President's blog

TIME FOR THE FRIENDS OF TUNISIAN JOURNALISTS TO SPEAK UP

2012-02-29T11:23:00.007-08:00

Secretary of State Hilary Clinton’s crusade for democracy finally reached the shores of Tunisia one year after the revolution. Holed in a conference centre in Tunis with her armada of “friends of Syria” led by renown autocrats like the Saudi Arabia's Wahhabi rulers, she waxed lyrical on the Arab spring but did not have a single word to say about the assaults on democracy taking place only a stone throw from her hotel. As far as she is concerned, her host, the troika in government in Tunis, could do no wrong.

I am sure that the grey suits who feed her daily reports would have informed her that all is not well in Tunisia. There are plenty of documented cases on violations against journalists and media throughout last year, as wave after wave of attacks by the police against journalists were reminiscent of the police and security worse practices of the old regime, which everyone thought were over. Journalists face frequent full-front assaults to prevent them covering events, confiscation of cameras and to make things worse dismissal at the hand of vicious employers.

Clinton should have been told about her host, the Islamist An-Nahda party, the senior party in government, turning a blind eye to various Salafist groups, some turned militia gangs, who don’t hesitate to attack and intimidate journalists and frequently issue threats to kill journalists and burn down media institutions accusing them of political bias and moral degradation.

She should know about members of the new government making statements that enflamed the already tense situation, some even calling for public media to reflect the views of parties and politicians currently in government. At the beginning of the year, the government forced the pace by appointing officials to head public media, including three editors in chief which was widely seen as a serious regressive turn.

Hilary kept silence. This may have given An Nahda and its most extremist supporters the confidence to step up their attacks. At a demonstration organised last week by the labour federation UGTT, journalists were again targeted by police and security forces seemingly under order to stop them covering the event. Our member union said that half a dozen journalists were hurt some of them seriously. It did not take long for the mask to come down and the new government, put into power by the Tunisian revolution, have now shown their true intention to control journalists and media.

Next week, Nasreddine Bin Said, owner and publisher of the daily Attounissia, will be in court on charges of disrespecting public morality. His paper published a picture of German model Lena Gercke posing naked with her boyfriend Sami Khedira, a German-Tunisian soccer player, a reprint of the March 2012 cover of the German GQ magazine. After he was arrested, he went on hunger strike which forced the authorities to release him. If he is imprisoned or fined, this will signal the beginning of the slippery slope towards a sustained attempt to use the long arm of the law to throttle the little voice that journalists have found post-revolution.

AS WAR DRUMS ROLL, FAMILIES OF IRANIAN JOURNALISTS IN THE MIRE

2012-02-16T03:27:00.002-08:00

Throughout the year, the IFJ website is usually awash with appalling stories about journalists being hunted in many corners of the world, intimated, harassed, hurt or even done to death by the people who want to silence them. The Iranian secret services have come up with a more frightening idea. When they could not get at the journalists themselves, they started targeting their families. This is the ordeal faced by several journalists working for the BBC’s Persian service.

Not content with jamming the service, something the Iranian authorities have done repeatedly since it was founded, they have now ratcheted up the pressure in the run up to the elections on 2nd March. Anonymous callers using names such as the Cyber Army of Allah make regular accusations against the service’s staff of being drug dealers, converting to Bahaism or Christianity, a serious offense, or taking bribes.

But in what now amounts to a fully-fledged campaign of intimidation and smears against the journalists, their families found themselves in the eye of the storm. Through direct pressure on the families, Iranian intelligence service managed to get access to the journalists and contact them asking questions and making ludicrous demands.

Last month, the Iranian security forces went even a step further and raided the home of a BBC Persian employee's relative in Tehran. They took her to Evin prison after searching and confiscating some of her belongings. Once there, her interrogator had the cheek to contact the employee in London, seeking information about the BBC and requested her to collaborate with him in return for the family member's freedom.

This brazen online interrogation forced the BBC to go public and its director general to issue a public statement. His call to the Iranian government “to repudiate the actions of its officials” will most certainly be derided and ignored by the Iranian authorities as long as the BBC Persian service journalists continue to have an impact and their broadcasts be immensely popular. One of their news programme is apparently watched by up to 15 million people each week. During the last election, journalists at the service conducted hundreds of telephone interviews with protesters describing what was happening. This is what hurts the Iranian government and it is not surprising they will do everything they can to stop this happening again.

The work by these journalists is considered such a threat that a website identical to the BBC Persian was created to spread allegations against them. The fake site uses an .ir domain name, which apparently requires government permission.

Iran's prosecutor made it clear that people with alleged links to the broadcaster would be tracked down and dealt with as they are deemed to be acting against the national interest. With the drums of war getting louder the situation of Iranian journalists will continue to get worse. Over thirty are still in jail, their leaders in hiding or abroad and their union’s HQ, the Association of Iranian Journalists, locked and sealed. The first casualty of war continues to be truth.

THE PRESS FREEDOM INDEX – AN IMPERFECT INSTRUMENT

2012-02-12T11:20:00.000-08:00

Under pressure from their financial backers, press freedom NGOs continue to surpass each other in inventing new clever stunts in search for the oxygen of publicity. With no direct links to journalists, the “press freedom industry” has, over the last decade, carved itself a special niche speaking freely on their behalf, commenting on major issues of journalism, corresponding with chiefs of states, making daily statements without asking journalists or their representatives’ views on them. There have been instances where their stunt became an impediment to advancing some issues. In others, they have no qualms in displaying the most shocking arrogance in hijacking conferences and seminars in a crude attempt to impose their various agendas on outcomes concerning journalists.

Setting themselves as little global corporations, many have now built mini-empires across several continents having anointed themselves as the true defenders of press freedom. Most could not do it without the financial support of powerful players in the geopolitical sphere. If you take the recent Arab spring, the press freedom industry has been the first to set camp in many Arab countries, thanks to the generosity of their backers. To make sense of the size of their operation one only has to read a State Department cable from 30 April 2009, published by WikiLeaks, which discusses an instance where funds were transferred to an Egyptian human rights organisation via the Morocco-based Center for Press Freedom. The funding was awarded as part of former President George W. Bush’s Middle East Partnership Initiative. The initiative has spent over US$ 530 million across 17 countries in the Middle East. This sum, dished out by the US for the Middle East only, is equivalent to 150 times the annual turnover of the IFJ funded by 150 journalists’ unions worldwide. No wonder the arrogance of the press freedom industry has no limits.

Among their many stunts is the Press Freedom Index published every year by Reporters sans frontières and promoted as the guiding light in the state of press freedom throughout the world. Its annual publication however does little to alleviate the pressures on journalists. Far from being an authoritative tool to scrutinise and understand what journalists have to confront in many countries, it usually throws together a circus where representatives of governments make a staunch defense of their respective performance, each shelling out a torrent of distractionary comments. What matters for them is why they have lost 10 positions since last year, or their rejection of being only two positions above their neighbour.

The tittle tattle is all about who has gone up and who has gone down. It may give easy copy to media commentators but it’s all superficial and hardly tells the real story, despite brave attempts by Reporters sans frontières to justify their methodology as if it were rocket science.

Take the case of Tunisia and Egypt which both experienced last year the most leading-edge changes in the Arab world. Tunisia has risen 30 positions from 164th to 134th which may reflect what had happened, but at the same time Egypt lost 39 positions to number 166, sandwiched between Laos and Cuba. The explanations given by RSF, such as arrests of journalists and intimidation of foreign journalists, are not convincing at all. At the same time, little explanation is available to justify why Saudi Arabia is 158th in the Index, eight positions higher than Egypt. Surely if we compare the way Egyptian journalists have been facing down the military crackdown to the supinity of their Saudi colleagues who failed to raise their heads above the parapet, it demonstrates clearly that the Index cannot be relied upon to give an accurate impression of the true nature of media in a given country.

There are many other examples that expose the Index as an imperfect and incomplete tool. The whole exercise is based on the subjectivity of scoring undertaken by various observers. It is also incapable of taking account of qualitative criteria such as content as well as plurality and accuracy.

It is hardly surprising then that the Index put Cabo Verde (9th) ahead of Canada (10th) and Denmark (11th), or that Jamaica is level with Germany (16th), that Niger (29th) is ahead of Australia (30th) and that Tanzania (34th) and Papua New Guinea (35th) are ahead of France (38th).

Or if you take the US falling from 20th to be ranked 47th on account of the 25 reporters arrested during the occupy movement protest. The classification of the US over many years has been lambasted as “fickle”. In 2006 the US hit an all-time low in the RSF Index reaching 53 because of the Bush administration intimidation of journalism using the pretext of “national security”. Later in in 2009, the US was ranked 20th thanks this time to what RSF calls the “Obama effect”. It is here where the Index is at its weakest showing considerable flaws in a methodology incapable of comparing the latest 25 arrests with what took place under Bush-era national security restrictions.

In the end the financial backers want the press freedom industry to provide them with what would be most useful to them, a list of goodies and baddies. On this, the Index with all its weaknesses is the perfect instrument.

STANDING UP AGAINST THE HUMAN RIGHTS DEFENDERS

2012-02-08T06:14:00.000-08:00

Newspapers subs are quite used to toil under the most ridiculous pressures but not often under the gun. This is what happened to journalists at the At Thawra newspaper in Sanaa, Yemen, after their newsroom was invaded by armed soldiers demanding that they reinstate a picture of former President Ali Abdullah Saleh as a splash on the front page. The newspaper editor, Yassine Al Massoud, who is also the president of the Yemen Journalists’ Syndicate, decided to put an end to the ridiculous cult of political honchos, in particular when they have fallen from grace.

Fanatic supporters of the former president won’t allow it and they summoned the army to first surround, then overrun the offices of the newspaper. When inside, they compelled journalists by force to re-make the front page by inserting the picture of Saleh and an apology. Journalists worked literally with guns to their heads until the edition was printed and ready to hit the newsstands.

Despite having to cope with the most unprecedented acts of thuggery, the union continues to stand by all its members and support them in doing their job as journalists. In a country awash with guns and in the thick of a civil war, it is a minor miracle that journalists continue to go to their newsrooms every day and try to do a normal day’s work.

As well as confronting the hoodlums, the YJS has also being standing up against the “defenders of human rights”. This week, the union is organising a picket of the US embassy in Sanaa to demand that the US administration lifts its objection to the release of their colleague, Abdul-Elah Haidar Shaye, who is still behind bar one year after being pardoned by Yemen’s president.

Shaye was kidnapped from his house in the middle of the night in August 2010 and held for weeks without access to a lawyer or his family. While in prison, he was tortured and finally questioned illegally in order to gather evidence to criminalise him. His trial began the following October and he was indicted following fabricated charges as a result of his reporting on Al-Qaeda and his accusations against the Yemeni and US governments. He was sentenced to three years in prison and a travel ban for another two years.

In the first months of the uprising in Yemen, President Saleh released scores of prisoners as a concession, including Shaye. However, President Obama intervened to make sure he stays behind bar. The union asked me to write to US Secretary Hillary Clinton demanding that the US remove their objection to Shaye being released.

The arguments are pretty straightforward. The US administration is giving legitimacy to an unfair trial based on confessions extracted by torture and carried out by a due process that is far from credible. And to continue to force the Yemeni government to keep a journalist in jail, despite being pardoned, throws considerable doubt on the US stand as defender of human rights.

NEW INITIATIVE LAUNCHED TO END IMPUNITY

2012-02-05T07:10:00.000-08:00

With 106 journalists killed in the line of duty, 2011 has been an average murderous year. It proved again that, once the inflated figures of the war years cease to distort the grim toll of killed journalists, the tally confirms what we have been saying all along that the majority of journalists killed are not the by-lined war correspondents who knowingly risk their lives, but the local beat reporters whose names do not resonate at all in the media.

This is why, as journalists continue to die, we have been arguing all along that the next step is not to engage in a long tortuous battle to promote yet another international instrument. We have always believed that there were now enough international laws, covenants, protocols, declarations and resolutions to paper all the walls of Ban Ki-Moon office. What we need is a strong UN determined to implement these resolutions and compel governments to abide by international laws and standards, including the Universal Humanitarian Laws which are a set of universal standards for all people and all nations.

