism. Pacific Journalism Review, 16(2): 81-98.

Fairfax Media (undated). Fairfax Code of Conduct. Retrieved from http://www.fairfax.com.au/resources/Fairfax_Code_of_Conduct.pdf.

Finkelstein, R. (2012). Report of the independent inquiry into the media and me­dia regulation. Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy: Canberra. Retrieved from http://www.dbcde.gov.au/digital_economy/independent_media_inquiry

Galtung, J. and Ruge, M. (1965). The structure of foreign news: the presentation of the Congo, Cuba and Cyprus crises in four foreign newspapers. Journal of International Peace Research 1: 64-90.

Gandhi, M.K. (1949). Autobiography: The Story of my Experiments with Truth. Phoenix Press: London.

Grenby, M., Kasinger, M., Patching, R. and Pearson, M. (2009). Girls, girls, girls. A study of the popularity of journalism as a career among female teenagers and its corresponding lack of appeal to young males. Australian Journalism Monographs, vol 11: Centre for Public Culture and Ideas, Griffith University. Retrieved from http://www.griffith.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0010/171991/Australian-Journalism-Monograph-Vol-11-2009-.pdf

Gunaratne, S. (2005). The Dao of the Press. A Humanocentric Theory. Hampton Press: Cresskill, NJ.

Hutchins, R.M. (1947). A Free and Responsible Press. A General Report on Mass Communication: Newspapers, Radio, Motion Pictures, Magazines and Books. [Report of the Commission on Freedom of the Press]. University of Chicago Press: Chicago.

Kalupahana, David J. (1976) Buddhist Philosophy: A Historical Analysis. University Press of Hawaii: Honolulu

Law Commission (NZ) (2013). The news media meets ‘new media’: rights, responsibilities and
 regulation in the digital age. 
(Law Commission report 128). Law Commission: Wellington. Retrieved from http://www.lawcom.govt.nz/project/review-regulatory-gaps-and-new-media/report

Leveson, B. (2012). Report of An Inquiry into the Culture, Practice and Ethics of the Press (The Stationery Office, 2012) [Leveson Report]. Retrieved from http://www.official-documents.gov.uk/document/hc1213/hc07/0780/0780.asp

Lynch, J. (2010). Peace journalism. In Allan, S. (ed). The Routledge Companion to News and Journalism. Routledge, London: 542-553.

McDevitt, M., Gassaway, B.M., Perez, FG. (2002), “The making and unmaking of civic journalists: influences of professional socialization”, Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, 79(1): 87-100.

McQuail, D. (1987) Mass Communication Theory: An Introduction.Sage Publications: London

Pearson, M. (1988). “I Want to be a Journalist”: a study of cadetships, Australian Journalism Review, January-December, 10: 125-134.

Pearson, M., K. Green, S. Tanner & J. Sykes. (2010). Researching Journalists and Vulnerable Sources – Issues in the Design and Implementation of a National Study In Pasadeos, Y. (ed) Advances in Communication and Mass Media Research. ATINER, Athens: 87-96.

Pearson, M. (2012). The media regulation debate in a democracy lacking a free expression guarantee. Pacific Journalism Review, 18(2): 89-101.

Pearson, M. and Polden, M. (2011). The journalist’s guide to media law, Fourth edition, Allen & Unwin: Sydney.

Robie, D. (2011). Conflict reporting in the South Pacific – Why peace journalism has a chance, The Journal of Pacific Studies, 31(2): 221–240. Retrieved from: http://www.academia.edu/1374720/Conflict_reporting_in_the_South_Pacific_Why_peace_journalism_has_a_chance

Romano, A.R. (Ed.) (2010) International journalism and democracy : civic engagement models from around the world. Routledge:  New York and London.

Rosen, J. (1999). What Are Journalists For? Yale University Press: New Haven, CT.

Rosen, J.. (2003-2013). PressThink – Ghost of Democracy in the Media Machine. Weblog. Retrieved from http://pressthink.org.

Schön, D. (1987) Educating the reflective practitioner. Toward a new design for teaching and learning in the professions. Jossey-Bass: San Francisco.

Segal, Z., Williams, M., Teasdale, J. and Kabat-Zinn, J. (2012). Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy for Depression, Second Edition. Guilford Publications: NY.

Sheridan Burns, L. (2013). Understanding journalism. Second edition. Sage: London.

Siebert, F.S., Peterson, T. & Schramm, W. (1963) Four Theories of the Press. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

Smith, H. and Novak, P. (2003) Buddhism : A Concise Introduction. Harper San Francisco: New York.

 

Note: The author acknowledges funding from the Australian Research Council for funding the collaborative ARC Linkage Project LP0989758 (researchers from five universities led by Professor Kerry Green from the University of South Australia) which contributed to this study and to the Griffith University Arts, Education and Law Group for funding to present this paper.

…

© Mark Pearson 2013

Disclaimer: While I write about media law and ethics, nothing here should be construed as legal advice. I am an academic, not a lawyer. My only advice is that you consult a lawyer before taking any legal risks.

6 Comments

Filed under Uncategorized

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

June 19, 2013 · 2:45 am

Dealing with cybersquatters in your precious domain

By MARK PEARSON

Since the advent of the Internet, profiteers have tried to exploit the registration of domain names of unwitting celebrities, businesses and organisations. Lawmakers are still trying to work out how to deal with this problem, and quite often there is absolutely nothing the courts can do because the offender lives in a different jurisdiction. Disputes often end up in the hands of international and national domain registration agencies who engage in arbitration between the parties to try to resolve the argument over who is really entitled to the name. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) will work with national bodies to withdraw a domain name from a cybersquatter.

It is in your best interests as a blogger to keep a close eye on your domain name registration and to register in advance any close wording variants, especially if you are using your blog to any commercial ends. You never actually ‘own’ your URL – you are only licensed to use it for a certain period by the registration body. Cybersquatters keep a close eye on the registration process and pounce once a popular name becomes available. They then use might use it for selling advertising, stealing your identity theft or trying to sell it back to you at an inflated price.

You can’t register every possible variation on the spelling of your name so some spyware and phishing operators register common misspellings of the URLs of famous people and corporations – a practice known as ‘typosquatting’.

Even trademark law is inconsistent in the area of domain names and courts will often not grant relief unless someone clearly demonstrates an intent in ‘bad faith’ to profit from the deception within the same jurisdiction as the victim.

The international dispute resolution processes for domain names might be less expensive than litigation, but they can be beyond the means of the ordinary blogger or small business. WIPO’s Arbitration and Mediation Center charges between US$1500 and US$5000 for their services, depending how many domain names are contested and the number of independent panelists needed for the adjudication. They claim they can process such claims within two months of filing. The domain name cases they have handled – listed here  – make for interesting reading and feature many of the world’s leading brands winning URL registration back from shysters and spammers from remote corners of the planet.

Major social media network and blog hosts like Facebook and WordPress also have rules to deter you from registering under other people’s or corporations’ names. They claim they will act to shut down the offender’s account if the target person or organisation complains. But they are sometimes slow to respond and complaints get lost in their bureaucracies. PBS reported on the difficulties a Georgia mother faced removing a fake Facebook profile on her 13-year-old daughter. This was despite the social network’s Statement of Rights and Responsibilities requiring users to use their real names and not ‘create an account for anyone other than yourself without permission’. On the other hand, Twitter tolerates numerous impersonation ‘handles’ set up for comedic purposes. Its policy allows users “to create parody, commentary, or fan accounts”.

[Adapted from my book, Blogging and Tweeting Without Getting Sued. A Global Guide to the Law for Anyone Writing Online. (Allen & Unwin, 2012).

Disclaimer: While I write about media law and ethics, nothing here should be construed as legal advice. I am an academic, not a lawyer. My only advice is that you consult a lawyer before taking any legal risks.

© Mark Pearson 2013

Leave a comment

Filed under Uncategorized

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

June 4, 2013 · 2:28 pm

Reporters’ communications targeted in subpoena served direct on sources

By MARK PEARSON

The sources of at least three journalists investigating a collapsed fund manager have been ordered by the Queensland Supreme Court to hand over all correspondence with the reporters.

The tactic is an alarming new threat to the confidentiality of journalist-source communications and comes as other reporters face direct court demands to reveal their sources.

The subpoena comes from the administrators of Gold Coast-based LM Investment Management Ltd and it demands from Trilogy Funds Management Ltd “letters, emails, facsimile transmissions, memoranda, other correspondence and reports” with a range of parties, including Sydney Morning Herald business columnist Michael West and The Australian’s Anthony Klan.

It also demands all correspondence with any other journalists from The Australian and the National Business Review in New Zealand.

It was issued on April 30 but was extended until June 14 after an unsuccessful application to have it dismissed.

West told journlaw.com it was a ‘disgraceful’ technique he had rarely encountered in his long career.

“It is a pity for journalism and intimidating,” he said.

“It’s a waste of unit holders’ money in LM.”

National Business Review reporter David Williams called it a “fishing exercise without a genuine need” – a technique that did not appear to have been used in New Zealand.

“It is an appalling tactic that should be vigorously resisted, particularly by Australian-based media. If this was happening in New Zealand, NBR would resist it as strongly as possible,” he said.

“Perhaps now I’ll have to resort to strictly using phone calls and letters.”

He said the practice of subpoenaing reporters’ communications should be banned.

“At the very least it should be resisted by the parties involved, and the courts should closely question the need for such a course.”

Voluntary administrator Ginette Muller of FTI Consulting said only one document had been provided to date which she said was “nothing of note”.

She said the purpose of the subpoena was not to identify the journalists’ sources.

“We know the source,” she said. “It is more about the people who have been subpoenaed as opposed to the journalists.”

The subpoena also sought correspondence between Trilogy and their law firm Piper Alderman and its partner Amanda Banton.