Last week, Hassan Osman Abdi, a senior Somali journalist and head of Shabelle Media Network, was gunned down as he was stepping into his home. Another cold-calculated murder that took place under the nose of the soldiers of the Somali Federal Transitional Government, proof that his killers would never be found and those who ordered the execution will remain sheltered. Barely 24 hours later, many powerful voices including those of UN Special Representative to Somalia Ambassador Augustine Mahiga, European diplomats, representatives of the Somali government echoed each other in condemning this heinous crime and backing a swift enquiry.

It would be all too easy to draw the simple conclusion that finally the powers that be have woken up from their slumber and are now showing the political mettle they have been lacking. The reality in this case is that other geopolitical factors seems to be at play. Why did the murder of Abdi suddenly become an issue when the last murder in Mogadishu of his colleagues Abdisalan Sheik Hassan only a month ago was barely noticed? Should it have anything to do with the “international community” evaluating the achievements of the current Federal Transitional Government? In a recent report, the International Crisis Group describes the current FTG as "having squandered the good will and support it received and achieved little of significance”. It also said that many local and foreign observers regard the current government as the most corrupt since the cycles of ineffectual transitions began in 2000. No wonder that the FTG moved quickly in an effort to impress its backer.

It is in this context that the recent initiative launched at the Doha conference should be seen. It may well have been ensconced in geopolitical considerations, but we were fully engaged with some of our regional groups as core participants. The main debate was dominated by the polemics around whether to have an emblem to identify journalists and to promote another convention to protect journalists, but the main gist of the conference was to call for renewed and urgent action to monitor and implement the existing mechanisms. The final declaration was not radical and reiterated many of the demands already addressed in the past to the UN and its agencies, governments, employers and journalists. What mattered most was the renewed attempt to re-ignite the arguments of why, when and how the current mechanisms must be enforced? We welcomed the declaration and we will be among the group representing journalists, led by the Qatar National Human Rights Council, that will deliver the recommendations to the UN General Assembly and participate in the follow up.

The UNESCO inter-agencies conference last September, the conference of experts organised last November by the Austrian government and the recent Doha initiative all signal the start of a powerful dynamic determined to put governments under pressure to protect journalists and put an end to impunity.

Opening session of the Doha conference

ONE YEAR ON: HAS THE ARAB SPRING FAILED TO DELIVER FOR JOURNALISTS?

2012-01-28T08:13:00.000-08:00

One year after the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt, the press freedom industry the world over is tacking stock of what has been achieved.

Early during the uprising we brought together our affiliates at a gathering we called “Winds of Change – setting the agenda for media reforms”. Representatives of our unions were then full of optimism and believed that their time has come to push for real radical reforms and opened the widest discussion on subjects as diverse as the safety of journalists, press freedom and political pressure on media, reforming media laws, the role of unions in the public debate on democratisation and reform, censorship, freedom of information protection of sources, public interest, self-regulation/press councils, ethical media, role of investigative journalism.

Armed with a clear plan of action and dozens of recommendations, they returned home eager to be at the forefront of the struggle for civil liberties, individual freedoms and democracy and to transform their media landscape by fighting to reinforce the values of journalism, workers’ rights, democracy and equality.

In Tunisia, although the naked repression meted out daily by the police thugs of Ben Ali has almost disappeared, the climate and state of media has not radically changed to reach the level of total press freedom that the new government has been trumpeting.

The infamous information ministry did indeed disappear from the structure of the interim government, and blogger Slim Amamou was released from prison to be appointed Secretary of State for youth and sport. But journalists continued to be often violently assaulted by security forces while covering demonstrations. Attacks by politicians using journalists as scapegoats for the country's woes has now made journalists the target of Salafist gangs who often attack journalists and threaten to burn down media, as in the case of TV station Nessma.

Private media frequently dismiss scores of journalists while these vicious employers continue to take advantage of the largesse of the new government through grants, subsidies and sale of advertising. The new politicians, led by the Islamist An Nahda, have shown no hurry in reforming the state media into a public service media. Worse still, they are refusing to loosen their grip as they made their own appointments to head public media, including three editors in chief, many of whom had links with the former Ben Ali regime.

Regarding Egypt there is no doubt that a page of history was turned on 11 February last year when President Hosni Mubarak gave up power after 18 days of bloody crackdown. Eleven months later, things are still up in the air with the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces taking over the running the country and not keeping to many of its promises. They even went further in using the same old methods of censorship and intimidation, stating they would “tolerate no insults directed against it” and started dragging numerous journalists in front of military tribunals.

A more violent crackdown was still to come with threats last September by the Supreme council to use emergency laws against all journalists who “threaten social peace”, the checking up of the licences of 16 satellite TV stations, the storming of the offices of Al-Hurra and Channel January 25 TV, and the violent attacks against journalists in November in the streets around Tahrir Square where more than 40 instances of assaults and arrests of journalists by the security forces were recorded.

One year on it seems as if the Arab spring has steadily turned into a nuclear winter.

JOURNALISTS IN JAIL MUST BE SET FREE

2011-12-29T05:41:00.000-08:00

With the New Year festivities around the corner, the IFJ remembers the scores of journalists in prisons around the world. Many are held without trial and some in secret locations, and those who had a trial had to confront the most ludicrous charges of anti-state crimes.

In the two most recent high-profile trials, Turkey and Ethiopia used their anti-terror laws against journalists. In the case of the two Swedish colleagues, Johan Persson and Martin Schibbye, they were condemned on 27th December to an 11 years’ prison sentence after being convicted of supporting terrorism and on a less important charge of entering the country’s Ogaden region illegally. They denied throughout their ordeal any accusation of supporting terrorism, namely the Ogaden National Liberation Front, and maintained that they were investigating Lundin Oil, a company involving Swedish foreign minister Carl Bildt. Their plea fell on deaf ears and the judge ruled that they should serve "rigorous imprisonment”.

A day earlier on 26th December, the trial of 10 Turkish journalists opened in Istanbul with the prosecution again using anti-terror laws, following another trial of 10 other journalists which took place on 22nd November. More was still to come as dozens of journalists were later arrested in coordinated raids across the country bringing the total to over 90 journalists currently in jail awaiting trial, most of the time under the pretext of allegations of terrorist activities. 

On both these cases we are determined to extend in the new year our campaigns to free these journalists. But more needs to be done to defeat the anti-terror laws and the cynical way they are manipulated by unscrupulous governments to sacrifice civil liberties under the pretext of security.

At the IFJ global conference on anti-terror laws last September, we managed to bring together the widest coalition to fight attempts by authoritarian regimes to use these laws to reinforce their oppressive systems, and to restrict dissent inside and outside media and to curtail free speech.

The latest trials demonstrate once again how authoritarian governments can redefine at will what constitutes terrorism to prosecute and gag journalists. In the Turkish trials, the minister of the interior İdris Naim Şahin went so far as to include art, poetry, journalism and academia.

As well as freeing our colleagues, our main target remains that all counter-terrorism and national security laws are reviewed to ensure compliance with international human rights and freedom of expression standards.

US JUDGE DECLARES A BLOGGER IS NOT A JOURNALIST

2011-12-14T09:29:00.000-08:00

For several years now, journalists have been fiercely arguing over “who is a journalist” and more precisely are bloggers journalists? A judge in Montana has just ruled in a defamation case that Crystal Cox, a self-defined “investigative blogger”, who was sued by an investment firm for a defamatory posting, was not a journalist and therefore not entitled to protection under media shield laws that allow journalists not to identify their sources.

In a judgment that sent shock waves in bloggers’ communities, US District Judge Marco Hernandez said according to Associated Press: “ Although [the] defendant is a self-proclaimed 'investigative blogger' and defines herself as 'media,' the record fails to show that she is affiliated with any newspaper, magazine, periodical, book, pamphlet, news service, wire service, news or feature syndicate, broadcast station or network, or cable television system. Thus, she is not entitled to the protections of the law."

He then went on to order her to pay US$2.5m to investment firm Obsidian Finance Group and its co-founder Kevin Padrick for alleging defaming him in several of her posts.

Cox considered herself to be a journalist and insisted that her posts – a mixture of facts, commentary and opinion – were based on information supplied by a whistle-blower she refused to name.

In many parts of the US, shield laws protects journalists from revealing their sources unless it is relevant, unobtainable by any other way, and the need for the information is compelling to the public interest. Forty states currently have shield laws and they vary from state to state. Oregon, like many others, has shield laws that exclude online publishers from protection.

In 2009 the US House of Senate discussed a federal shield law but could not agree about who should be considered a journalist, leaving it to states to enact their own laws. It looks that in the end it will be the Supreme Court that will be asked to step in to define who and what media is.

OUR GLOBAL FIGHT AGAINST IMPUNITY TAKES OFF

2011-11-26T01:36:00.000-08:00

The recent global mobilisation of IFJ member unions and its allies in IFEX may yet have a long way to go if it is to bring an end to impunity. However, in a single day, it succeeded in raising awareness the world over about the inertia of governments in putting serious efforts to hunt killers of journalists and put them behind bars, and the lack of will by international institutions to enforce the wide range instruments they enacted and they seem incapable of enforcing.

I attended and spoke at the meeting in London jointly organised with the Campaign for Human Rights in the Philippines held at Amnesty International Human Rights Action Centre. Speakers included CHRP chair Mark Dean but also Stefan Antor, a judge formerly of the EU-Philippines Justice Support Programme (EPJUST) and most importantly Carlos Zarate a Filipino lawyer and journalist (see picture below).

The strength of the meeting is that it did not spend much time unravelling the circumstances of the Ampatuan Town massacre but focussed on what has been happening in the ensuing two years at the level of government, police, prosecution and justice system which is at the heart of the unabated culture of impunity.

Stefan Antor, who participated in the 18-month €3.9m EPJUST project highlighted what he found when he set out to analyse on the ground the institutional capabilities of the criminal justice system and the reforms needed to create a fair and transparent system. Impunity occurs when there is the absence of political will to back the investigations, when judges are weak or corrupt, when the police or investigating authorities are incompetent, when they are meagre resources assigned to those responsible for providing security and enforcing the law; and when official negligence and corruption is rife.

In the case of these particular trials, the families of the killed journalists have to fight almost daily attempts to stall and subvert the course of justice, ranging from the delays introduced by the defence lawyers by seeking to remove judges and prosecutors, to alleged offers of bribes to the families and intimidation, and daily violence against witnesses.

On top of this, the system has its own flaws – it normally takes 6 to 8 years for the trial of a normal murder to come to an end; the slow pace of the police in arresting the perpetrators (in the first year only 12 suspects were arraigned and even today some 100 remain at large); the overreliance on witnesses rather than forensic; the weakness of the penal code, etc.

Carlos Zarate explained how the massacre was a tragedy waiting to happen, in view of the support given by former President Arroyo to the Ampatuan family, arming them and allowing them to maintain powerful militias, and to amass considerable wealth in return for political support which delivered for her an incredible 12-0 win for her senatorial slate in Maguindanao. He also unravelled foreign intervention and patronage which allowed warlordism to flourish.

The recent arrest of former President Arroyo may just be the break waited for and is a source of great optimism by the families who have just filed a $15 million-damage suit against her in connection with the massacre.

Despite extra-judicial killings still continuing under President Aquino, campaigners, including the families, the trade unions and civil society at large, are full of optimism. They are committed to working together, despite the indomitable obstacles they face, to combat injustice and bring an end to impunity.

WHEN A BLOGGER MEETS AN INFORMATION MINISTER

2011-11-23T06:19:00.000-08:00

When the IFJ kicked off a debate on the future of journalism among its member unions at its last congress in Cadiz, there were some who were perplexed that this had anything to do with them. They saw it as an issue for the Western nations, or even more precisely the Anglo-Saxon world.

Some of their arguments sounded fine -- why should the IFJ centres its approach to the future of its members based on the meltdown affecting US newspapers? The US is not the centre of the world and, while newspapers are in decline in the West, they continue to flourish in the emerging economies, most notably in India, China and Brazil, where the newspaper industry is enjoying an unprecedented boom.

Just over a year later after Cadiz, I was invited by Russia’s main news agency Ria Novosti to deliver a keynote speech at the European and Asian Media Forum in Astana, Kazakhstan, where the main issue under the spotlight was the future of journalism and the dynamics of new media.

Looking at the programme and listening to the scores of participants representing media, unions and governments throughout all the 11 CIS countries, its is clear that the new schools of thoughts, and the new journalism gurus springing up everywhere have become powerful templates for professional journalists and institutions.