Banton told journlaw.com the court had decided the request for the order was ‘relevant’ and set aside her application to have it dismissed.

She said the journalists and their organisations could make separate applications to have the order set aside.

But that seems unlikely given the tight budgets of the major newspaper groups and the lack of any shield law for journalists in Queensland.

Reporters Steve Pennells and Adele Ferguson are awaiting court decisions on their refusal to reveal their sources after demands from Australia’s richest person, mining magnate Gina Rinehart.

I am reporting upon this latest episode to Reporters Without Borders.

…

© Mark Pearson 2013

Disclaimer: While I write about media law and ethics, nothing here should be construed as legal advice. I am an academic, not a lawyer. My only advice is that you consult a lawyer before taking any legal risks.

1 Comment

Filed under Uncategorized

Tagged as , , , , , ,

May 30, 2013 · 2:12 pm

When jurors go ‘rogue’ on the Internet and social media …

By MARK PEARSON

The term ‘rogue juror’ has been used widely and pejoratively to describe a range of juror actions running counter to judicial directions to restrict their inquiries and communications about a case to the court room and the jury room.

I was tasked with taking a close look at the phenomenon for our collaborative research project conducted recently to the Standing Council on Law and Justice via the Victorian Attorney-General and drafted a section around the following cases. Our full report – including elaboration on this material – can be viewed here. [Johnston, J., Keyzer, P., Holland, G., Pearson, M., Rodrick, S., and Wallace, A. (2013). Juries and Social Media. A Report Prepared for the Victorian Department of Justice. Centre for Law, Governance and Public Policy, Bond University.]

While all such incidents involve jurors venturing beyond the courtroom in their communications during a trial, not all their actions are prejudicial to a trial and can be viewed on a continuum. At one extreme are serious transgressions such as a juror’s ‘friending’ of the accused on Facebook (as in was A-G v Fraill [2011] EWCA Crim 1570). At the other extreme are actions that still risk being counter-productive, but are far from ‘roguish’ behaviour and may well stem from a desire on the part of jurors to better perform their role. For example, jurors who search the Internet for definitions of terms they have been asked to consider are likely indulging in their normal method of research and inquiry and might consider such actions as fastidious rather than inappropriate. Between these poles on the continuum are a range of behaviours classified and exemplified here through recent cases in Australian and other jurisdictions.

In 2010 Reuters Legal, using data from the Westlaw online research service, compiled a tally of reported US decisions where judges granted a new trial, denied a request for a new trial, or overturned a verdict, in whole or in part, because of juror actions related to the Internet. They identified at least 90 verdicts between 1999 and 2010 challenged over juror Internet misconduct. They counted 21 retrials or overturned verdicts in the 2009-2010 period (Grow, 2010).

The Law Commission (2012) (p. 62) identified at least 18 appeals in the UK since 2005 related to juror misconduct during criminal trials, some of which involved Internet access or social media use. The section below is an attempt to classify these types of cases, with examples, according to their level of potential prejudice to a trial, although this is not a perfect science and experts will inevitably differ in their opinions on this.

Jurors using social media to communicate with parties to the case

The most famous case of this type was A-G v Fraill [2011] EWCA Crim 1570, [2011] 2 Cr App R 21. Joanne Fraill, 40, was sentenced to eight months in jail by London’s High Court in 2011 for exchanging Facebook messages with the accused in a drug trial while she was serving on the jury. She also searched online for information about another defendant while she and the other jurors were still deliberating. All this went against clear instructions from the judge to jurors to stay away from the Internet.

In June 2010, the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals granted a new trial to a sheriff’s deputy convicted of corruption, after finding that a juror had contacted the defendant through MySpace. (Grow, 2010).

Jurors commenting on social media during the trial

Harvard’s Digital Media Law Project recorded the case of attorney Frank Russell Wilson who was suspended from the Bar for 45 days for blogging about a burglary trial while serving as a juror. He had failed to disclose to the court that he was a lawyer (California Bar v. Wilson DMLP 1/23/09) .

An erstwhile Californian Superior Court Judge was called for jury duty in a murder case, and proceeded to email 22 fellow judges with progress reports on his experiences.  His first e-mail stated:  “Here I am, livin’ the dream, jury duty with Mugridge [the defense lawyer] and Jenkins [the prosecutor].”  (Sweeney, 2010).

A juror used his smartphone to send eight tweets from an Arkansas case brought by investors against a company manufacturing building materials. He tweeted: “oh and nobody buy Stoam [the building product].  Its bad mojo and they’ll probably cease to exist, now that their wallet is 12 m lighter.” (Sweeney, 2010)

Tweets from the handle @JohnnyCho in 2010 boasted the owner was in a jury pool in Los Angeles Superior Court. He posted: “Guilty! He’s guilty! I can tell!”  He was identified through his Twitter profile to be Johnny Cho, director of communications at a Los Angeles entertainment lighting company. The accused in the case was convicted and the court took no action against Cho (Grow, 2010).

Jurors commenting on blogs or social media after a trial has concluded

In Commonwealth v. Werner  81 Mass. App. Ct. 689 (2012) Appeals Court of Massachusetts, Plymouth, February 1, 2012 a variety of juror online behaviours were exhibited, including three jurors friending each other and two jurors posting comments to Facebook about their jury service. One also blogged about the case after the trial. The Appeals Court refused to set aside the conviction on this basis because of overwhelming evidence of the accused’s guilt.

Jurors using social media to seek responses or advice about the case 

A UK juror was dismissed from a child abduction and sexual assault trial after she asked her Facebook ‘friends’ to help her decide on the verdict. “I don’t know which way to go, so I’m holding a poll,” she wrote. This was discovered prior to the jury starting its deliberations  (Sweeney, 2010)

Jurors ‘friending’ each other on Facebook during trial

Retired Circuit Court judge Dennis M. Sweeney told the Maryland State Bar Association of an episode during the political corruption trial of Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon, over which he presided in 2009. Five jurors had ‘friended’ each other on Facebook and had mentioned the case in their postings, despite his explicit direction not to use Facebook (Sweeney, 2010). After he admonished them, a young male juror posted on his Facebook page, “F— the Judge.” Judge Sweeney said he asked the juror about the offensive comment and was told: “Hey Judge, that’s just Facebook stuff.” [Westlaw News & Insight website, 2010]

Given it is common behaviour among social media for people to ‘friend’ those with whom they interact in many situations, the challenge is for the courts to distinguish the often close relationships formed during an intense jury trial from other social contexts if they wish to establish juror duty as an exception to this common practice.

Jurors searching the Internet for information on the accused (“Trial by Google”)

The UK Attorney-General used the expression ‘Trial by Google’ in a recent speech to describe jurors’ use of Internet search tools and social media to conduct their independent investigations into a case (Grieve, 2013). He conveyed a dim view of the practice and cited instances where it had resulted in contempt convictions, including Attorney General v Dallas [2012] EWHC 156. There, a female juror was sentenced six months’ jail for contempt of court for conducting research on the Internet, including definitions of the word ‘grievous’ and a newspaper report of an earlier rape allegation against the accused, and had shared this with fellow jurors. The judgment [at http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Admin/2012/156.html] provides an extended account of how the British courts brief juries about Internet use and manage transgressions.

A US District judge in Florida ordered the search of a former juror’s computer hard drive in 2013 after the juror revealed she had done Internet research each evening while hearing the federal criminal drug trial of reggae star Buju Banton. The order specifically asked whether the following words had been searched: “Pinkerton. Doctrine. Mark. Anthony. Myrie. Buju. Banton. Music. Reggae. Gun. Charge. Guilt. Verdict. Mistrial. Conspiracy. Cocaine. Narcotic. Drug. Possession. Hung. Jury.” The juror had told a newspaper: “I would get in the car, just write my notes down so I could remember, and I would come home and do the research.” (Ryan, 2013)

Jurors searching the Internet to better inform their role

In Benbrika v. The Queen [2010] [2010] VSCA 281(http://www.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/sinodisp/au/cases/vic/VSCA/2010/281.html) the Victorian Court of Appeal affirmed trial judge’s (Bongiorno, J.) handling of a situation where jurors had used Internet sites including Wikipedia and Reference.com seeking definitions of terms related to the terrorism trial (definitions the judge said were not substantially different from those stated in court). The Appeal court said the trial judge had found that “it was distinctly possible that they had interpreted his directions as meaning that they should not seek information about the case, rather than using the Internet for more general purposes” (at para 199). They noted the important difference between this kind of search and searching for “information that is both inadmissible at trial, and prejudicial to the accused”, which might prompt the discharge of a jury  (at para 214).

However, in the US similar behaviour was enough for a Washington State Superior Court judge to declare a mistrial in a child sex case after a juror admitted researching on the Internet about witness coaching (Hefley, 2012).

Also in the US, Maryland’s Court of Special Appeals, overturned a murder conviction because a juror had searched Wikipedia for the terms “livor mortis” and “algor mortis” on and had taken printouts to the jury room, later discovered by the bailiff.  The juror did not consider the action wrong: “To me that wasn’t research.  It was a definition.” (Sweeney, 2010).

Jurors as citizens engaging in their routine social media behaviour during a trial

As social media becomes a part of everyday life, the courts are encountering the fact that ordinary citizens have adopted a routine use of social media which they carry into the court room. A visitor to the District Court in Sydney used a cellphone to take a photo of a family friend who was sitting in a jury panel – common social behaviour in other public places (Jacobsen, 2011). But she was charged with contempt and was fingerprinted, her phone was seized and she was granted bail but the charge was later dropped and signs were erected in the courthouse warning that no photography was allowed.

[Other cases of inappropriate access by British jurors include the following cited by the Law Commission (2012):  Karakaya [2005] EWCA Crim 346, [2005] 2 Cr App R 5; Smith [2005] EWCA Crim 2028; Hawkins [2005] EWCA Crim 2842; Pink [2006] EWCA Crim 2094; Marshall [2007] EWCA Crim 35, [2007] Criminal Law Review 562; Fuller-Love [2007] EWCA Crim 3414; H [2008] EWCA Crim 3321; Thakrar [2008] EWCA Crim 2359, [2009] Criminal Law Review 357; White [2009] EWCA Crim 1774; Reynolds [2009] EWCA Crim 1801; Richards [2009] EWCA Crim 1256; Gibbon [2009] EWCA Crim 2198; Bassett [2010] EWCA Crim 2453; Thompson [2010] EWCA Crim 1623, [2011] 1 WLR 200; McDonnell [2010] EWCA Crim 2352, [2011] 1 Cr App R 28; Mpelenda [2011] EWCA Crim 1235; Morris [2011] EWCA Crim 3250; Yu [2011] EWCA Crim 2089; Starling [2012] EWCA Crim 743; Gul [2012] EWCA Crim 280, [2012] 3 All ER 83.]

References

Grow, B. (2010, December 8). ‘As jurors go online, US trials go off track.’ Reuters. Available: http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/12/08/internet-jurors-idUSN0816547120101208

Grieve, D. (2013, February 6). ‘Trial by Google? Juries, social media and the Internet. Speech by the Attorney-General at the University of Kent. Available: https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/trial-by-google-juries-social-media-and-the-internet

Hefley, D. (December 12, 2012). ‘Juror’s ‘research’ forced mistrial in child rape case’, HeraldNet. Available: http://www.heraldnet.com/article/20121212/NEWS01/712129975?page=single

Jacobsen, G. (2011, September 8). ‘A quick click or two in court lands a young woman in the nick’, Newcastle Herald. Available: http://www.theherald.com.au/story/936338/a-quick-click-or-two-in-court-lands-a-young-woman-in-the-nick/

Johnston, J., Keyzer, P., Holland, G., Pearson, M., Rodrick, S., and Wallace, A. (2013). Juries and Social Media. A Report Prepared for the Victorian Department of Justice. Centre for Law, Governance and Public Policy, Bond University. Available: http://www.sclj.gov.au/agdbasev7wr/sclj/documents/pdf/juries%20and%20social%20media%20-%20final.pdf

Krawitz, M. (2012). ‘Guilty as Tweeted: Jurors using social media inappropriately during the trial process’. Available: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2176634

Law Commission (2012). Consultation Paper No 209 Contempt of Court. Law Commission, London. Available: http://lawcommission.justice.gov.uk/docs/cp209_contempt_of_court.pdf

Ryan, P. (2013, March 5). ‘Judge wants to know if Banton juror typed any of these 21 words’. Tampa Bay Times. Available: http://www.tampabay.com/news/courts/criminal/judge-wants-to-know-if-banton-juror-typed-any-of-these-21-words/2107088

Sweeney, D.M. (2010). ‘The Internet, social media and jury trials: lessons learned from the Dixon trial’. Address to the litigation section of the Maryland State Bar Association, April 29, 2010. Available: http://juries.typepad.com/files/judge-sweeney.doc

…

© Mark Pearson 2013

Disclaimer: While I write about media law and ethics, nothing here should be construed as legal advice. I am an academic, not a lawyer. My only advice is that you consult a lawyer before taking any legal risks.

1 Comment

Filed under Uncategorized

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , ,

May 21, 2013 · 11:47 am

Moral rights – taking the high ground

By MARK PEARSON

International conventions and the laws of many countries grant you ‘moral rights’ over your work in addition to your actionable economic rights over copyright. They give you the right to claim authorship of your work through attribution and also the right to object to any changes others might make to your work that might damage your integrity as the creator.

Even if you transferred the copyright in your work to someone else – as you might have done as a freelance blogger or if you were writing as an employee in a government or media organisation – you would still retain your moral rights as an author. This means you can take action against those who might put their own names to your work or those who have put your name to the work but have changed it to your disadvantage. It operates in part to protect you from unfair attacks and parodies where your work has been mutilated, distorted beyond recognition, or reproduced in a thoroughly inappropriate context that damages your honour.

It won’t protect ‘reasonable’ criticism of your work or any critique you have agreed to. It also does not prevent employers or clients leaving your name off work if you have contracted to allow them to do so. But it sends a warning to others that they shouldn’t mess with your work or republish it without giving you due credit. As a blogger, it also means you should be careful when writing parodies pretending to be someone else or denigrating their content and style by chopping and changing it to your satirical ends.

A recent Australian case resulted in the award of $10,000 in damages over a moral rights breach to international rap/hip-hop recording star ‘Pitbull’ (Armando Perez) by an Australian DJ and promoter who had altered one of his songs and played it automatically when his website was visited and at nightclub performances. Freehills executive counsel Melanie Bouton gives an excellent summary of the case here. 

The issue of moral rights also raises copyright issues for the blogger or social media user writing under the name of someone famous – beyond the hazards we considered earlier in this book.

Many parts of the world have limitations on how you can use the name and image of others – particularly if you are making a profit out of it. These are often called ‘personality rights’.

In European and other civil law jurisdictions there are tough limits on how you can use the likenesses of others – all bundled up in the laws of privacy. You can’t just cut and paste someone’s photo from the Internet and use it in your blog – especially if it appears to be endorsing your enterprise in some way.

In common law countries like Australia and the UK there is an action called ‘passing off’ which can be launched against you if you have used someone’s name or likeness to imply they have entered into some commercial arrangement to endorse your product or service in some way. In its basic form, it offers simple protection to businesses against those who pretend to have some connection with them or endorsement from them. It has been extended in the creative arts to protect newspaper columnists from deceptive parodies of their work being published under their names in competing publications and also to protect the ‘pen-names’ of authors being used by their former employers after they have moved on to another title.

The US offers a property right known as the ‘right to publicity’ and several states have passed laws to extend its basic common law protections. It gives people the right to protect their name, image and other identifying features against commercial exploitation by others. However, like so many areas of US law, it is limited by the First Amendment so it usually only encompasses blatant cases of exploitation that lack a free expression rationale.

[Adapted from my book, Blogging and Tweeting Without Getting Sued. A Global Guide to the Law for Anyone Writing Online. (Allen & Unwin, 2012).

Disclaimer: While I write about media law and ethics, nothing here should be construed as legal advice. I am an academic, not a lawyer. My only advice is that you consult a lawyer before taking any legal risks.

© Mark Pearson 2012

Leave a comment

Filed under Uncategorized

Tagged as , , , , , , , , ,

May 15, 2013 · 3:27 pm

Seeking PhD and research Masters candidates in journalism and social media law

By MARK PEARSON (@journlaw)

Followers of this blog will be aware that I joined Griffith University earlier this year as Professor of Journalism and Social Media.

I am now fielding expressions of interest from students internationally who might want to pursue a PhD or a Masters degree by research in my field of journalism and social media law, ethics and regulation.

While I am happy to correspond with you via email at my work address m.pearson@griffith.edu.au, the best course of action would be for you to go through the application process via the Griffith website at http://www.griffith.edu.au/higher-degrees-research/how-to-apply. Details on scholarships and their application processes are also available at that link.

I’m very much looking forward to seeing your applications as they work their way through the system.

Be sure to mark them for my supervision and attention: Mark Pearson LLM, PhD, Professor of Journalism and Social Media.

2 Comments

Filed under Uncategorized

Tagged as , , , , , , , ,

May 5, 2013 · 3:53 pm

Press freedom, social media and the citizen: My 2013 UNESCO World Press Freedom Day Lecture

By MARK PEARSON (@journlaw)

[This is the full text of my 2013 UNESCO World Press Freedom Day Lecture, delivered at the Pacific Media Centre, AUT University, Auckland on May 3, 2013. Further details, interviews about the material, and vision of the address can be accessed at the PMC’s website.]

Press freedom, social media and the citizen

Mark Pearson*

UNESCO World Press Freedom Day 2013 lecture

Pacific Media Centre, Sir Paul Reeves Building, AUT University, Auckland, New Zealand

May 3, 2013

Firstly I wish to acknowledge the tangata whenua of Tamaki Makaurau and to thank UNESCO, my hosts here at AUT’s Pacific Media Centre and the School of Communication Studies for your hospitality this week.

 

The Pacific region can lay claim to several ‘press freedom warriors’ over recent decades. It would be a mistake to try to name such individuals in a forum like this because you inevitably leave someone off the list – and they are usually sitting in the very room where you are giving your address!

A ‘press freedom warrior’ is someone who has made a substantial sacrifice in the name of free expression and a free media.

For some, that sacrifice has taken the form of physical injury or danger – perhaps even death. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, more than 100 journalists died in the course of their work internationally last year, and more than 20 have been killed already in 2013 (CPJ, 2013). Some were relatively close to home in the Asia-Pacific region, with at least 72 Philippine journalists killed over the past decade.

Throughout the Pacific islands, many others have suffered physical violence or have been imprisoned in recent years because of what they have reported.

I also include in my definition of a ‘press freedom warrior’ those who have suffered in other ways because of their commitment to truth-seeking and truth-telling. Some have been the victims of lawsuits and have had to pay damages to those who have set out to gag them. Others have forsaken lucrative positions in government or public relations so they can continue as Fourth Estate watchdogs in preference to becoming political or corporate lapdogs.

We are honored to be in the company of press freedom warriors in this room today or watching via webcast and I ask you to join with me in a round of applause to salute them. [APPLAUSE].

I am not a press freedom warrior. I have made none of these sacrifices. I prefer to describe myself as a “press freedom worrier” – because much of my work has centred upon my public expressions of worry about a continuing array of regulatory, technological, economic, corporate and ethical threats to free expression and a free media.