I was knocked back to see all these participants rushing around punching their i-pads and speaking as if they were the main players of the Future of News consensus, talking with ease about the leaps and bounds of new technology and the behaviour of new audiences in a networked world.

It was amazing to hear the discussion among people, some of which still believing they should be part and parcel of the post-Soviet mass media space, talk about how the future lies in hybrid techniques, new delivery platforms, the impact of open source, live blogging and the rise of user-generated content and even the impact of the Silicon Valley on journalism. “New and traditional media and their interaction – merge, ‘divorce’ and transformation” was the title of one of the sessions. “Heated debate: Social Networks – wonder or woe of the 21^st century?” was another. Speakers included governments’ representatives standing side by side with bloggers and facebook official representatives.

I took the opportunity to invite unions in these countries to join the IFJ. Apart from unions in the Baltic countries, very few see the needs to be in the IFJ and some of them know very little about what we do. The time may have come for us to make a special effort to attract organisations representing journalism in central Asia. They have a lot in common, are already active in networked groups and will make a huge change to journalism in this region by moulding into a single authoritative voice for journalists.

STRATEGIC PLANNING PUT AFRICAN UNIONS ON THE RIGHT TRACK

2011-11-21T16:03:00.000-08:00

Our African member unions may not have big resources but they are not short of good ideas and initiatives. One of their big successes is to hold every statutory meeting of their leadership in a separate country. This allows them to deal with normal business like any other leadership, but also serves as a mini-congress to give a health check to their work programme and boost the standing of their host unions. I attended the last meeting of the leadership of the Federation of African Journalists hosted by our Sudanese affiliate, the Sudanese Union of Journalists (see below the opening session).

Our visit lasted only 48 hours but it was an eye opener. Apart from meeting their activists and hearing in fine details about their efforts to build their unions, we also heard first hand about the issues they confront daily and how they have been trying to resolve them. The SUJ has, for a while now, put a major thrust to build its ability to recruit journalists and support students of journalism, including involvement with their curriculum and insisting on a strong formation to improve the overall professionalism of all working journalists. This is bearing great result and is turning it into our second biggest union in Africa after Nigeria.

Another major effort has been campaigns and advocacy. And in mobilising the strength of their members to react to every action taken by their authorities against individual journalists or media, they have become the authoritative voice for press freedom in their country to the extent that the Sudanese government is now intensively consulting them in the drafting of the country’s new media law. They are also one of our few unions participating in the work of a press council which they initiated.

This FAJ leadership meeting also took the lead among IFJ regions in producing a strategic plan for 2012-2016, a forward-looking move that will position the regional body as a serious actor in the development of the African continent. The plan is now been sent to affiliates as well as the IFJ’s leading structures for consultation. It may not be perfect or ambitious enough, but it is being finalised through the widest collective effort giving journalists and their unions a stake in the future of their countries and societies, and firmly rooted in their reality and sustained by their own vision of the future of Africa.

TIME FOR OUR UNIONS TO RE-IGNITE THE FLAME OF TRADE UNIONISM

2011-11-17T08:19:00.000-08:00

The strain of it all is everywhere to see. Not just in the rising unemployment figures and wider economic gloom, but the whole of the western world seems to be running on near empty and heading to a double-dip recession. In the middle of the gloom and doom, some of our unions are feel the double pressure of voracious employers who have invariably taken advantage to put the boot in but also from the press freedom industry NGOs who have been seeking all along to outflank unions and speak on behalf of journalists.

Last week saw two momentous events that boosted our union’s legitimacy in representing their members. In Ohio, unions succeeded in delivering a splendid victory for workers when they convinced voters to overturn a divisive anti-union law and defeat Republican Governor John Kasich. Ohio voters rejected by 61 to 39 per cent Issue 2 in a ballot referendum on Senate Bill 5, a legislation framed to restrict collective bargaining rights for public employees. Faced with an intransigent Kasich, workers did what that can do best, campaign, mobilise, educate, march, petition, and in the end they won.

In the UK, IFJ member, the National Union of Journalists, confounded its enemies and even surprised its own members when it took by storm the Leveson enquiry into the future of the press regulations in the UK, following the phone hacking scandal. First it won the status of core participant which put it in pole position speaking with authority on behalf of journalists. Most importantly it gave a lesson to the vast army of silks and QCs hired for the occasion by media corporations by depicting the lives of journalists in today’s newsroom.

NUJ General Secretary Michelle Stanistreet made one of the most powerful opening speeches that made headlines and was transmitted live, as the enquiry got under way.

She exposed the cynicism of News International and its boss Rupert Murdoch in creating and funding their own proxy union -- the News International Staff Association – to keep the NUJ and other unions out. She berated the Press Complaint Commission as a “self-serving gentleman club” that failed and called for new models that have teeth.

She unraveled today’s relentless pressures on journalists to deliver without even the resources to do the job well which often leads to short cuts and explained in details the reality of newsroom culture something that only a union, and no other NGO, can deliver on behalf of its journalists members.

The NUJ is coordinating the testimonies from journalists and will feed dozens of cases of bullying at a senior level, all key factors which led to the scale of hacking. Again only a union, and no other NGO, can do this on behalf of its members.

For quite a while now, the IFJ has been collaborating in good faith with all the alphabet soup of press freedom NGOs. In the end they only represent themselves or their funder. But now that they act and speak on behalf of journalists, the time has come for the IFJ to re-evaluate some of these relationships. I hope that events such as the Ohio vote or the Leveson inquiry will give confidence to our unions to reignite the flame of trade unionism as the only organisations that can represent and fight for their members.

GREEK UNIONS FIGHT BACK AUSTERITY

2011-11-16T07:46:00.001-08:00

Leafing through the European press over the last few days, it looks as if the doomsday scenario of the collapse of the Greek and Italian economies have given way to a curt intellectual discussion about the merits of technocrats, such as Italian prime minister designate, Mario Monti, and Greek PM, Lucas Papademos, being parachuted into the top jobs. There is not a day that passes by without editorials and comments agonising about the democratic deficit or the rise of the technocrats. “Is technocracy better than democracy?” seems to be the stunning stuff that excites writers of all ilk. However very few ever enquired about how the current meltdown is affecting the state of the media in these countries.

I attended a rally in Athens organised by the IFJ Greek unions precisely to unravel what is going on (see picture). It was a shocking eye opener. Greek media is in such a down spiral that the unions have little faith that journalism will still be able to play a role in informing Greek citizens about the parlous state of their economy or the grand designs of the technocrats now in charge of saving the country.

To start with, over 25% of journalists are unemployed today. The majority of those remaining in employment have not received any wages for 3.5 months on average. As one journalist put it “if before the crisis, journalists have to juggle with three jobs to earn a decent income, now their work packet provides mere pocket money”.

Many medias, whether newspapers or broadcasters, are in such dire straight that they simply have not got the cash to pay their journalists. Eleftherotypia has not paid its workers for the past 3.5 months. Those working at Private TV Alter, which filed for bankruptcy, received nothing for over five months. Avriani and sports newspaper Filathlos are the worst culprits, having paid nothing since January.

Some managements like at Skai, a private television, or Pegasus, the publishers of the daily Ethnos, simply forced their staff to sign private contracts bringing their work conditions well below the signed collective agreement. Others like business daily Kerdos or Sentra FM dismiss journalists at will.

Outside Athens things are even worse. Cities like Cities Heraklion, Patras, Thessaloniki, Volos and Larissa) which traditionally sustained five daily newspapers now have no more than two.

The toughest battle is being fought at public service broadcaster ERT which announced the closure of ET1, one of the three public channels, the merger of regional radios and, in the process closing down 958 Thessaloniki public radio and Radiotileorasi. Journalists’ salaries have been reduced by 30-40% with the austerity squeeze announced in the public sector. Worse still, the Greek government took the unprecedented decision to change the status of journalists which are now considered as civil servant.

Who knows what this bunch of new technocrats would dream of as they scramble to enforce more and more austerity measures? One thing is certain, our Greek unions will not roll over and die. The rally in Athens showed that journalists are ready for a fight back. The whole of the Greek labour movement has been battling for many months to resist the vicious attacks unleashed on them and their families day after day. Our Greek journalists unions have been part of this battle. They are also turning to their sister unions in Europe to support them reverse these plans that would only decimate their medias.

BBC WIELDS THE AXE

2011-10-06T15:47:00.000-07:00

“The best journalism in the world” insisted BBC management as they unveiled the extent of 20% cut across the corporation, resulting in 2000 workers losing their jobs. After nine months of a one-way "Delivering Quality First" review with staff, BBC boss Mark Thompson finally announced the finer prints of a smaller and radically reshaped BBC. He hoped to convince BBC viewers that, despite getting a raw deal when he agreed last autumn with the coalition Government a freeze in the licence fee until 2017, he managed to keep essential services with little impact on programmes.

Thompson boasted that he found the £700m in annual saving, over half saved through productivity gains. The changes will see more repeats on BBC2, fewer entertainment shows, less money spent on sports rights and a shrunken BBC3 and BBC4. Stressing that it is a plan for a BBC which “uses its resources more effectively” he played down the impact of the loss of 2000 jobs on quality and standards.

The unions highlighted the significant impact of the slashing of 700 to 800 in BBC News and its reduction in business coverage, investigative journalism and foreign news. Changes to working conditions will also suffer. Current staff will see cuts to their allowances and changes to their redundancy consultation periods. Terms for new staff with worse salaries and conditions is bound to create a two-tier workforce.

NUJ GS Michelle Stanistreet described the announcement “a watershed moment in BBC history”. “We are stunned that BBC news, BBC radio and quality journalism have received a disproportionate hit today. The cuts risk irreparable damage to the BBC and will inevitably compromise quality journalism and programming.” she said, vowing stiff resistance, including strike action.

In view of the close relationship between the government and Rupert Murdoch at the time the licence fee deal was done, the NUJ has been calling for the deal to be re-opened and a proper public debate to take place about BBC funding.

“WE HAVE NOT BEEN DEFEATED”

2011-09-27T04:41:00.000-07:00

Every week we pay with the life of a reporter, a cameraman, or a support worker, and unless this life is that of a well-known Western correspondent, the world barely notices. Most killed journalists remains anonymous and, in most cases, are just statistics.

Last week, IFJ leaders, who were meeting in Buenos Aires for their statutory meeting, took part in heart-wrenching memorial events organised by the IFJ affiliate in Argentina, FATPREN.

It is important that we, as trade unions, mark the lives of all those who have fallen for the cause of workers. The international labour movement publishes every year the grim list of those who have been persecuted for standing up and leading workers or just for being active. The IFJ publishes every year a killed list of journalists who died for the cause of journalism, but there is nothing more emotionally powerful than memorial events involving the families of the killed journalists, their colleagues, their friends and neighbours, and just ordinary people wanting to pay their respect.

We must thank FATPREN in taking the lead to rekindle the memories of all the journalists who have fallen during the dark years of the military-sponsored state terrorism in Argentina. They brought together the families of the 130 mostly disappeared journalists, and invited their relatives, friends, colleagues to join in a moving celebration of their lives and achievements.

IFJ Executive members stood shoulder to shoulder with Plaza de Mayo mothers in a poignant act of healing through remembrance and a joint commitment to get to the truth and justice for the 30,000 people who disappeared at the hands of the dictators, including the 130 press workers. Relatives queued to tell the stories of their loved ones and pledged to keep fighting for the truth. “We have not been defeated” many of them said in defiance.

A photographic exposition was on display showing the work of Raymundo Gleyzer, film director and cameraman, founder of a film institution, who was kidnapped and disappeared in May 1976. IFJ Honorary Treasurer, Wolfgang Meyer, presented a watch on behalf of the union of metal workers in Germany, to the family of Andrés Lucio Ariza, a correspondent of the magazine of the union.

A few days earlier, I helped launched a plaque at the site where journalist Emilio Jáuregui was killed by police on 27^th June 1969 at the corner of Calle Anchorena (picture below). Emilio, who previously worked for La Nación newspaper, was general secretary of the FATPREN union, but he was targeted, and sought out for death for the simple reasons that he stood up for the right of his fellow workers, and stood up against injustice.

This kind of memorial is crucial for us journalists and marked Emilio as one of our many martyrs. These events took up one step further in helping us break the anonymity of killed journalists and fight against impunity.

We will never forget them.