I shall try to address some of these here tonight and I look forward to some robust discussion afterwards.

Before we proceed too far, however, we need to position the concept of free expression – and its offspring, ‘press freedom’ – in the modern world.

The free expression of certain facts and views has always been a dangerous practice in most societies.

There have been countless millions put to death for their attempted expression of their so-called ‘dissident’ religious or political views throughout history. Many more have been imprisoned, tortured or punished in other ways for such expression.

A classical free expression martyr was Socrates, who in 399 BC was forced to drink hemlock poison by the government of the day because he refused to recant his philosophical questioning of the official deities of the time (Brasch and Ulloth, 1986, p. 9).

It was the invention of the printing press and the burgeon­ing of the publishing industry over the 16th and 17th centuries in the form of newsbooks and the ‘pamphleteers’ that first prompted repressive laws and then the movement for press freedom (Feather, 1988: 46). It is interesting that these individuals were the forerunners of the citizen journalists and bloggers we know today – often highly opinionated and quick to publish speculation and rumour.

But the pamphleteers took umbrage at government attempts at imposing a licensing system for printers from the mid-16th century (Overbeck, 2001: 34) Political philosopher and poet John Milton very publicly took aim at this in 1644 with his missive Areopagitica, a speech to the parliament appeal­ing for freedom of the presses. He went on to utter the famous free speech quote (Patrides 1985: 241):  “Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties. “

Milton was an early free press warrior because he boldly inscribed his name on the title page of his unlicensed work, in defiance of the very law he was criticising. So with this series of events the notion of free expression spawned its offspring – press freedom – which we celebrate today.

Of course, the definitive example of that development was the enactment of the First Amendment to the US Constitution as part of the Bill of Rights in 1791. The relevant 14 words would fit comfortably within a modern day 140 character tweet: “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.” The US Supreme Court has applied a broad interpretation of those words to an array of writing and publishing scenarios. It has been held to cover the gamut of traditional and online expression, by ordinary citizens, journalists and bloggers – particularly if they are addressing a matter of genuine public concern. But even in the US the First Amendment cannot guard against government erosion of media freedoms, and that nation languishes at number 32 behind Ghana and Suriname on the Reporters Without Borders World Press Freedom Index (RSF, 2013).

In fact, nowhere in the world has there ever been unshackled free speech or a free media. We operate on an international and historical continuum of press freedom or censorship, from whichever perspective you wish to view it.

It is only over the past half century that the notion of free expression and a free media has gained traction on a broader scale internationally.

The key international document is the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which in 1948 enshrined free expression at Article 19: “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media regardless of frontiers.”

At face value, this statement seems to give all the world’s citizens a right to free expression. But it was only ever meant to be a declaration of a lofty goal and has many limitations.

Stronger protections came internationally in 1966 when the UN adopted the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, prompting a series of binding treaties. The covenant introduces a right to free expression for the world’s citizens, again at Article 19: “Everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of his choice.”

It sounds like it was almost written for bloggers and citizen journalists. However, the right is limited because the covenant imposes special duties for the respect of the rights and reputations of others and for the protection of national security, public order, public health or morals. Add to this the fact that many countries have not ratified the covenant and you are left without much real protection at this level. Complaints about individual countries’ breaches can be brought to the Office for the High Commissioner for Human Rights, but the processes can take several years and are often not resolved, as their annual reports demonstrate.

A positive of the UN right was that it fed through into regional conventions and in turn into the laws of their nations. Rights charters exist in Africa, the Americas and Europe and free expression or a free press is guaranteed by the constitutions of many countries internationally.

In the Pacific region we have no such rights charter, although many nations including Papua New Guinea and New Zealand have either constitutional or legislative rights protections for free expression. Pacific Media Centre director David Robie (2004) has critiqued the ease with which governments in Fiji and Tonga have changed such provisions when this has suited their political ends.

Theorists have attempted to group different functions of the press within government systems. Most notable was Frederick Siebert’s Four Theories of the Press (Siebert et al. 1963), which categorised press systems into ‘Authoritarian’, ‘Libertarian’, ‘Soviet-Communist’ or ‘Social Responsibility’. Others have criti­cised the Siebert approach for its simplicity and outdatedness, with Denis McQuail (1987) adding two further categories: the development model and the democratic-participant model.

Some countries justify their stricter regulation of the press, and limitations of media freedom, on religious, cultural or economic grounds. There has been an ongoing debate about the lack of press freedom in the Asia-Pacific region. Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei and Fiji have state licensing systems in place for their newspapers. Malaysia also has its Internal Security Act 1960, restricting publications on such topics as the position of rulers, the position of Malays and natives, the status of Malay as the national language and citizenship (Syed, 1998: 124).

As Rejinal Dutt noted in 2010, ‘Singaporeans have been led to believe that their model of news media suits the interests of their wider society and that the media’s role is to support the government in its quest to promote harmony, solidarity, tolerance and prosperity, rather than to question the existing social, political and economic structures’ (Dutt, 2010, p. 90). He showed how the Fijian regime had modelled its own approach to media regulation on the Singapore structure in its Media Industry Development Decree (Dutt, 2010).

As a ‘press freedom worrier’ my concerns are not limited to Singapore and Fiji.

My major worry is the ever-increasing government regulation of media and social media everywhere. My observation has been that governments are quick to enact laws to control emerging social and technological situations but are loathe to wind them back when they prove unjust or the reasons for their existence have long gone. Examples of such laws that are an anachronism in the modern era – and still exist in many Pacific nations – are laws of sedition, criminal libel and blasphemy.

Add to these the spate of anti-terror laws introduced since 9/11 and you start to get a potential armory of tools available to governments and their security agencies for surveillance or intimidation of the media.

Even laws endowing journalists with special privileges are worrying because they require a definition of who or what constitutes a ‘journalist’. Shield laws are a good example. At their best they offer journalists sanctuary when being pressed to reveal their confidential sources in court. However, the downside is that a shield law for journalists requires a court to deem who is, or is not, a ‘journalist’ – a process which, when taken to its extreme, can constitute a licensing system.

It is even more problematic now that citizen journalists and bloggers are covering stories of public importance when they might not meet a government’s definition of ‘journalist’.

As a press freedom worrier I am also concerned by the technological intrusions into free expression and a free media. As an avid blogger and social media user I can attest to the utility and reach of these media and we have seen via the Twitter revolutions in North Africa how social media can be a useful tool for dissident mobilization in autocratic regimes.

Web 2.0 communication has further empowered ordinary citizens who can now publish at their whim in the form of blogs, tweets, podcasts, Facebook postings and Instagram and Flickr images. Citizen journalists can crowdsource funding for important stories and not-for-profits can operate their own news platforms to compete with the legacy media.

Yet at the same time the Internet has given audiences and advertisers so many new choices that the financial model of those traditional media is under chronic stress. The important Fourth Estate journalism once funded by the ‘rivers of gold’ in the form of classified advertising to newspapers has all but lost its funding base.

Investigative reporting calling governments to account does not come cheaply. It involves weeks of groundwork by senior journalists, photojournalists and videojournalists and funding of their salaries, travel expenses and equipment. It typically requires further investment in the time of expert editors and production staff.

But the former multinational newspaper companies that once funded this investigative enterprise have been shedding staff, rationalizing operations and slashing budgets. There is a ripple effect throughout the Pacific of the impact of such measures in major Australian, New Zealand and North American newsrooms.

It is not just their domestic investigative reportage that suffers – but also their international reportage and foreign correspondence. This means the policies of governments in Pacific island nations are exposed to less international scrutiny and that breaking news is more likely to be covered ‘on the cheap’ by so-called ‘parachute journalists’ who fly in and out to report in a superficial way.

An unfortunate byproduct of the financial demise of big media is that they no longer have the deep pockets to fund the lobbying for media freedom they have conducted over recent decades. Tighter budgets mean less funding for submissions to government opposing media threats, appeals to higher courts on points of law and free press principle, and a greater tendency to settle out of court to reduce court costs and potential exposure to higher damages. Bloggers and citizen journalists are left stranded without the resources to defend legal threats unless they can garner the support of a union or an international NGO.

Another downside to the technological revolution is the level of surveillance of the journalistic enterprise available to governments and their agencies. Anti-terror laws introduced internationally – modeled on the US PATRIOT Act – typically give intelligence agencies unprecedented powers to monitor the communications of all citizens.

There is also an inordinate level of surveillance, logging and tracking technologies in use in the private sector – often held in computer clouds or multinational corporate servers in jurisdictions subject to search and seizure powers of foreign governments.

This has disturbing implications for journalists’ protection of their confidential sources – typically government or corporate ‘whistleblowers’ who risk their reputations, jobs and even lives if they reveal information to reporters. I blogged recently asking whether the Watergate investigation could even happen in this modern surveillance era because it was premised upon the absolute confidentiality of the White House source known as ‘Deep Throat’ (recently revealed as FBI executive Mark Felt) (Pearson, 2013). Today the Washington Post reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward and their secret source would have to contend with geo-locational tracking of their phones and vehicles, tollpoint capture of their motorway entry and exit, easily accessible phone, email and social media records, CCTV in private and public places, and facial recognition in other people’s images, perhaps posted to Facebook. The use of new technologies like drones and Google Glass will equip journalists with significant newsgathering capabilities but will at the same time risk further compromising the identities of their confidential sources.

All this might sound terribly pessimistic, but despite my ‘press freedom worrier’ status I am actually an inherent optimist, although probably not quite as hopeful as the stated theme for today’s UNESCO World Press Freedom Day – “Safe to speak: Securing freedom of expression in all media”. While we might aim to secure the ideal of freedom of expression in all media it can only ever be an aspiration – there is always a looming threat of censorship in even the most liberal societies.