A special video of the FATPREN events can be viewed at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8r4yJblwes

Pictures Ruben Corral

AGENCY JOURNALISTS WIN RESOUNDING VICTORY

2011-09-21T14:23:00.001-07:00

It is quite rare these days to see workers win outright strikes in matters of hours. This is what happened last Monday when over 100 journalists at the state-owned news agency Maghreb Arab Press in Morocco took a one-day strike action to stop their management impose major changes to their working hours.

The journalists voted to take strike action on 19th September, followed by another two days of strike on 26th and 27th September. They took the decision at a general assembly after initial negotiations with MAP new director Khalili Hachimi Idriss collapsed. Leaders of the journalists’ union, the Syndicat national de la presse marocaine (SNPM), were buoyed by early contacts after MAP management unveiled various options to resolve the dispute. However later, they changed their mind and tried to impose a clock in system which raised the journalists’ hackle.

Hours into the strike, management backed down and cancelled the new arrangements. The union continues to press for new negotiations to resolve outstanding issues, including improved internal democracy and a transparent appointment process, setting up an editorial committee and new statutes for the agency.

HORN OF AFRICA JOURNALISTS UNDER THE COSH

2011-09-19T16:47:00.000-07:00

Governments in the Horn of Africa seem to have decided in unison to turn up the heat on journalists.

Ethiopia’s Meles Zenawi charged at least five journalists using anti-terror laws. A few days before, in the newly-independent South Sudan, journalists and their union, the South Sudan Union of Journalists, are struggling to ascertain the basic principles of press freedom. Eight Journalists working for the South Sudanese newspaper, The Juba Post, have been suspended from duty, in breach of labour laws, without pay, reportedly over financial difficulties. Despite the great optimism of the country’s rulers on independence day, the nascent print media is being stopped from printing in Khartoum, and has since then been printed either in Nairobi, but mostly in Kampala, incurring a huge increase in their print bill.

In the same week, Eritrea, the worst jailer of journalists in Africa, got special treatment at the hands of the European Parliament on the 10^th anniversary of President Afeworki’s crackdown on journalists. On that day, 11 journalists were jailed and there are still no news of their whereabouts. The EU, for the first time, sharpened their language in their call for the journalists to be released forthwith. The resolution agreed at the session in Strasbourg referred to the Cotonou agreement, the bible of EU trade relations with its African partners, in particular its human rights clause – a sign that the EU, a major donor to Eritrea, is getting fed up with Eritrea continuing to violate its human rights obligations.

ETHIOPIA CHARGES JOURNALISTS WITH TERRORISM

2011-09-17T12:32:00.000-07:00

Only days after the IFJ global conference on anti-terror laws, Ethiopia was the next country to crack the whip and arrest at least five journalists, and to charge them under anti-terror laws.

Eskinder Nega, an online journalist, was alleged to be helping a US-based opposition party Ginbot 7 plan various terrorist attacks across the country. Two other foreign journalists, contributors to the Swedish photo agency Kontinent, Johan Persson and Martin Schibbye, were last week charged with terrorism after being arrested in July while trying to cross the Ethiopia-Somalia border into the Ogaden region where Meles Zenawi’s government is fighting the Ogaden National Liberation Front rebels. Another journalist, Argaw Ashine, has reportedly fled the country fearing arrest.

The IFJ member union in Ethiopia, the National Journalists Union (ENJU), said the arrests created a climate of fear among journalists. Following their request for information, Federal Police Central Intelligence and Crime Intelligence Director, Assistant Commissioner Demelash Gebremichael said that the journalists were arrested after the National Intelligence and Security Service and the Federal Police Joint Anti-terror Task Force got evidence that they were engaged in destabilising peace and security in the country and spying on behalf of external forces.

When I met Prime Minister Meles Zenawi with an IFJ delegation in January last year, he boasted about Ethiopia becoming a paragon of press freedom. Even if this was true, it did not last long and it looks that Zenawi is taking a leaf from the book of many despots, showing no scruples in using anti-terror laws to silence his critics.

BRITISH POLICE HOUND GUARDIAN JOURNALISTS TO REVEAL SOURCES

2011-09-16T16:59:00.000-07:00

A few days ago the IFJ organised a highly successful conference on the 10^th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attack under the theme “Journalists in the Shadow of Terror Laws”. Scores of journalists, law makers and academics discussed the impact of these laws on journalism and called, among other things, for the elimination of all laws that criminalise journalism, or restrict the protection of sources.

Even before the recommendations of the conference were sent out, the London Metropolitan Police announced today they will attempt on 23^rd September to seek an order by a judge at the Old Bailey to force Guardian journalists Amelia Hill and Nick Davis to handover documents relating to the source for several articles on the phone hacking scandal published last July.

The Met Police is alleging that the journalists breached the 1989 Official Secrets Act, more specifically a rarely used clause 5 used against individuals who pass on “damaging” leaked by government officials. The Police claim that these journalists may have incited police officers involved in Operation Weeting on the hacking enquiry into leaking information about the hacking of the phone of missing murdered girl Milly Dowler and about the identity of arrested News International executives.

So obscure is clause 5 that the only attempt to use against a journalist some 11 years ago came to nothing. This case followed the publication by Tony Geraghty of The Irish War, a book describing the British army computer databases in Northern Ireland. Both the author and Lieutenant Colonel Wylde, a former military intelligence officer were arrested. The case was later dropped. In the same year, another attempt by the police to get a production order to get the Guardian and the Observer to provide their correspondence with MI5 officer David Shayler also failed.

Many voices including the NUJ have denounced this clumsy attempt by the Met Police to get at the Guardian's sources by going around article 10 of the Human Rights Act which clearly set out the protection of sources as a cornerstone of press freedom, a principle repeatedly reaffirmed by the European court of human rights.

If the matter goes to court, the journalists may be facing jail for contempt. The whole issue is proving embarrassing for a police force that, for years, failed to investigate criminal hackers but now wants to jail the journalists who exposed them.

STRIKING TO DEFEND QUALITY JOURNALISM

2011-08-02T13:27:00.000-07:00

Midnight picket at London BBC television centre

For a second time in just over a fortnight, most of the NUJ members working at the BBC were on strike again shutting down many of the flagship programmes for the day. Since the last strike, plenty of efforts were put in by NUJ officials to resolve the dispute but every single proposal they made to try and avoid the strike fell on deaf ears. It was as if the BBC management were sleepwalking into disaster. The union was offering them thousands and one ways of not only avoiding a costly stoppage but also of keeping skilled and valuable staff in employment. They won’t have it.

NUJ General Secretary Michelle Stanistreet pointed out that “BBC management lived in a fantasy world”. Their position became so farcical that, in one case at BBC Monitoring in Caversham, one NUJ member was escorted out the door having being made redundant, and within hours three new jobs were advertised for which he was qualified. In the end, it was the union and its members that came out of it with flying colours, defending quality journalism and trying to stop cuts that will harm programs.

The first shift to strike was at the BBC World Service which downed tools at midnight. I dutifully joined the nearest picket at BBC Oxford and was fired up by the determination of strikers who are geared up for a long fight, as they were about to embark the next day on a non-stop work-to-rule.

As the phone hacking scandal in the UK reached new heights, the NUJ has been focusing on the intimate links between Murdoch and the British Prime Minister when the ruling coalition set a rotten deal for the BBC which is to last for six years. This licence deal directly led to the imposition of a 20% spending cuts across the BBC. This is what is at the heart of the current cuts at the BBC and it is not a secret anymore that Murdoch, who has been conducting a colossal campaign against the BBC, had had a huge influence on the government’s decision.

This is a dispute that will run and run.

NDEY IS INNOCENT, OK?

2011-07-24T11:46:00.000-07:00

Somebody said that immediately on attaining power each dictator suppresses all free speech except his own. And President Jammeh of Gambia is no exception. He may be considered by some as a fool or even a rogue president, but in reality he can be painfully brutal and ruthless and don’t usually hesitate to declare his opponents guilty even before a court can hear their cases. He has on many occasions professed his hatred of journalists, in particular those who are brave enough to write about his dreadful record on human rights.

The latest to be targeted is Ndey Tapha Sosseh, former president of the union of journalists, the Gambian Press Union. She was charged last week with treason and sedition, accusations that may carry a sentence of 25 years in prison or even the death sentence. We take these ludicrous charges seriously but they don’t stand to scrutiny and bear all the hallmarks of a desperate president using all manners of artifice and trickery to witch-hunt journalists.

Last Friday, human rights defenders in many countries organised activities to expose what President Jammeh is doing to his citizens on a day he commemorates every year as “freedom day” in a sham and cynical act of deceit. In reality this is the anniversary of the day he took power by force. And while he celebrates freedom day, the whole world knows there is no freedom in the Gambia where its citizens, journalists in particular, are routinely subject to unfair trials, arrests, and targeting by security agencies.

I participated in a news conference in Abuja, Nigeria, to pledge support on behalf of the global community of journalists for our colleague Ndey Tapha Sosseh (see picture ©Samuel Adeko, Punch Nigeria, Ndey is on the right). President Jammeh would never forgive Ndey for the brave and defiant campaign she coordinated two years ago to free the seven journalists who were grabbed in June 2009 and sentenced to jail for publishing what he claimed was seditious material. The international outcry was so wide and so powerful that he was forced to release them a few months later.

Nor would he forget that Ndey and her union would not stop campaigning for justice in the case of two of its members – Deydra Hydara, former editor of The Point newspaper, killed in 2004 allegedly by security operatives – and Daily Observer journalist Chief Ebrima Manneh – a victim of enforced disappearance for many years now.

So now he is going for her. But what he has forgotten is that she is not alone. Hundreds of organisations all over the world are fully aware of her fighting spirit and her determination to defend free journalism, and would not hesitate a second to stand shoulder to shoulder with her. Hours after we heard about the charges, we are making urgent preparations to assemble the mother of all coalitions, including journalists’ trade unions, labour centres, human rights advocacy groups, freedom of expression organisations to defend Ndey and force him to drop the charges.

Somebody else said that a dictator must fool all the people all the time and there’s only one way to do that, he must also fool himself. And this is what Jammeh is doing right now.

THE FRUIT OF OUR LABOUR

2011-07-23T08:50:00.000-07:00

African unions are becoming a force to be reckoned with – more and more assertive, capable of organising and mobilising their workers and winning momentous victories. A conference, bringing together in Abuja, Nigeria, 30 leaders of journalists’ unions from all over Africa, came to an end with a united and strong message that the battle is on to end poverty wages and attacks on social rights.

The gathering entitled” The Fruit of our Labour: A New Agenda for Improving the Conditions of Journalists in Africa” opened on Wednesday in the middle of rare scenes of jubilations as the Nigerian labour movement scored a huge victory for workers. Federal and state governments officials were humiliated when they caved in literally at the 11^th hour at a meeting with labour leaders representing the Nigeria Labour Congress and Trade Union Congress, only minutes before the start of a three-day national strike that would have paralysed the country. The marathon negotiations were over the implementation of the minimum wage of 18,000 nairas monthly (around $3.6 per day).

In the middle of cheers and standing ovations, it was the triumphant leader and not the minister of labour who opened the conference. Owei Lakemfa, General Secretary of the NLC, who is also member of the Nigerian Union of Journalists, gave a magnificent solidarity speech concluding “A good journalist, like a good striker, must have the ability to use both legs: work as a professional and organise as a trade unionist”.

With their spirit lifted, delegates spent the two days debating and agreeing how to build a strong union movement in the media industry. It was not about press freedoms or human rights or killed journalists, it was about how to lift African journalists from poverty so they become a force to be reckoned with.

JOURNALISTS ON STRIKE ROCK THE BBC

2011-07-15T14:47:00.000-07:00

Picture Dave Pearce

I was up at the crack of dawn today to picket the first shift at the nearest BBC studio to where I live, BBC Oxford. By then thousands of BBC journalists responded to the call by the NUJ to strike for 24 hours in defense of jobs. In some of the London centres the stoppage started with the change of shifts at midnight.

The writing has been on the wall since NUJ negotiators felt that the BBC was spoiling for a fight. Usually both sides have always agreed that there should be no compulsory redundancies. This time however BBC management refused to make any concession hoping to browbeat the union and push through their planned redundancies without caring about the impact upon millions of listeners and viewers. Attempts by the union to use conciliations were rebuffed.

The strike was solid everywhere and several flagship programmes have been cancelled with huge disruption hitting most stations.

This dispute is taking place at a time when all eyes are on the unfolding phone hacking scandal and the ructions inside the Murdoch empire. The NUJ is making sure that the current cuts and job losses, which are now causing a major crisis within the BBC, are seen within the context of the malignant influence by Murdoch on politicians. They denounced today the cuts they had to fights as a direct result of the decision by government to freeze the licence for the next six year which they see as a shabby deal done behind closed doors between management and government at a time when Murdoch was putting huge pressure on politicians in the run up to the general election.

In the weeks to come the various enquiries will attempt to unravel how Prime Minister Cameron and others at the heart of government have been pandering to Rupert Murdoch and his commercial interests.

The IFJ will be joining the NUJ in calling for the licence fee deal to be re-examined in light of recent events. The deal should be scrapped and instead an open debate involving staff and listeners and viewers held to determine the future funding the BBC.

Picture NUJ

REALLY THE END OF THE WORLD?

2011-07-15T10:23:00.000-07:00

It is now one week since the phone scandal, which was been brewing for years, suddenly erupted to engulf the Murdochs. Every day has its harvest of new twists and turns. Wednesday saw politicians, friends and foes, seeking to distance themselves from them in the first Parliamentary debate after which News Corporation announcing they will withdraw their bid for BSkyB. Yesterday, the Commons Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport served summons on Rupert Murdoch and his son James, threatening them with jail if they didn’t turn up to a hearing next Tuesday. On the same day, storm clouds started gathering in the US where the FBI started a criminal investigation and Democrat senators joined in the chorus to investigate News Corp for hacking Americans, violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and possibly violating the accounting rules of the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Today Rebekah Brooks finally resigned from her position as News Corporation’s CEO, a day after Saudi prince Al-Waleed bin Talal Alsaud, the second largest shareholder in the company, said she would go if found to be involved.

Next week is likely to be even more eventful despite News International announcing they would run adverts in all British national newspapers apologising for what has happened. The crème de la crème will be the public hearing at the select committee next Tuesday where the Murdochs will be hanged to dry.

The credibility of so many senior executives in News Corp. now seems in tatters. James Murdoch's bid to taker over after his father is now seriously in trouble. Murdoch, himself at the centre of the web, seems to have got his upcommance, with more to come as further investigations will try and lift the veils on everything he has done to determine whether he is "fit and proper" to receive a license for a TV channel. In the US the law requires that same person to be "of good character".

Years of mounting outrage at Murdoch's tabloid empire and its ruthlessness, corruption and lawlessness is prompting many ordinary people to call for vigorous prosecution of all those implicated. At the same time some vested interest are taking advantage of the public revulsion to call for a toughening up of the regulations not just to punish wrongdoers but to curb the press and even a system of registering and striking off journalists. Many politicians start their rant by excoriating the Murdochs and finish up with a general condemnation of "the press" for being "too powerful."

But agreeing on a cure will prove more difficult than we may think. Attempts to regulate the press in the past lumbered us with harsh libels laws which saw diverse but less wealthy media shriveling up under the weight of libel suits while the rich and powerful prospered.

"The press is too powerful" should be read as nothing less than a prelude to increase liability for investigative journalists. After all, journalists are seen by some as having offended the royal family over Diana’s and pictures, outraged MPs over expenses and now crossed the last line over phone hacking.

As part of the general debate, Really the End of the World? was the title last night of a public meeting in central London organised by the NUJ which brought together journalists, unions officials, press freedom advocates and politicians. This was the first shot by the union to involve citizens in discussions on the future of the media and to shape up its campaign in the run up to the public enquiry. The union has also stepped up its campaign for industrial recognition at News International which is necessary to protect journalists from editorial pressure and help fight for a conscience clause. Murdoch cleared unions out of Wapping in the 80s and set up a company union as a bulwark against the NUJ and other unions to prevent them organise inside his empire.

HAS THE EMPEROR LOST HIS CLOTHES?

2011-07-10T16:14:00.000-07:00

The News of the World published today its last issue, the 8674^th,, bidding a “sad and proud farewell to its 7.5 million readers”, defiant and bombastic till the end. But is it the end of Rupert Murdoch too? Suddenly the powerful tycoon looked a tired old man as he ran for cover in Sun Valley, Idaho with hacks in hot pursuit. Today, competitors spent acres of newsprint poring over 40 years of Murdoch’s domination of the British media and political landscape, making or breaking the reputation of the great and the good. This was a perversion of our politics, orchestrated by a man whose power the establishment failed to check wrote The Observer. Politicians of all hues danced to his tune, but in a few hours the game has changed and the spell broken.

In the whirl of arrests, denials and inquiries, the question of the day is whether Murdoch will keep his hands on the rest of BSkyB? Prime minister Cameron wriggles, almost reneging on a done deal by delaying it. Opposition leader Ed Milliband, having kicked the shackles, demands that the bid goes to the competition commission and even that Parliament votes on the takeover.

Closing down NOTW is the price that Murdoch seems willing to pay to secure full ownership of BSkyB, the leading provider of pay TV and the ultimate cash cow. In the last few days, £1 billion was wiped from its value and now city experts warn the deal may collapse. For many weeks to come following the death of NOTW, every day will bring its harvest of new twists and turns but, one thing is increasingly certain, Murdoch’s influence on the body politics will never be the same.

REYKJAVIK RECOMMENDATIONS ON ANTI-TERROR LAWS IN THE DOLDRUMS

2011-07-10T02:59:00.000-07:00

Eurocracies are known to be masters of procrastination and, at times, fickle. Even when they take clear decisions, they always need intense campaigning to force them to do what they say they will do. Last month, a coalition headed by an NGO, Europe Info Access, and including both the IFJ and EFJ sent a letter to the Secretary General of the Council of Europe, Thorbjørn Jagland, copied to a bundle of Eurograndees, reminding them of the commitment made at the Reykjavik Ministerial Conference on 29 May 2009 to review anti-terror laws and asking them to do something.

The Reykjavik decision was crystal clear. The ministers agreed to

[R]eview our national legislation and/or practice on a regular basis to ensure that any impact of anti-terrorism measures on the right to freedom of expression and information is consistent with the Council of Europe standards, with a particular emphasis on the case law of the European Court of Human Rights.

The petition asked the Secretary General to use his powers, including the power vested in him under Article 52 of the European Convention on Human Rights, to request member states to declare whether their internal laws are fully protective of freedom of expression and information.

The reply was quick and short. Having noted our concerns, the Secretary General mentioned in passing the activities of the Steering Committee on the Media and New Communications Services and stressed he was pursuing the Council of Ministers Declaration of 13^th January on measures to promote Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, but nothing much about the decision made in Reykjavik.

What to do? Well I can see another letter or petition in the making, pressing the Secretary General to answer the question and use his power under Article 52 to carry out an investigation. Didn’t ping-pong diplomacy die with President Nixon?

PHONE HACKING SCANDAL PUTS MURDOCH UNDER PRESSURE

2011-07-08T03:05:00.000-07:00

Yesterday’s announcement by News Corporation that their Sunday tabloid the News of the World is to be closed next Sunday sent ripples through British and world media. What has been brewing up for months, even years, as intrusion in private lives of a few celebrities through phone hackings, suddenly exploded into the most extraordinary scandal Western media has ever seen. In a matter of hours as revelation after revelation hit the headlines, James Murdoch, prospective heir to his dad’s empire, announced that NoW will be closed down with the loss of 200 jobs. “Wrongdoers turn a good newsroom bad” he said.

Quite right but who are these wrongdoers? Could they be the corporation’s top executives who have been the main instigators of a media culture based on greed, pushing some of their journalists to get stories at any cost including hacking over 4000 phones. Dubbed “Rupergate” by Bob Woodward, the scandal suddenly exploded like a lightening bolt, involving politicians – Prime minister Cameron having hired formed NoW editor Andy Coulson as his director of communications, and keeping close links with his friendship with former NoW editor Rebekah Brooks and the Murdochs –, the Metropolitan Police – now launching an inquiry into alleged bribes of police officers by NoW –, the Press Complaint Commission, the main regulatory body, and News Corporation Executives.

The decision to close the paper is the more staggering given that it is still the biggest-selling Sunday newspaper in the English-speaking world, selling 2.66 million copies each week. Founded 168 years ago with the words “Our motto is the truth, our practice is fearless advocacy of the truth”, its really formula “Crime, sensation, vice” proved an unstoppable winner. NoW has also built a reputation as a campaigning newspaper sometimes raising millions for just causes from his readers.

Most commentators could not predict that Rupert Murdoch would move so quickly to hang out his newspaper to dry which was received with deep skepticism. It was seen by some as a commercial move to deflect the exodus of advertisers unwilling to risk public anger if they continue being associated with the paper and pulling their contracts. It was also seen as a move to relaunch a replacement phenix, perhaps the Sun on Sunday (complementing his other successful daily), to keep his market share and the brand. Most importantly it could be just a maneuvre to keep open his options over acquiring 60% of TV company BSkyB, currently being considered by the government, which he desperately want to protect from being tarnished by the phone-hacking debacle. Sacrificing journalists in order to protect top executives, including former NoW editor Rebecca Brooks, is interpreted as a move to shield his son James, and preventing other parts of the empire from becoming toxic.

This crisis will run for days, if not week, throwing up the threat of government over-regulation of a free press. Although this scandal was unraveled by a determined bunch of Guardian journalists pushing the investigation during the last two years, already some politicians are using this scandal to tar all journalists with the same brush, giving ammunitions to those who would wish to find an excuse to stamp down on genuine investigative journalism. There will be two official enquiries set by government, one into the conduct of the original police investigation, and one into the future of the media and its regulation.

This is less a crisis of journalism than a crisis over media control and accountability. The IFJ union in the UK, the National Union of Journalists, has been arguing for some time for alternative forms of media ownership, more accountable, less obsessed with narrow profiteering and that fully respect union rights. Since the Wapping strike in the 1980s, Murdoch has kept unions out of his firm and set up and financed a company union NISA that has proved incapable of dealing with these challenges. The NUJ is stepping its recruitment campaign and calling for recognition so that journalists can have a true voice. Only strong unions can effectively combat overbearing and unethical managements and enforce our code of conduct.

More importantly, public inquiries, no matter how important they may unravel the moral and ethical abyss at the heart of the Murdoch’s operation at NoW, may not change much. What is needed right now is a proper debate and inquiry into media ownership in general, in the interests of plurality and the interests of media workers and the public.

THE MURDER OF FREE SPEECH IN BAHRAIN

2011-07-06T15:37:00.000-07:00

There is nothing more moving than to encounter exiled journalists who have run for their lives, left their loved ones behind and re-emerged in a foreign country like a rabbit caught in headlights, at the mercy of a ruthless immigration bureaucracy. This is what is happening to half a dozen Bahraini journalists who have fled to the UK and who will remain nameless. I met them today in London to hear about the situation of colleagues they left behind and their struggle to survive and settle.

Until March 15^th all these journalists had solid jobs and a steady future. Following the uprising that ignited their country, scores of journalists, bloggers and photographers have been targeted by the country’s security forces. Two of them, publisher Kareem Fakhrawi and blogger Zakariya Al-Asheeri, died while in custody. Many others were arrested, some tortured and over 95 so far sacked from their jobs. Several photographers as well as two journalists remain in custody – Abbas al-Marshed and Abdulla Alaawi – charged with a weird accusation from the Punishment Laws that can indict citizens, including journalists, for “inciting the public to disdain government or disfavouring it”. The only case that made headlines worldwide was that of France 24 reporter Nazeeha Saeed who was brutally beaten and assaulted during her interrogation.

The journalists I met today were profoundly traumatised by their ordeal and, at the same time, concerned about their families left behind and anxious about their future. At the moment they are focussing on obtaining political asylum – not a mean feat in today’s Britain. They found themselves in a strange environment, dispersed throughout the country and having to fend for themselves. Thankfully the NUJ in the UK is helping them strengthen their legal cases, giving them advice and connecting them with journalists in the localities they now live in.

The reaction from the Bahraini authorities was to say that these claims are “pure fiction” and that nobody was being targeted. Our member union, the Bahraini Journalists’ Association, shamefully backed their government’s claim and even supported employers when they justified the sackings of journalists “because they did not show up for work for more than 10 consecutive days and they only followed the law of the land.” In their desperate attempts to deflect criticism, the authorities are even suing Robert Fisk of the London daily Independent, disputing his reports of events.