Perhaps it is time for a new approach to media ethics and regulation. While I do not approve of the Malaysian, Singaporean and Fijian application of the ‘development model’, I am not sure the libertarian model strongly identified with British and US media in the 20th century is the only workable approach.

Winston Churchill once described democracy as the ‘least worst’ option? (House of Commons, 11 November 1947). Is the libertarian model of press freedom also the ‘least worst option’? Or can we have press freedom within some other system of regulation, implying a different ethical framework for truth seeking and truth telling?

There is no doubt that press freedom is entrenched in the libertarian traditions of western democracies and it is sometimes seen as another feature of colonialism that has been imposed upon societies – including those here in the Pacific – as a compulsory add-on to democracy.

But that implies that truth-seeking and truth-telling can only be part of Western culture, and that is clearly not the case.

My very first academic article in 1987 took up the issue of information sharing in indigenous Australian societies and questioned whether the techniques of modern journalism were well suited to interviewing and reporting upon indigenous issues. Information exchange in indigenous societies had cultural implications related to the status of the parties involved and the period of time allowed for the communication process (Pearson, 1987).

Veteran New Zealand journalism educator Murray Masterton had already noted codes of practice within Samoan society, where in some situations it was even a taboo to ask a question of an individual with a higher social status (Masterton, 1985, p. 114). Countering that, Samoa also had the tradition of the revered ‘tusitala’ or ‘story teller’ – the name conferred on the great author Robert Louis Stevenson when he lived there for the four years before his death in 1894 (Spencer, 1994, p. 7-A).

Papuan tribal societies also valued communication highly and can in some ways be seen as the consummate news reporters through their use of the garamut and the smaller kundu drum to send clear and simple messages across hilltops and through dense jungle. However, journalists in Papua New Guinea face challenges through their own cultural practices of wantok and payback which imply both an obligation to members of their own social network and retribution against others for wrongs done to their kin (Trompf, p. 392). It renders the roles of whistleblower and investigative reporter even more isolating and socially reprehensible despite a clear constitutional guarantee of a free media in that nation’s constitution.

When used to describe approaches of governments to media regulation, the libertarian model has been most commonly associated with the private ownership of newspapers and their active watchdog role as the Fourth Estate in a Western democratic society. Even liberal democratic societies have adopted a ‘social responsibility’ approach to the regulation of broadcast media, given the public or collective interest in control of a scarce resource, given the traditionally limited number of radio and television frequencies available for allocation (Feintuck & Varney, 2006, p. 57).

Recent inquiries into media regulation in the UK (Leveson, 2012), Australia (Finkelstein, 2012) and New Zealand (Law Commission, 2013) have proposed extending that social responsibility model to print and new media regulation, despite the fact that the scarcity of resource argument is diminishing. Rather than taking a libertarian approach and reducing the government regulation of the broadcasters because the frequency scarcity and media concentration arguments are diminishing, the reform bodies have recommended mechanisms to bring newspaper companies within the ambit of stronger government control.

Their motivation for doing so stems from public angst – and subsequent political pressure – over a litany of unethical breaches of citizens’ privacy over several years culminating in the News of the World scandal in the UK with an undoubted ripple effect in the former colonies. I am at grave risk of over-simplifying this important issue because many other factors are at play, including some less serious ethical breaches by the media in both Australia and New Zealand, evidence of mainstream media owners using their powerful interests for political and commercial expediency, and the important public policy challenge facing regulators in an era of multi-platform convergence and citizen-generated content.

So press systems and ethical frameworks are on the agenda in all societies, and we are challenged to accommodate free expression and its close relative press freedom within new technological and cultural contexts.

If we are to stick with the libertarian model and continue with ‘light touch’ media regulation by governments, we clearly need more meaningful ethical guidelines than the ones that do not always seem to work in mainstream journalism.

Pacific Media Centre director Professor David Robie (2011, p. 237) has been among those exploring how a ‘peace journalism’ model could be applied to the reporting of conflict in the South Pacific and to the education of journalists in this region. It requires a deeper understanding of the context and causes of a conflict, a commitment to ensuring the views of all sides are reported, comments from those condemning any violence, reducing emphasis on blame or ethnicity, and offering suggestions for solutions.

This kind of approach has great merit – and I am currently examining ways it might be extended to a new framework for reporting more generally by implementing some of the key principles of the world’s great religions in a secular context. When you look closely at Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Confucianism and Buddhism you find common moral and ethical principles that we might reasonably expect journalists to follow in their work, including all of those attributes of peace journalism identified by Robie.  The Dalai Lama’s recent book – Beyond Religion – explores how core ethical values can offer a sound moral framework for modern society while accommodating diverse religious views and cultural traditions.

I believe this sits well with a modern trend to apply basic principles of mindfulness and compassion to a range of human endeavors and I will be exploring and applying this to journalism in a conference paper I will be presenting in Dublin next month where I call it ‘Mindful Journalism’. It suggests we should educate journalists, serious bloggers and citizen journalists to adopt a mindful approach to their news and commentary which requires a reflection upon the implications of their truth-seeking and truth-telling as a routine part of the process.

They would be prompted to pause and think carefully about the consequences of their reportage and commentary for the stakeholders involved, including their audiences. Truth-seeking and truth-telling would still be the primary goal, but only after gauging the social good that might come from doing so.

The recent inquiries into poor journalism ethics have demonstrated that journalism within the libertarian model appears to have lost its moral compass and we need to recapture this.

Even today, young people choose journalism as a career with a view to ‘make a difference’ in society. Like teaching and nursing, the choice of the occupation of truth-seeking and truth-telling in our societies has an element of a ‘mission’ or a ‘calling’ about it. I this in a secular rather than a religious way – a deep sense of social responsibility to expose wrongdoing and injustice and to facilitate the exchange of ideas on important social issues.

All societies need their ‘tusitalas’ – their storytellers – in whatever form they might take.

With the advent of citizen journalism and the widespread use of social media we can no longer claim this as the exclusive preserve of journalism and journalists.

Social media and blogging seems to have spawned an era of the new super-pamphleteer – the ordinary citizen with the power to disseminate news and commentary internationally in an instant.

We are quickly losing the distinction between journalists and other communicators, accelerated by the fact that their traditional employers forcing journalists into the blogosphere as the old model suffers under the strain. Journalists’ codes of ethics have long been associated with the traditional mainstream media and have usually been documented and administered by unions or professional associations. But we now have many ordinary citizens producing the reportage and commentary that was once the preserve of those who called themselves ‘journalists’. We need new ethical codes of practice that are inclusive of these new serious bloggers and citizen journalists.

The printing press spawned free expression’s offspring – the right of ‘press freedom’ – as pamphleteers fought censorship by governments in the ensuing centuries.

Events are unfolding much more quickly now. It would be an historic irony and a monumental shame if press freedom met its demise through the sheer pace of irresponsible truth-seeking and truth-telling today.

Our challenge is to educate our fellow citizens on the mindful use of this fragile freedom before their elected representatives take further steps to erode it.

—-

* Professor of Journalism and Social Media, Griffith University, Australia and Australian correspondent for Reporters Without Borders

REFERENCES

Brasch, W.M. & Ulloth, D.R. (1986). The Press and the State: Sociohistorical and Contemporary Interpretations. Lanham: University Press of America.

CPJ (2013). Committee to Protect Journalists – Defending Journalists Worldwide. Retrieved from http://www.cpj.org/killed/2012/.

Dalai Lama, (2011). Beyond Religion – Ethics for a whole world. London: Rider.

Dutt, R. (2010). The Fiji media decree: A push towards collaborative journalism. Pacific Journalism Review, 16(2): 81-98.

Feather, John (1988). A History of British Publishing. London: Routledge.

Feintuck, M. and Varney, M. (2006). Media Regulation, Public Interest and the Law, second edition. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Finkelstein, R. (2012). Report of the independent inquiry into the media and me­dia regulation. Canberra: Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy.

Law Commission (NZ) (2013). The news media meets ‘new media’: rights, responsibilities and
 regulation in the digital age. 
(Law Commission report 128). Law Commission: Wellington.

Leveson, B. (2012). Report of An Inquiry into the Culture, Practice and Ethics of the Press (The Stationery Office, 2012) [Leveson Report].

Masterton, M. (1985). Samoa, where questioning is taboo. Australian Journalism Review 7 (1&2): 114-115.

Pearson, M. (2013, April 26). Surveillance and investigative reporting: How would Deep Throat stay anonymous today? Journlaw.com blog. Retrieved from: jourlaw.com/2013/04/26/surveillance-and-investigative-reporting-how-would-deep-throat-stay-anonymous-today/

Pearson, M. (2012). The media regulation debate in a democracy lacking a free expression guarantee. Pacific Journalism Review, 18(2): 89-101.

Pearson, M. (1987). Interviewing Aborigines: a cross-cultural dilemma. Australian Journalism Review, 9 (1&2): 113-117.

Robie, D. (2011). Conflict reporting in the South Pacific – Why peace journalism has a chance, The Journal of Pacific Studies, 31 (2): 221–240. Retrieved from: http://www.academia.edu/1374720/Conflict_reporting_in_the_South_Pacific_Why_peace_journalism_has_a_chance

Robie, D. (2004). The sword of Damocles in the South Pacific: Two media regulatory case studies. Pacific Journalism Review, 10(1): 103-122. Retrieved from http://www.pjreview.info/articles/sword-damocles-south-pacific-two-media-regulatory-case-studies-617

RSF. (2013). Reporters Without Borders World Press Freedom Index. Retrieved from http://en.rsf.org/press-freedom-index-2013,1054.html

McQuail, D. (1987) Mass Communication Theory: An Introduction. London: Sage Publications.

Siebert, F.S., Peterson, T. & Schramm, W. (1963) Four Theories of the Press. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

Spencer, G. (1994). Samoa rediscovers ‘Tusitala’ Stevenson. Daily News (Bowling Green, Kentucky). July 19, p. 7A.

Syed, Arabi Idid (1998) Malaysia. In Asad Latif (ed.) Walking the Tightrope: Press Freedom and Professional Standards in Asia. Singapore: Asian Media Information and Communication Centre, pp. 119–27.

Overbeck, Wayne (2001) Major Principles of Media Law, Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt College Publishers.

Patrides, C.A. (ed.) (1985) John Milton: Selected Prose, New and Revised Edition. Columbia: University of Missouri Press.

Trompf, G.W (1994). Payback: The Logic of Retribution in Melanesian Regions. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge.

© Mark Pearson 2013

Disclaimer: While I write about media law and ethics, nothing here should be construed as legal advice. I am an academic, not a lawyer. My only advice is that you consult a lawyer before taking any legal risks.

3 Comments

Filed under free expression, Media freedom, media law, Media regulation, Press freedom, Uncategorized

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

May 3, 2013 · 8:45 am

RSF names 39 leaders as Press Freedom Predators

3 May 2013
World Press Freedom Day

Media release from Reporters Without Borders – RSF (See http://www.rsf.org)

Website: http://en.rsf.org/asia,2.html
Twitter: @RSFAsiaPacific, @RSF_Asia (中文)
Facebook : facebook.com/reporterssansfrontieres
Skype: rsfasia

39 leaders, groups named as Predators of Freedom of Information in 2013

On World Press Freedom Day, Reporters Without Borders is releasing an updated list of 39 Predators of Freedom of Information ­– presidents, politicians, religious leaders, militias and criminal organizations that censor, imprison, kidnap, torture and kill journalists and other news providers. Powerful, dangerous and violent, these predators consider themselves above the law.

“These predators of freedom of information are responsible for the worst abuses against the news media and journalists,” Reporters Without Borders secretary-general Christophe Deloire said. “They are becoming
more and more effective. In 2012, the level of violence against news providers was unprecedented and a record number of journalists were killed.

“World Press Freedom Day, which was established on the initiative of Reporters Without Borders, must be used to pay tribute to all journalists, professional and amateur, who have paid for their commitment with their lives, their physical integrity or their freedom, and to denounce the impunity enjoyed by these predators.”

Five new predators have been added to the list: the new Chinese president, Xi Jinping, the Jihadi group Jabhat Al-Nosra from Syria, members and supporters of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, Pakistan’s Baloch armed groups, and Maldives’ religious extremists. Four predators have been dropped from the list: former Somali information and communications minister Abdulkadir Hussein Mohamed, Burmese President Thein Sein, whose country is experiencing unprecedented reforms despite the current ethnic violence, the ETA group, and the Hamas and Palestinian Authority security forces, which are harassing journalists less.

To draw attention to their abuses, Reporters Without Borders has drafted indictments against some of these predators in the hope that they will one day be brought before competent courts. To better highlight the gulf between propaganda and reality, the statements of some of them have been contrasted with the facts. And to show how some predators really think, we have presented their innermost thoughts in the first person. We had to use a little imagination, of course, but the facts alluded to conform to reality.

New names in the list of predators

A predator goes and is replaced by another. It is no surprise that Xi Jinping has taken former Chinese President Hu Jintao’s place as predator. The change of person has not in any way affected the repressive system developed by China’s Communist Party.

The list of predators has been impacted by the repercussions from the Arab Spring and uprisings in the Arab world. Members and supporters of Egyptian President Morsi’s party, the Muslim Brotherhood, have been responsible for harassing and physically attacking independent media and journalists critical of the party.

Jabhat Al-Nosra’s entry into the predators list reflects the evolution in the Syrian conflict and the fact that abuses are no longer attributable solely to the regime, represented on the list by Bashar al-Assad, but also to opposition armed groups, which are proving to be more and more intolerant and suspicious towards the media. At least 23 journalists and 58 citizen-journalists have been killed in Syria since 15 March 2011 and seven journalists are currently missing.

In Pakistan, Baloch armed groups, including the Balochistan Liberation Army, Baloch Liberation Front and Baloch Musallah Defa Army, have turned the southwestern province of Balochistan into one of the world’s most dangerous regions for journalists. Consisting of armed separatist groups and opposing militias created to defend the central Pakistani government, they have spread terror in the media and created information “black holes.” Pakistan’s intelligence agencies are also on the predators list because of their abuses against the media.

Ever since the army mutiny that overthrew President Mohamed Nasheed in the Maldives in 2012, extremist religious groups have tried to use their nuisance power to extend their influence. They have become more aggressive as the July 2013 presidential election approaches, intimidating news media and bloggers and using freedom of expression to impose a religious agenda while denying this freedom to others.

Unacceptable impunity for predators

Physical attacks on journalists and murders of journalists usually go completely unpunished. This encourages the predators to continue their violations of human rights and freedom of information. The 34 predators who were already on the 2012 list continue to trample on freedom of information with complete disdain and to general indifference.

The leaders of dictatorships and closed countries enjoy a peaceful existence while media and news providers are silenced or eliminated. Such leaders include Kim Jong-un in North Korea, Issaias Afeworki in Eritrea and Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov in Turkmenistan. In these countries, as in Belarus, Vietnam, Uzbekistan and other Central Asian countries, the international community’s silence is not just shameful, it is complicit.

Reporters Without Borders urges the international community not to hide behind economic and geopolitical interests. Thanks to their rich natural resources, Azerbaijan’s Ilham Aliyev and Kazakhstan’s Nursultan Nazarbayev are confident that no one will rap their knuckles. Economic interests come before everything else, as they do with China. It is the same with countries that the West regards as “strategic.”

Iran’s two predators – President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei – have already taken steps to deter the media from providing independent coverage of next June’s presidential election. The waves of arrests of journalists that began on 27 January, “Black Sunday,” are clear evidence of this.

Criminal organizations and paramilitary groups that are often linked to drug trafficking – Mexico’s Zetas, Colombia’s Urabeños and the Italian Mafia – continue to target journalists and media they regard as too curious, independent or hostile. In Mexico, a country that is especially deadly for media personnel, 87 journalists have been killed and 17 have disappeared since 2000. Justice has not been properly rendered in any of these cases.

Since Vladimir Putin’s return to the presidency in Russia, the authorities have tightened their grip even further in response to unprecedented opposition protests. The country remains marked by a completely unacceptable level impunity for those responsible for violence against journalists. A total of 29 have been murdered since 2000, including Anna Politkovskaya.

Why are predators never brought to justice?

The persistently high level of impunity is not due to a legal void. There are laws and instruments that protect journalists in connection with their work. Above all, it is up to individual states to protect journalists and other media personnel. This was stressed in Resolution 1738 on the safety of journalists, which the United Nations security
council adopted in 2006.

Nonetheless, states often fail to do what they are supposed to do, either because they lack the political will to punish abuses of this kind, or because their judicial system is weak or non-existent, or because it is the authorities themselves who are responsible for the abuses.

The creation of a mechanism for monitoring adherence to Resolution 1738, which Reporters Without Borders has proposed, would encourage member states to adopt specific provisions for penalizing murders, physical attacks and disappearances that target journalists, would extend Statesʼ obligations to non-professional “news providers” and would reinforce their efforts to combat impunity for such crimes.

At the international level, the legal protection of journalists is also guaranteed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the Geneva Conventions and other instruments. The United Nations recently published an Action Plan on the safety of journalists and measures to combat impunity for crimes of violence against them.

The International Criminal Court’s creation has unfortunately not helped advance the fight against impunity for those responsible for the most serious crimes of violence against journalists, although journalists play a fundamental role in providing information and issuing alerts during domestic and international armed conflicts. The ICC only has jurisdiction when the crime takes place on the territory of a state that is a party to the Rome Statute (which created the ICC) or if the accused person is a citizen of a state party.

Furthermore, the Rome Statute provides for no specific charge for deliberate physical attacks on journalists. Article 8 of the statute needs to be amended so that a deliberate attack on media professionals is regarded as a war crime.

Dropped from the predators list

Abdulkadir Hussein Mohamed
Also know as “Jahweyn,” this Somali politician is no longer minister of information and telecommunications. His successor does not seem to be directly responsible for harassment, intimidation or other abuses against media personnel. Journalism nonetheless continues to be very dangerous in Somalia, with a total of 18 journalists killed in 2012.

Burmese President Thein Sein
Installed as president in March 2011, Thein Sein no longer qualifies as a predator of freedom of information. Under his presidency, the military junta has disbanded and all jailed journalists and bloggers, including Democratic Voice of Burma’s 17 video-journalists, have been freed. In 2012, prior censorship was abolished and many exile media began operating openly inside the country. The first privately-owned daily newspapers appeared in early 2013.

Hamas and Palestinian Authority security forces
The security forces of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and those of the Hamas government in the Gaza Strip have been dropped from this year’s list of predators because the number of their press freedom violations has fallen considerably in the past four years. The situation of freedom of information in the West Bank and Gaza Strip is nonetheless still the subject of concern. The Hamas government recent banned local journalists from working for Israeli media, and many journalists are prosecuted for insulting President Mahmoud Abbas.

ETA
The organization ETA has been dropped from the 2013 list. It announced the “definitive end to armed actions” in 2011 and has carried out no attacks on journalists or news media since then. Reporters Without Borders has
of course not forgotten all the journalists who were physically attacked or killed by ETA and continues to demand justice for those crimes of violence. Reporters Without Borders will also continue to be on the lookout for any future threat to media freedom by ETA.