Despite protests by its member union in Bahrain, the IFJ has given full support to the journalists under the cosh. Its leadership went further and decided not to renew the arrangement with the Association to host the federation’s Ethical Initiative in the region. It also agreed to switch a major event to train trainers on safety from Bahrain to Rabat. All is not lost with the Association and we should continue our attempts to try and convince it to stand by all its journalists. However this work remains severely stymied by the double standard of Western governments who applaud the revolution in Egypt and Tunisia while turning a blind eye to the violent repression in Bahrain. Many press freedom foundations follow blindly their government’s line and their praise for the Arab Spring will sound more and more hollow if they don’t line up behind these brave Bahraini journalists.

BBC JOURNALISTS SUMMER OF DISCONTENT

2011-07-05T11:07:00.000-07:00

Reps from all over the BBC met today to ponder over the result of the ballot for action to stop cuts at the BBC. The vote showed that thousands of journalists at the BBC are prepared to strike to stop management making compulsory redundancies. The NUJ announced that 72% indicated in a secret ballot that they favour strike action and 87% action short of a strike.

The reps gave BBC management seven days to meet NUJ negotiators for talks to resolve the cases of compulsory redundancies and to re-instate one of their colleague who was dismissed in the BBC World Service. The reps dealt again with the issue of executive pay, raised a few days ago by BBC Trust Chair, and re-iterated their union policy that the differential should be no more than five times the median salary.

The strong vote, the result of months of frustration as the BBC management announced wave after wave of redundancies and cuts, threatens to re-ignite another confrontation throughout the summer and beyond.

UNION PUTS BBC FAT CATS UNDER THE SPOTLIGHT

2011-07-04T15:54:00.000-07:00

Today Michelle Stanistreet became the first woman General Secretary to start her first day in office for one of the IFJ’s largest unions, the National Union of Journalists in the UK and Ireland. Over the weekend, the National Executive Committee of the NUJ, of which I am a member, held various celebratory events to bid farewell to its old General Secretary, Jeremy Dear, who ran the show for ten momentous years.

Even before she started her first day in her new job, Stanistreet had to abandon her weekend plans and set the journalists’ case in response to the announcement made by the BBC Trust to cut the pay of some of its senior executives. The detailed revelations made by the chair of the trustees, Lord Patten, hinted that BBC managers would be targeted to show that the BBC is responding to the need to cut public spending. Executive pay has been a bone of contention for many years as unions fought wave after wave of cuts while managers shied away from pulling in their belt.

The pledge was made by Patten only days before the union announced the result of a ballot for national strike. Journalists and other BBC employees have been campaigning hard to defend the service against the ill-considered cuts to programme. BBC Director General Mark Thompson announced that he intends to go beyond the licence fee freeze and slash BBC budgets by 20%, about £400m, before April 2017. The NUJ is mobilising its members to resist the cuts, service closures and compulsory redundancies."

DRAGON SLAYING IN TUNISIA

2011-06-07T10:51:00.000-07:00

It was not until 4am that the name-by-name gruelling reading of each of the vote bulletins came to an end -- 454 voters had to chose nine among the 40 candidates. A worn out president staggered to the rostrum to read in a solemn voice the results of the election of a new board for the Tunisian union of journalists (SNJT). The poor man has been on his feet since 10 in the morning, but he had to compose himself to rise to the occasion. He had to, as every gesture in revolutionary Tunisia carries an enormous significance.

The congress lasted a day and a half with only a fraction dedicated to its main theme of “press freedom as essential guarantee to the transition to democracy”. It was the second congress of Tunisian journalists since they decided to ditch their old association three years ago and replaced it with a union. It also happen to take place only months after a mass uprising brought the country’s dictatorship down and was still brewing with revolutionary fervour.

Tunisian media which has been one of the main pillars used by the dictator’s clan to control the hearts and minds is in meltdown. Everything is up for grab – the state press and broadcasting media, its news agency, even the main private newspapers and magazines. Journalists were not only geared up to defend their livelihoods but also want to be at the forefront of the refounding of their media. In such circumstances, one would expect that the first gathering post-revolution of the journalists would attempt a high-level debate of a root-and-branch shake up of their profession. Unfortunately, the outgoing leadership did not present much, apart from a thin moral report accounting for three years of work and a financial report, both distributed as the congress opened. A hastily convened commission drafted a spur-of-the-moment set of recommendations that passed for a working programme and were passed on the nod.

The only thing that mattered was the election. In fact the only documents that were thrust in hands, stuck on walls and piled on tables were elections addresses and lists. Two main lists locked horns – the fourth estate and the professional lists. From the time the president opened debates, almost every speech was an election address. A few dealt with the atrocious conditions in some work places. Some were about cases of journalists who suffered at the hands of the dictatorship. Others were from young journalists who were the most vocal in describing their attempt to survive the harsh environment in their workplace but directed their bile against older journalists.

On the whole, the mood was not for a comradely or a savvy debate to discuss building the union or uniting behind clear campaigns. It suddenly swung into charged incriminations, calling for account those who cheered or worked for the regime and demanding their heads on a plate. For a moment congress turned mutinous with rabble-rousers taking to the podium to incite against named individual which were surrounded and, for a short moment, in danger of being tarred and feathered. In the end, they got away with a reprimand when congress agreed to set a black list of the “collaborators”.

In hindsight after 22 years of coercion, humiliation and oppression, it would have been unimaginable that Tunisian journalists would just turn the page and quietly get on with building their future. They needed to lance that boil they endured for so many years and make their own revolution. In the end, they roared slogans, sang revolutionary songs, reviving once again the heydays of the uprising then they calmed down, queued up very neatly and voted.

WELCOME TO FREE TUNISIA

2011-06-05T12:58:00.000-07:00

I arrived in Tunis yesterday to attend the 2^nd congress of the Tunisian Union of Journalists (Syndicat national des journalists tunisiens). It was already several months down the road from the dramatic escape by Ben Ali and his mob and the height of the revolutionary fervour of the masses which crammed daily Bourguiba avenue. But the sequels were still fresh – barbed wire and heavy guns surrounded supersensitive buildings and lots of graffiti everywhere, in Arabic, French, English, all slogans calling for revolution and the ousting of the former dictator.

“Welcome to free Tunisia,” was the first word I heard as I stepped out of the plane. And it was truly a different Tunisia than I ever seen before. I was not heavily questioned by suspicious airport police and I did not have to look over my shoulder just in case I was followed. I even discussed politics in the taxi without having to lower my voice.

As I tried to ask about what was happening so I could try to relive at least a little of what they experienced, the taxi driver had to stop talking many times, speechless not only from a deep sense of nostalgia, but also because they cannot anymore explain things in a few sound bites. Revolutionary euphoria has ebbed, the scruffy camps in the Kasbah, heart of government, have been dismantled and the protesters gone back to Tunisia’s heartlands, popular committees have started splitting like amoeba and running out of steam, over 100 political parties have sprung up crowding the political landscape and confusing the Tunisian masses who are still mourning their martyrs. The question is what next. Who will hold power? Is the counter-revolution now gathering steam? Later on the formal opening of the journalists congress may just give a glimpse of the state of the revolution. One thing is preserved -- the people’s graffiti and no one had the right to remove it, especially not in such haste. Decades of corruption and suffocating oppression can’t be erased as quickly as paint on walls can be covered up.

I’d like to say that I’ve been to post-revolutionary Tunisia, but I am not sure I’m there yet.

THE LONG ROAD TO END IMPUNITY

2011-06-04T04:18:00.000-07:00

On a day when another journalist, Syed Saleem Shahzed, was murdered in cold blood in Pakistan, a “coalition of the willing” met in London to look at impunity, in particular as to why international instruments are not working. On the same day, the Yemeni authorities have intensified their hunt of Yemeni journalists, in particular several lay officials of our member union who are now in hiding.

So it was perfect timing for this initiative, grouping a good chunk of the press freedom industry – NGOs ranging from Article 19 to CPJ -- European and international institutions such as the Human Rights Council, OSCE, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, etc. The main player was however which sent it its Assistant Director General of Communications and Information Janis Karklins. During the one-day conference many of these organisations talked at great length about the killings of journalists. I was the only one representing journalists and I was not even scheduled among the key speakers.

There is no doubt that the Centre for Freedom of the Media from Sheffield and City University universities, that are behind the Initiative on Impunity and the Rule of Law, are genuinely concerned about the killings of journalists and the shortcomings of the working of international instruments. The aim to present the case for more effective international mechanisms to end impunity is indeed laudable. The research was excellent.

Unfortunately, apart from some new thoughts on developing existing systems of mandatory sanctions and expanding the mandate of special rapporteurs, hardly any contributor dealt with the real reasons as to why are the current instruments are not working.

UNESCO believes there may be a need for a new convention and is organising an inter-agency dialogue next Autumn. However its representatives did not explain why UN Security Council 1738 is left to gather dust and the UN did not have the guts to implement it? Why did their Director General only allocated no more that a puny paragraph to this issue in his 60 page annual report?

According to many, it was just “inertia” at work. But Susan Hyland speaking on behalf of the UK Foreign Office did not explain why her government is supporting the Bahraini government when the same government is killing its people and hunting down its journalists. She did not explain why her government never had the guts to call the US military to account for the death of ITV reporter Terry Lloyd who was declared by an inquest to be murdered by US soldiers in Iraq.

Having stronger instruments is welcome and the IFJ will cooperate to pursue relentlessly to end impunity. But until the issue of the hypocrisy and double standards shown by governments is fully exposed and dealt with, journalists will continue to be killed and their murderers allowed getting way with it.

OPEN SEASON ON JOURNALISTS

2011-05-26T01:51:00.000-07:00

Last Monday will go down as one of the most perilous days for journalists as more countries started vying for the noxious title of the most dangerous country in the world for journalists.

In Yemen, after months of stand off between its president and opposition forces, one of the main tribal army start attacking government buildings bringing the country close to civil war. The armed group also decided to attack the offices of SABA news agency where 50 journalists were trapped for more than 12 hours, using machine guns and artillery. It was a miracle that none of them died but two journalists, Farouk Al Kamali and Ahmad Mutawakkil were injured.

At around the same time, AK-47 armed gunmen raided the office of our member union in Mogadishu in Somalia and occupied their office. They disarmed the security guard, took documents and computers and warned officials of the union that they will be killed if they continued working for the union.

Several thousands miles south in Kampala, Ugandan police armed to the teeth stormed the offices of Gwanga newspapers in a military-style operation and arrested managing director Kizito Sserumaga, news editor Alex Lubwama, and administrative staff. The reason given is that they were looking for documents linked to the recent disturbances.  Police Commander, Siraje Bakaleke, later said that they had found anonymous letters and copies of publications “urging people to overthrow the government”. 

The gloves are off. It now looks more like open warfare on journalists has been declared.

INTERNS HAVE RIGHTS TOO

2011-05-15T01:31:00.000-07:00

In a major legal test case, the NUJ in the UK and Ireland has established the right of interns to be paid for any work carried. The union took a media company, TPG Web Publishing Ltd, to court on behalf of its member Keri Hudson.

Keri worked a full day and was put in charge of a team of writers at the My Village website and asked to do training as well as scheduling articles and even hiring staff. Her employers insisted she was not eligible for any pay as she was an intern.

The NUJ supported her as part of its campaign to end the exploitation of new entrants into journalism. Although work experience placements can be useful for students of journalism, many unscrupulous employers have been extending short placements into unpaid or poorly-paid work, long after students qualify.

This practice has always been recognised as unlawful but the new ruling by the employment tribunal is sending a clear warning to employers to stop doing it. The tribunal established that interns are workers in law and are entitled to at least the national minimum wage and holiday pay.

"It is unacceptable that full time staff are being sacked while unpaid interns are being exploited. This is the first case of its kind – if employers continue to break the law it will not be the last" said NUJ General Secretary Jeremy Dear.