_______________________

3 mai 2013
JOURNEE MONDIALE DE LA LIBERTE DE LA PRESSE

39 Prédateurs de la liberté de l’information recensés par RSF en 2013

A l’occasion de la Journée mondiale de la liberté de la presse, Reporters sans frontières publie une liste de 39 Prédateurs de la liberté de l’information, chefs d’Etats, hommes politiques, chefs religieux, milices et organisations criminelles qui censurent, emprisonnent, enlèvent, torturent et parfois assassinent les journalistes et autres acteurs de l’information. Puissants, dangereux, violents, ces Prédateurs se considèrent au-dessus des lois.

“Ces prédateurs de la liberté de l’information sont responsables des pires exactions contre les médias et leurs représentants. Leurs actions sont de plus en plus efficaces : 2012 a été une année historiquement violente pour les acteurs de l’information, avec un nombre record de journalistes tués”, déplore Christophe Deloire, secrétaire général de Reporters sans frontières. “La Journée mondiale de la liberté de la presse, instaurée à l’initiative de Reporters sans frontières, doit être l’occasion de rendre hommage à tous les journalistes, professionnels et amateurs, qui payent leur engagement de leur vie, leur intégrité physique ou leur liberté, et de dénoncer l’impunité dont bénéficient ces prédateurs.”

Cinq nouveaux prédateurs rejoignent la liste : le nouveau président chinois Xi Jinping, le groupe djihadiste Jabhat Al-Nosra en Syrie, les membres et partisans des Frères musulmans en Egypte, les groupes armés baloutches du Pakistan et les extrémistes religieux des Maldives. Quatre prédateurs ont disparu de la liste : l’ancien ministre somalien de l’Information et des Télécommunications, Abdulkadir Hussein Mohamed ; le président birman Thein Sein, dont le pays connaît une ouverture sans précédent, malgré une situation instable ; le groupe ETA, ainsi que les forces de sécurité du Hamas et de l’Autorité palestinienne, dont les exactions envers les médias sont en sensible diminution.

Pour mieux dénoncer les Prédateurs, Reporters sans frontières formule des actes d’accusation étayés dans l’espoir que ces individus ou ces mouvances soient un jour forcés de rendre des comptes à la justice. Pour mettre en évidence le décalage entre leurs propagandes et la vérité, leurs assertions officielles sont confrontées aux faits. Pour démontrer leurs intentions profondes, Reporters sans frontières se met dans leurs têtes et présente leurs pensées au style direct, à la première personne. La transcription est librement établie par l’organisation, mais les faits invoqués conformes à la réalité.

De nouveaux noms dans la liste des Prédateurs

Un prédateur en remplace un autre : Xi Jinping reprend sans surprise la place de prédateur de l’ancien président chinois Hu Jintao. Le changement d’individu ne remet en rien en cause le système liberticide porté à bout de bras par le Parti communiste chinois.

La liste des prédateurs subit elle aussi le contre-coup des printemps arabes et des mouvements de soulèvements populaires. Les membres et partisans du parti des Frères musulmans en Egypte se rendent responsables d’actes d’agressions, de pressions et de harcèlement envers les médias indépendants et les journalistes critiques du parti et du président Morsi.

L’entrée de Jabhat Al-Nosra symbolise l’évolution du conflit syrien et le fait que les exactions ne sont plus du seul fait du régime, représenté dans la liste des prédateurs par Bashar Al-Assad, mais également de groupes armés de
l’opposition, qui s’avèrent de plus en plus intolérants et suspicieux envers les médias.
Du 15 mars 2011 au 3 mai 2013, au moins 23 journalistes et 58 citoyens-journalistes ont été tués en Syrie. A ce jour, 7 journalistes sont toujours portés disparus.

Au Pakistan, les groupes armés Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA), Baluch Liberation Front (BLF) et Musallah Defa font du Balochistan l’une des régions les plus dangereuses au monde pour les journalistes. Ils ont instauré la terreur au sein des médias, assassiné des journalistes et créé des trous noirs de l’information. A noter que les services de renseignement pakistanais, également responsables d’exactions contre la presse, figurent déjà dans la liste des prédateurs.

Aux Maldives, depuis la mutinerie militaire de 2012, qui a renversé le président Mohamed Nasheed, les groupes religieux extrémistes tentent d’user de leur force de nuisance pour étendre leur influence dans le pays. A l’approche des élections présidentielles de juillet 2013, ils durcissent leurs positions. Ils intimident les médias et les
blogueurs et instrumentalisent la liberté d’expression pour imposer un agenda religieux en refusant que cette liberté soit étendue aux autres.

Ces Prédateurs qui jouissent d’une intolérable impunité

Les agressions et assassinats de journalistes se soldent généralement par une impunité totale des responsables. C’est pour les Prédateurs un encouragement à poursuivre les violations des droits de l’homme et de la liberté d’information. Les trente-quatre Prédateurs qui figuraient déjà sur la liste 2012 continuent de piétiner la liberté d’information dans le dédain le plus complet et l’indifférence générale.

Les dirigeants des régimes dictatoriaux et des pays les plus fermés coulent des jours paisibles tandis que la presse et les acteurs de l’information étouffent ou ont été réduits au silence. C’est le cas de Kim Jong-un en Corée du Nord, Issaias Afeworki en Erythrée ou Gourbangouly Berdymoukhamedov au Turkmenistan. Pour ces pays, ainsi que pour le Bélarus, le Vietnam, l’Erythrée et les autres dictatures d’Asie centrale (Ouzbékistan en tête), le silence de la communauté internationale est plus que coupable, il est complice. RSF appelle la communauté internationale à ne plus se cacher derrière les intérêts économiques et géopolitiques. Forts de leurs ressources naturelles, Ilham Aliev en Azerbaïdjan, et Noursoultan Nazarbaïev au Kazakhstan savent pertinemment que nul ne viendra leur taper trop fort sur les doigts. Les intérêts économiques passent avant tout, comme avec la Chine. Même scénario pour des Etats ‘stratégiques’ pour les pays occidentaux.

Les deux prédateurs iraniens – le président Mahmoud Ahmadinejad et le Guide Suprême, l’Ayatollah Khamenei – ont déjà pris des mesures pour dissuader les médias d’assurer une couverture indépendante de l’élection présidentielle du 14 juin 2013. En témoignent les vagues d’arrestations de journalistes et détentions préventives qui se succèdent depuis le dimanche noir, 27 janvier 2013.

Les organisations criminelles ou paramilitaires, souvent liées au narcotrafic – Zetas au Mexique, Urabeños en Colombie ou mafias italiennes – continuent de prendre pour cibles journalistes et médias jugés trop curieux, trop indépendants, souvent hostiles. Pays particulièrement meurtrier pour les journalistes, le Mexique en compte 86 tués et 17 disparus depuis 2000. Justice n’a été réellement rendue dans aucune de ces affaires.

En Russie, un tour de vis répressif a été mis en place depuis le retour à la présidence de Vladimir Poutine, en réponse à une mobilisation sans précédent de l’opposition. Le pays reste marqué par l’impunité intolérable de nombreux assassins et agresseurs de journalistes. Pas moins de 29 journalistes ont été tués en lien direct avec leur activité professionnelle depuis l’année 2000, dont la journaliste Anna Politkoskaïa.

Pourquoi les prédateurs échappent-ils à la justice ?

La persistance d’un haut niveau d’impunité ne s’explique pas par l’existence d’un vide juridique. Des normes et des mécanismes existent pour protéger les journalistes dans l’exercice de leur profession. La protection des journalistes et autres acteurs médiatiques incombe en premier lieu aux États comme le rappelle la résolution 1738 relative à la sécurité des journalistes, adoptée par le Conseil de sécurité des Nations Unies en 2006. Pourtant, les Etats sont trop souvent défaillants, soit par manque de volonté politique de réprimer de telles exactions, soit parce que leur appareil judiciaire est inexistant ou affaibli, soit encore parce que les autorités sont responsables de ces exactions. La mise en place d’un mécanisme de contrôle du respect et du suivi de la résolution 1738 par les Etats membres des Nations unies, proposée par Reporters sans frontières, inciterait les Etats à adopter des dispositions pénales spécifiques incriminant les crimes, agressions et disparitions de journalistes, à étendre les obligations des États envers les acteurs de l’information non-professionnels et à renforcer leur lutte contre l’impunité.

Au niveau international, la protection juridique des journalistes est également garantie par la Déclaration universelle des droits de l’homme, le Pacte international relatif aux droits civils et politiques, les Conventions de Genève entre autres textes. Les Nations unies ont récemment publié un Plan d’Action sur la sécurité des journalistes et la lutte contre l’impunité.

La mise en place d’une Cour pénale internationale n’a malheureusement pas fait progresser la lutte contre l’impunité des auteurs des crimes les plus graves contre les journalistes, malgré leur rôle fondamental d’information et d’alerte pendant les conflits armés internes et internationaux. La CPI n’est compétente que lorsque les faits ont lieu sur le territoire d’un Etat partie ou si la personne accusée du crime est ressortissant d’un Etat partie. En outre, le Statut de Rome (constitutif de la CPI) ne prévoit aucune incrimination spécifique des attaques délibérées contre les journalistes. Un amendement à l’article 8 est nécessaire pour que les attaques délibérées contre les professionnels des médias soient considérées comme un crime de guerre.

Ces personnalités et mouvements qui sortent de la liste des Prédateurs

Abdulkadir Hussein Mohamed
Surnommé “Jahweyn”, cet homme politique somalien a quitté son poste de ministre de l’Information et des télécommunications. Son successeur ne semble pas directement responsable de pressions, d’intimidations ni d’exactions à l’encontre de la presse. L’exercice du métier d’informer reste certes très périlleux en Somalie (où 18 morts ont été recensés en 2012).