The NUJ has issued work experience guidance which can be found at http://www.nuj.org.uk/files/NUJWorkExperienceGuidelines.pdf

OUR MOROCCAN UNION HOSTS COURSE ON TRAINING SAFETY TRAINERS

2011-05-13T11:26:00.000-07:00

Not long after our Arab region conference in Casablanca, I was called upon once again to travel to Morocco where journalists are increasingly put under pressure. Things looked bright with the publication of a White Book on media law reforms and our member union, the SNPM, seemed confident having pushed many important issues, such as access to information, self-regulation and a root-and-branch shake up of the press code, a few notches up on the agenda of politicians. Almost unexpectedly, the publisher of the biggest circulation daily Al Massae was arrested on 28^th April. He has since been under intense questioning about a series of daily columns he has written concerning the security services, cases of corruption and comments on entrenched powers. The charges which included at the beginning “insult to officials” and “fabricating evidence” have now been beefed up by the prosecuting magistrate. An impressive coalition of organisations, including our member union, have been set up to lobby for his release. The detention of Niny raises doubt about the will of the Moroccan government to implement its promises of political reforms it announced recently to placate the massive wave of protest.

During my visit I also launched a very important training session on safety of journalists organised by the IFJ. A dozen representatives from our various member unions in the Arab world will gather in Rabat for several weeks to learn about all aspects of safety training in our first attempt ever to set up a group of trainers in the region. At a time where journalists everywhere in the Arab world are under pressure, the IFJ has set out to give priority to a tailor-made package addressing the specific requirements engendered by the current civil disorders in the region. Training of trainers is a tough programme including basic first-aid training as well as intense classrooms and scenarios on safety work. Every union in the region has nominated one of its members to be trained as safety trainer so he/she can qualify in providing immediate support and assistance to fellow journalists, news organisations and other media workers in their respective countries and the region.

UNESCO ON THE SPOTLIGHT AGAIN

2011-05-07T13:28:00.000-07:00

A few days ago I sent a comment piece to the London Guardian for publication. They did not run it. Perhaps it was not good enough. Or perhaps I pushed my luck in being too unduly cynical about World Press Freedom Day event run by UNESCO in Washington featuring a star-studded line up. I lamented the trite sound bites that make no difference to the plight of journalists who, these days, cannot rely on international institutions to defend their rights when they disappear or are jailed or murdered.

I said that UNESCO has, for decades, proclaimed itself as the prime body within the United Nations dedicated to defending press freedom and the freedom of expression. Yet its cosy relationship with various government left many journalists wondering whether UNESCO has got its priorities right. In 2009, UNESCO chose to hold its World Press Freedom Day in Qatar, a country that deny journalists the right to form their own association or union, control their freedom of movement and force foreign journalists working there to hand over their passports to editors and seek an official exit permit to leave the country. In protest, the International Federation of Journalists advised its affiliates worldwide to boycott the event. UNESCO remained silent.

The following year, human rights organisations launched a global campaign to force the same UNESCO to drop plans to award a prize to one of the world’s leading abusers of press freedom, President Teodoro Obiang of Equatorial Guinea. A couple of years before, UNESCO had accepted a multi-million dollar donation from the dictator to subsidise an award in life science. This was perceived as a pay back move that would have boosted the standing of the notorious despot, who ruled the West African nation with an iron fist and never held back from oppressing journalists, subjecting them to frequent harassment, imprisonment and censorship. In the end, the coalition of human rights organisations won the day as they forced UNESCO's executive board to drop their plans. But why did they agree to them in the first place?

The record of the UN itself is not without blemish. Years of campaign by the International Federation of Journalists finally forced its Security Council to adopt resolution 1738 in December 2008, putting the onus on governments to protect journalists. This was hailed as a landmark in the global fight against impunity in the murders of journalists. Sadly, despite the odd gushing statement by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, the resolution has been left gathering dust and many governments remain able to avoid opprobrium when, under their watch, journalists are targeted and killed by the enemies of press freedom. In some instances the Secretary-General squandered the opportunity to speak out, such as when, under pressure from the Chinese Government, he refrained from congratulating Nobel Peace Prize winner journalist Liu Xiaobo.

The regional groups are spineless too. Journalists under fire in Asia, the Middle East and Africa expect little support, if any, from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, the Arab League, or the African Union, whose headquarters are located in Ethiopia, a known abuser of press freedom, and its human rights body based in the Gambia, a known jailer of journalists.

I was not off the mark. I received on World Press Freedom Day last Tuesday a note from one of the participants at the session in Washington briefing me about the final declaration adopted by the meeting. The statement which, apparently was defended at great length by Janis Karklin, Assistant General-Director of Communications and Information for UNESCO, included a paragraph with clearly attempted to restrict the freedom of expression on the Internet, using the well-rehearsed argument of fighting child pornography. My source told me that the text seems to have shamelessly breached article 19 of the Human Rights Declaration. Is it yet another faux-pas by UNESCO? I am itching to lay my hand on the passed text to see what new turn UNESCO has taken. The jury is out.

FLASHMOB PHOTOGRAPHERS HIGHLIGHT CRISIS OF PRESS FREEDOM ON WPFD

2011-05-04T03:57:00.000-07:00

I was due to be in Istanbul today to visit journalists in prison. Unfortunately the ministry of justice refused us permission. I had to abort my visit, which gave me the opportunity to dedicate much of my time to help the IFJ secretariat coordinate our World Press Freedom Day. This year, we could well succeed in achieving the widest mobilisation of our unions worldwide.

In Latin America leaders of our affiliates converged on Santiago in Chile in a union fest lasting three days and including seminars, lobby of government and culminating in an international conference on media and democracy. Our African colleagues organised a continent-wide protest to highlight journalists in jail in Eritrea where some 30 journalists have been detained incommunicado for up to 10 years. Leaders of our African federation attended a session of the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights to press the adoption of a resolution on the safety of journalists. In the Asia-Pacific region, the IFJ released in Delhi their ninth annual South Asia Press Freedom report while in Manila our union in the Philippines marked the day remembering journalists killed in the 2009 Ampatuan Town massacre. Other events, fund-raising, forums and demonstrations were held in Sydney, Kula Lumpur and Colombo. Our Arab unions marked the day on the theme “Solidarity with journalists on the frontline of the Arab spring” with rallies, seminars, and pickets in many capitals putting them at the forefront of the fight for change in the Arab world. In Europe, unions in the Netherlands, Italy and Belgium carried out several activities on the day but it is in London that the Flashmob event carried out by NUJ photographers made the biggest impact.

Our union in Britain in tandem with “I’m a Photographer, Not a Terrorist!” campaign has been confronting the creeping bans on pictures taken in some of the popular public spaces. The IFJ has been supporting the campaign by the NUJ to change anti-terrorism legislation in particular the notorious section 44, which has been found by the European Court of Human Rights to breach Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The section was suspended pending a review of counter-terrorism powers, including the use of terrorism legislation in relation to photography, but police however continues to abuse its powers by using the counter-terrorism measures as a general stop-and-search provision.

Flashmob outside City Hall has been the best activity on press freedom day that put a spotlight on the laws and policies used by authorities to undermine journalists’ rights and civil liberties. Photographers took pictures in a place where the police service still act as if they legal powers or moral responsibility to prevent or restrict photographer's work.

SAUDIS TURN THE SCREWS ON JOURNALISTS

2011-05-02T13:30:00.000-07:00

Let’s face it: with the Arab Spring now entering its sixth month, the forces of darkness led by Saudi Arabia and its satellite sheikhdoms are working around the clock to cool it down.

At the IFJ Arab affiliates conference two weeks ago in Casablanca, the 10 unions represented adopted a well-advanced urgent programme dealing with the safety of journalists, their role in the public debates on democratisation and reform of media laws, censorship, freedom of information, protection of sources, public interest, self-regulation, ethical media, and the transformation of state radio and TV into public service broadcasting. The participants also pledged to launch on World Press Freedom Day a regional campaign entitled ‘‘In Solidarity with Journalists on the Frontline of the Arab Spring.”

Only days before press freedom day, Saudi Arabia brazenly issued a series of royal decrees amending their Press & Publications Law to criminalise almost anything, not only in Saudi newspapers, but also in online media, including those written by Saudis from outside the country. “All those responsible for publication are banned from publishing ... anything contradicting Islamic Sharia Law; anything inciting disruption of state security or public order or anything serving foreign interests that contradict national interests," said the new laws.

In a blatant kickback to the country’s clerics who issued a religious edict proclaiming demonstration against Islamic law, the royal order outlawed the "infringement of the reputation or dignity, the slander or the personal offence of the Grand Mufti or any of the country's senior clerics or statesmen". Punishments for breaking these laws include a fine of half a million riyals ($133,000), the shutting down of the publication and banning the writer from contributing to any media.

One would think that the free world would be up in arms in denouncing such a regression. By their silence over Saudis’ appalling new media laws, the European Union and the Obama administration have made a splendid art of double standards.

ENORMOUS CHALLENGES ACROSS AFRICA

2011-04-02T02:16:00.000-07:00

Visiting the IFJ member union in Nigeria, the Nigerian Union of Journalists, is always an electrifying event. This time the union hosted a meeting of the leadership of the Federation of African Journalists, their Steering Committee, last weekend in Abuja in the midst of an electoral frenzy.

With only two weeks to go before the presidential election involving sixty-three registered political parties, the federal capital was caught in a gigantic maelstrom of giant street rallies, wall-to-wall media coverage interspersed with scores of radio jingles and swarms of supporters bussed in for the occasion. Even the inevitable courtesy visit to the FAJ meeting by the Federal Minister of Information and Communication, Labaran Maku, had all the hallmarks of a political rally as the minister abandoned his morning electioneering and addressed the African journalists fully clad in his party’s colourful garb.

In the end the Steering Committee battened down the hatches and got on with the business of African journalists. As well as statutory matters, members of the Committee dealt with thorny issues arising from the many revolutions exploding in North Africa, in particular the demands by journalists’ unions of radical reforms of policies and laws concerning press freedom, labour rights, people’s right to know and human rights. They also sought ways of encouraging the member union in Côte d’Ivoire, the Union nationale des journalistes de Côte d'Ivoire (UNJCI), to remain united, maintain professional trade union solidarity and continue defending the rights and interests of Ivorian journalists despite the civil war. The situation of journalists held in-communicado for many years in Eritrea was one of the most important issues for discussion and the committee agreed to boost the campaign for their release. New steps were taken to help release Burundian journalist, Jean Claude Kavumbagu, editor of Netpress online publication, charged with high treason and increase support for Cameroonian journalists.

The Steering Committee also heard reports of union congresses in Somalia and Sierra Leone where NUSOJ and SLAJ renewed their leaderships and sent congratulatory messages to the new office bearers. Bigger congratulations should go to the NUJ and its leaders for achieving another remarkable feat in bringing together African journalists leaders during such challenging times.

SOLIDARITY WITH CROATIAN JOURNALISTS

2011-03-30T03:36:00.000-07:00

Picture Nenad Rebersak

Scores of Journalists at the Vecernji list in Croatia are on strike since 23^rd March. They came out after months of frustrating attempts at negotiating the renewal of their collective agreement.

In a remarkable show of solidarity hundreds of journalists rallied in support of their colleagues and marched onto the Vecernji newspaper headquarters, led by the Trade Union of Croatian Journalists and the Croatian Journalists’ Association – the first protest rally of journalists in the country. Hundred others held solidarity strikes throughout Croatia.

The stakes are high and concern all journalists since the collective agreement for the journalists and employees of Vecernji list was the first collective agreement for journalist signed in the Republic of Croatia. Attempts at conciliation did not come to anything but, worse still, management went on the offensive in a bid to attack current working conditions by cancelling a 0.5 % wage increase per year of service, the Christmas bonus, a procedure for wage adjustment to inflation rate, etc.

Striking journalists rightly feel that the refusal of management to sign a new agreement is a major step back, something the Austria-based Styria company, which owns the newspaper, would not dare impose at the other newspapers it owns in Austria.

Since Styria bought the Vecernji list in 2001, it has siphoned huge profits by breaking the company into 17 outlets and selling its property, but still uses the difficult economic climate to justify its attempt at reducing the labour rights of its employees in Croatia.

Journalists at the Vecernji list and their union are determined to defend their collective agreement -- the first signed in a media company in Croatia. They are supported by both the IFJ and EFJ which called all their affiliates worldwide to show solidarity by protesting to Klaus Schweighofer of the Styria management at klaus.schweighofer@styria.com.

FORMER UKRAINE’S PRESIDENT CHARGED WITH JOURNALIST’S MURDER

2011-03-28T12:05:00.000-07:00

After ten years of a formidable campaign by the IFJ and its unions, it looks as there may be light at the end of the tunnel in the case of murdered journalist Georgy Gongadze, publisher of the Internet journal Ukrainska Pravda. He was kidnapped on 16 September 2000, and his body found later beheaded. The journalist had been investigating corruption at senior levels of the Ukrainian government led by President Leonid Kuchma. Now the ex-President, which campaigners always alleged was behind the killing, is finally charged by the prosecutor general.

It was the NUJ UK which first raised the issue within the IFJ and worked doggedly to convince journalists unions to back the campaign. Every year on 16^th September, the anniversary of Georgy’s death, the NUJ would lead a delegation to the Ukrainian embassy in London to protest the killing and send messages to the Ukrainian government to pursue their investigation into those who ordered the killing, and to ensure they are brought to justice.

Despite support from the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, the enquiry dragged on, riddled with errors, and came to epitomise impunity as authorities obstructed it in their bid to conceal the real identity of the masterminds behind the murder.

Over the years, the IFJ supported several reports produced to put pressure on the investigators to pursue the case more vigorously, including examination of the so-called "Melnichenko tapes", on which former president Kuchma was heard talking to senior politicians about harming Georgy. I travelled to Kiev in September 2007 to launch the third report on the investigation, entitled “Official Obstruction is Rewarded”, which provided detailed evidence that, despite prima facie evidence, the Ukrainian government continued to frustrate and sabotage investigations of the murder.

Two years ago, the investigation took a major step forward by establishing that Georgy was killed by a group of serving interior ministry officers, and pointed to a former chief of the interior ministry's surveillance department Olexiy Pukach who admitted to killing the journalist. However those who ordered the murder remains unidentified despite promises made by political leaders following the Orange Revolution.

Last week's charging of Kuchma is another giant step vindicating the doggedness of IFJ unions and may bring to a close the ten-year fight to get justice for Georgy.

BRITISH PHOTOGRAPHERS SET UP SOLIDARITY AWARD

2011-03-24T06:50:00.000-07:00

While the people’s revolution in Egypt slipped from the headlines and the media circus moved on, people who lost their loved ones were left to pick up the pieces. But they are not left on their own. Solidarity from journalists to journalists is at its best when IFJ members and affiliates come together to care for families that killed journalists leave behind. Press photographer Ahmed Mohammed Mahmoud was killed by a police sniper during the events in Tahrir Square. The last picture he took was of his killer, moments before he was shot in the face.

Journalists, members of the NUJ’s London Photographers’ Branch, raised money at an event in a London cinema where British photographers showed their pictures and videos featuring the first 18 days of the Egyptian revolution. The money raised will be used to set up a photography award in memory of Ahmed which will be held every year on 25^th January.

Picture Jess Hurd

LPB Branch Secretary Jason Parkinson (left) hands over to Ahmed’s wife Anas and his daughter in the presence of Abeer Saady (right) from the Egyptian journalists’ syndicate.

A VICTORY FOR DEMOCRACY

2011-03-04T07:01:00.000-08:00

Quite often one feels overwhelmed by the doom and gloom and we don’t take time to celebrate our success stories. Last week our union member in Nigeria, the Nigerian Union of Journalists, achieved a remarkable milestone. Their House of Representatives passed the Freedom of Information Bill after a long campaign involving the NUJ and other press freedom advocates, lasting eleven years since it was first introduced to the National Assembly,

As well as breaking an all-time record of the longest gestation period the bill, which contains 34 clauses, may have also broken the record of the longest title “An Act to make public records and information more freely available, provide for public access to public access to public records and information, protect public records and information to the extent consistent with the public interest and the protection of personal privacy, protect serving public officers from adverse consequences for disclosing certain kinds of official information without authorisation and establish procedures for the achievement of those purposes and related purposes thereof."

Although the bill is still to be endorsed by the Senate, this is deemed to be a mere formality as Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan promised to sign the bill into law immediately it comes before him.

It took one long slog but the NUJ has achieved what many of our unions are still dreaming of, a tool to open the door for openness and transparency, accountability in our public life, and responsibility in governance.

More needs to be done to bring other laws to be fully consistent with the FOI Act. The NUJ is now focusing on amending or repealing all existing laws such as the Secrecy Act, the Federal Commissions (Privileges and Immunities) Act, the Public Complaints Commission Act, the Evidence Act and the Criminal Code, which contain clauses forbidding the disclosure of official information by public officials.

Well done NUJ.

“ARIANNA, CAN YOU SPARE A DIME?”

2011-03-01T06:21:00.000-08:00

Several IFJ member unions have over the years launched campaigns to bring exploitative employers to book. They tend to focus on the failure by media companies to pay interns. One of these campaigns, the "Cashback For Interns", waged by the NUJ in the UK and Ireland brings together other trade unions, and supports interns in claiming at least the minimum wage. Of the 25 editorial intern vacancies advertised in one jobsite, the union found that only three stated the positions were paid. Ten noted the positions were unpaid but included travel expenses, and the remainder did not clarify either way.

The scandal of exploitation recently came to a head in the US, following the sale of the Huffington Post to AOL for a whopping $315m. The Newspaper Guild, an IFJ affiliate, launched its own campaign to shame the former owner, Arianna Huffington, to invest some of her huge AOL deal profits in paid journalism and share some of this fortune with the journalists who made her success. Arianna has for many years used her credential as a left-leaning media tycoon to build a business model based on the free labour of thousands of bloggers.

Now several commentators are leading the backlash describing her as having misled and exploited people – “a galley rowed by slaves and commanded by pirates," wrote Los Angeles Times columnist Tim Rutten; “At media companies, a nation of serfs" blasted David Carr, the New York Times media critic.

Her former writers, some in the freelancers’ unit of the California Media Workers Guild, joined the fray setting a Facebook page "Hey Arianna, can you spare a dime?", campaigning for Huffington to pay them back some of the mountain of cash they made for her. Huffington built her business from webstart to multimillion success story in less than six years. But like many of the new captains of the information age industry, she used many of the weapons of old age capitalism to achieve huge profits at the expense of her largely unpaid and exploited workers.

Our unions everywhere should follow on the steps of the NUJ in the UK and the TNG in the US and campaign against these slave labour practices.

AFRICAN DICTATORS UNLEASH THEIR THUGS ON JOURNALISTS

2011-02-26T07:57:00.000-08:00

The current crisis in Libya seems to have overshadowed the Bahrain crackdown. And while the gaze of world public opinion is keeping watch on events in northern Africa, dictators in sub-Saharan Africa – and there are many still left – are ruthlessly nipping in the bud any protest, and focussing in particular on journalists. In Cameroon, President Paul Biya, who has been in power for 28 years, sent his thugs in uniform to crush protesters asking for free and fair elections in Douala and the country’s capital Yaounde. They also systematically assaulted journalists. Among them were Assongmo Necdem, reporter for the daily Le Jour, Warren Nzedou cameraman for Equinoxe TV, Jules Domche journalist at Vox Africa, Polycarpe Essomba RFI correspondent. Alain Tchakounte reporting for Cameroon Tribune, freelance journalists Aron Agien Nyangkwe and AFP correspondent Reinier Kaze.

In Zimbabwe, Robert Muagabe celebrated his 87 birthday last week with a lavish party but this was not enough to make him scale down his clampdown on journalists, media workers and even newspapers vendors. The spate of arrests last winter of journalists included our affiliate ZUJ’s president Dumisani Sibanda, Nqobani Ndlovu from The Standard newspaper, Nevanji Madanhire, editor of The Standard, and freelance journalists Andrison Manyere and Nkosana Dhlamini. Despite the signing of the Global Political Agreement, the authorities are still determined to gag and intimidate journalists through harassment, physical attacks, arbitrary arrests, illegal detention and heavy-handed interrogation by the Central Intelligence Organization. Our affiliate, the Zimbabwe Union of Journalists, is at the forefront of the calls for government to declare zero tolerance against attacks of journalists and media workers conducting their work professionally and ethically during upcoming referendum and elections.

The election of Uganda’s president Yoweri Museveni to another term in office, extending his 25 years in power, was another nightmare for journalists. Six journalists were reported to be brutally assaulted by men alleged to be supporters of the ruling National Resistance Movement, while covering local and mayoral elections held a few days after the presidential ones. Lydia Nabazziwa and Florence Nabukeera of Bukedde FM, Brian Nsimbe and cameraman Nixon Bbaale of Channel 44TV, Jane Anyango reporting for Uganda Broadcasting Corporation TV and Christine Namatumbwe of Metro FM were among the journalists attacked.

2011 is an important year for Africa. Elections are scheduled in more than 20 countries across the continent, including Zimbabwe and Nigeria. African journalists will undoubtedly continue to play more and more of a central role in the process of democratisation in their countries. This is why they’ll continue to run the gauntlet of the dictators.

We should be prepared to defend every one of them.

BELARUSSIAN JOURNALISTS NEED OUR HELP

2011-02-20T04:14:00.000-08:00

Belarus is said to be Europe’s last dictatorship. This week, trials of the prisoners held since a crackdown on a post-election rally will open -- over 600 people were arrested on 19 December in Independence Square in Minsk. Belarus and foreign journalists were attacked by Special Forces, beaten up, wrestled to the ground and made to lie in the snow, and had their equipment destroyed.

From then on it was open season on journalists. According to the IFJ member union, the Belarussian Association of Journalists, at least 27 journalists were detained, more than 20 reporters suffered from violence at the hands of the police, and 10 journalists served terms of administrative arrests of 10 to 15 days.

Currently six members of BAJ are in detention accused of organising mass disturbances and participating in them. They are Natallia Radzina, editor of the Charter'97 website; Iryna Khalip, a staff correspondent of Novaya Gazeta, Russia; freelance journalist Aliaksandr Fiaduta; Sergey Vozniak, Editor of Tovarishch newspaper; broadcaster Dzmitry Bandarenka; and writer Pavel Seviarynets. They have been charged with violating Article 292 of the Criminal Code (Mass Disturbances) and can be jailed up to 15 years.

The IFJ has joined the Belarusian Association of Journalists in demanding the immediate release of its members who are kept behind bars. Last Saturday, the Belarus Committee, a recently launched London-based held a demonstration outside the Belarusian in London and handed in a letter of protest. I will be joining them in their future activities. We must do everything we can to get these colleagues out of jail.

PARAMILITARY GANG THREATENS COLOMBIAN JOURNALISTS

2011-02-18T06:57:00.000-08:00

The attacks on journalists by Mubarak paid thugs shocked the world. Imagine a more powerful groups of thugs, better trained and equipped, and feeling confident enough to issue publicly death sentences on journalists. These are the infamous Colombian extreme right-wing paramilitary group "Central Command of the Black Eagles" who sent out threats to named Colombian journalists and also to human rights organisations.

The chilling e-mails declared journalists Hollman Morris, Daniel Coronell, Marcos Perales Mendoza, Claudia Julieta Duque (NUJ Honorary Member) and Eduardo Márquez, president of the IFJ affiliate, the Colombian Federation of Journalists FECOLPER, military targets. “The time has come to exterminate and eliminate all the people and organisations that try to pass as human rights defenders and even try to infiltrate international NGOs, journalists (...). We will find you at your offices, at the houses you live in (...). We are watching you and right now consider yourself dead" they wrote.

We are taking these threats extremely seriously and many of our unions are visiting Colombian embassies in their countries to remind them of the responsibility of the Colombian government to protect these journalists. I urge all our member unions to consider sending a delegation or at least to write to Colombian ambassadors expressing concerns about the death threats and asking for assurances that the Colombian government will take action to protect journalists and deal with the paramilitaries.

Links between these armed thugs and authorities are well documented. It is incredibly revealing that the recent threats include the same messages used publicly before by former president Uribe such as "human rights traffickers" which he once called journalists at press conferences or that journalists try to "pass as human rights defenders" and demanding they "take off masks". Among the targeted journalists, Daniel Coronell has been exposing the illegal surveillance and persecution by the Colombian secret police (DAS) of journalists, magistrates, members of the opposition and human rights defenders.

Since 1997 over 150 journalists have been murdered in Colombia (seven during 2010). See the full list at http://americalatina.ifj.org/es/articles/informe-sobre-agresiones-a-periodistas-en-colombia-durante-2010. The list also documents 189 aggressions, including a sexual assault and four attacks against media, making Colombia one of the