Le président birman Thein Sein
Au pouvoir depuis mars 2011, Thein Sein ne mérite plus le qualificatif de prédateur de la liberté de la presse. C’est sous sa présidence que la junte militaire a été dissoute et que tous les journalistes et blogueurs emprisonnés, y compris les 17 vidéo-journalistes de la Democratic Voice of Burma, ont été libérés. En 2012, la censure préalable a été abolie, nombre de médias en exil sont rentrés. Les premiers quotidiens privés sont parus début 2013.

Les forces de sécurité du Hamas et de l’Autorité palestinienne
Les forces de sécurité de l’Autorité palestinienne en Cisjordanie et celles du gouvernement du Hamas à Gaza sortent cette année de la liste des prédateurs. Le nombre de violations de la liberté de la presse qu’elles ont commises a considérablement diminué au cours des quatre dernières années. Toutefois, la situation de la liberté de l’information reste préoccupante, en Cisjordanie et à Gaza. Le gouvernement du Hamas a récemment interdit aux journalistes gazaouis toute collaboration avec des médias israéliens, et très nombreux sont les procès pour ‘insulte à la personne du Président Mahmoud Abbas’.

ETA
L’organisation a été retirée de la liste des Prédateurs en 2013. ETA a en effet annoncé en 2011 la “fin définitive de ses actions armées” et depuis n’a pas réalisé d’attentats contre des journalistes ou médias. Reporters sans frontières n’oublie naturellement pas les journalistes tués ou agressés par ETA et continue de demander que justice soit faite pour les actes commis. A l’avenir, RSF demeurera extrêmement vigilante, attentive au moindre indice de menace contre la liberté de la presse dont se rendrait coupable ETA.

Benjamin Ismaïl
Head of Asia-Pacific Desk
Reporters Without Borders

Website: http://en.rsf.org/asia,2.html
Twitter: @RSFAsiaPacific, @RSF_Asia (中文)
Facebook : facebook.com/reporterssansfrontieres
Skype: rsfasia

Leave a comment

Filed under Uncategorized

Tagged as , , ,

May 1, 2013 · 5:50 am

Watch my UNESCO World Press Freedom Day lecture live on May 3

Press Release – AUT University

UNESCO WORLD PRESS FREEDOM DAY LECTURE
Hosted by the Pacific Media Centre and supported by the New Zealand National
Commission for UNESCO and the School of Communication Studies

Press freedom, social media and the citizen

Professor Mark Pearson
Griffith University

Friday, May 3, 5.30-7.30pm
Communications Precinct
Lecture Theatre WG126
Sir Paul Reeves Building
2 Governor Fitzroy Place
Auckland City

Speech starts at 4pm AEST, Friday May 3, with live streaming link at AUT On Demand: http://tinyurl.com/cryjgu6

Does social media mean press freedom is now for everyone?

The theme for this year’s UNESCO World Press Freedom Day on May 3, “Safe to speak: Securing freedom of expression in all media”, broadens the debate. It opens the way for an exploration of the libertarian origins of press freedom and the advent of social media and citizen journalism at a time when we are looking for new models of media responsibility and ethics – beyond a social responsibility model – some of which embrace cultural and religious notions of truth and story-telling.

Dr Mark Pearson is Professor of Journalism and Social Media at Griffith University, Australia, and has long been an advocate of press freedom. He is the Australian correspondent of the Paris-based global media freedom advocacy organisation Reporters Sans Frontières (Reporters Without Borders). Professor Pearson has combined careers in teaching and journalism. He was special reports editor of The Australian newspaper and his work has been published in the Wall Street Journal, Far Eastern Economic Review, The Fiji Times, the Pacific Area Newspaper Publishers Association Bulletin and Crikey.com.au

Over the past two decades, Professor Pearson has also been involved with Pacific journalism at several levels. As author of The Journalist’s Guide to Media Law (4th edition with Mark Polden, Allen & Unwin, 2011), he has conducted media law training sessions for Pacific journalists in Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Samoa and Tonga. Professor Pearson is on the editorial board of the Pacific Journalism Review and is a former editor of the Australian Journalism Review. His latest book is Blogging and Tweeting Without Getting Sued (Allen & Unwin, 2012). He blogs from journlaw.com and tweets from @journlaw
Also, the new International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) documentary Media Freedom in the Pacific will be screened.

Live streaming link at AUT On Demand: http://tinyurl.com/cryjgu6

Content Sourced from scoop.co.nz

Leave a comment

Filed under Uncategorized

Tagged as , , , ,

April 26, 2013 · 11:22 am

Surveillance and investigative reporting: How would Deep Throat stay anonymous today?

By MARK PEARSON

We might support shield laws for journalists and bloggers but the actual practicalities of protecting confidential sources are a huge challenge for journalists in the modern era.

It’s of little value having a shield law to excuse a journalist revealing the identity of a whistleblower in court if litigants or government agencies have already been able to detect them using the surveillance regime that is ubiquitous in modern society.

It prompts the serious question: Could the Watergate investigation by the Washington Post three decades ago happen in the modern era? How long would Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward’s White House source ‘Deep Throat’ (senior FBI  official Mark Felt) remain anonymous today?

It would be interesting to hear from Bernstein and Woodward about how they would manage their top secret source in an era of geo-locational tracking, phone and social media e-records, CCTV in private and public spaces, and email logs.

Add to that new technologies like Google Glass and you start to wonder where a journalist could possibly meet in secret with a government source without being caught in the surveillance net.

The volumes of private information held on every citizen by governments and corporations was highlighted in the documentary Erasing David, where the lead character went into hiding and hired some of Britain’s top investigators to try to find him by discovering everything they could about him via public and private files. He found it was impossible to lead a private and anonymous existence in the 21st century.

Our digital trail extends wherever and whenever we conduct business on the Internet. The typical web browser allows countless ‘cookies’ that track many of our online activities. Search engines, app stores, airlines, travel booking agencies and countless other online entities hold all sorts of digital information about us that may or may not be secure or subject to legal discovery in the case of a court action. Some European experts are so concerned about the amount of information about us that is out there and its irretrievable nature that they are proposing a new ‘right to be forgotten’ allowing citizens to have personal data permanently erased.

Law enforcement authorities throughout the world are winning court orders to search suspects’ Internet records. Facebook is a popular hunting ground, with Reuters reporting federal judges in the US had approved more than two dozen applications to retrieve incriminating data from Facebook accounts between 2008 and 2011, leading to several arrests and convictions. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has published a useful online Know Your Rights! guide for US citizens faced with the threat of search and seizure of their devices by law enforcement authorities. EFF attorney Hanni Fakhoury explained the volumes of private information the average citizen holds on their personal devices. “With smart phones, tablet computers, and laptops, we carry around with us an unprecedented amount of sensitive personal information,” Fakhoury said. “That smart phone in your pocket right now could contain email from your doctor or your kid’s teacher, not to mention detailed contact information for all of your friends and family members. Your laptop probably holds even more data — your Internet browsing history, family photo albums, and maybe even things like an electronic copy of your taxes or your employment agreement. This is sensitive data that’s worth protecting from prying eyes.”

Of course, basic password selection and management is a fundamental starting point we often overlook. As the computer experts advise, choose your passwords carefully and change them often. Our laptops and smart devices also have geolocation capability, meaning our very movements can be recorded and abused, a point well explained by the Australian Privacy Foundation. This has serious implications for any meetings or communications we might have with confidential sources for our blogs or reporting.

As the Pew Research Center reported in 2011, more than half of people online had uploaded photos to be shared with others. As facial recognition (‘tagging’) is combined with geolocation capabilities, it means we are leaving a digital footprint via our images. That seem fine when we are just sharing an image with our small circle of friends on Facebook, but our ‘friends’ might choose to download and forward them and, depending on our privacy settings, these photos might well be viewable to the outside world.

Despite  whistleblower protection laws and shield laws, confidential sources face lengthy jail terms in most countries if they reveal state secrets because officials might not agree there was an ethical or public interest in the material being revealed. That was certainly the case with one of the most famous whistleblowers of the modern era – the military analyst Daniel Ellsberg who leaked the sensitive ‘Pentagon Papers’ about the true story of the US involvement in Vietnam to the press in 1971. Despite government efforts to stop the publication of the material, the Supreme Court allowed the New York Times and the Washington Post to go ahead with its release. Ellsberg and a co-accused later faced charges of conspiracy, theft of government property and espionage which were dismissed among allegations of FBI wiretapping.

Bernstein and Woodward operated using document drops at park benches and secluded places, coded phone messages and convoluted taxi rides to face-to-face meetings with Felt. In the modern era it is even harder to protect communications against detection by the authorities so you need to take extraordinary steps if you hope to keep your sources truly confidential. The international whistleblowing organisation Wikileaks became famous for revealing the 21st century equivalent of the Pentagon Papers when it released thousands of secret US government files on the Middle East conflicts and broader diplomatic relations throughout 2010 and 2011.

It reassured sources that its high security encrypted submission system using an electronic drop box protected their identity. US soldier Bradley Manning was arrested in 2010 and held in solitary confinement pending trial over the release of the classified material. CNN interviewed several experts about the spate of similar sites to Wikileaks who warned whistleblowers to examine their protocols very carefully if they wanted their identities to remain secret after the authorities discovered the leaks. Some reserved the right to disclose leakers’ identities if subpoenaed to do so.

Reporters, bloggers and citizen journalists should pay heed to the fact that their colleagues have served jail time throughout the world for either leaking secrets or refusing to name their off-the-record sources in court. Equally important are the measures you take to protect their identities in the first place.

…

Parts of this blog have been excerpted from my recent book Blogging and Tweeting Without Getting Sued: A global guide to the law for anyone writing online (Allen & Unwin, 2012).

© Mark Pearson 2013

Disclaimer: While I write about media law and ethics, nothing here should be construed as legal advice. I am an academic, not a lawyer. My only advice is that you consult a lawyer before taking any legal risks.

6 Comments

Filed under Uncategorized

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , ,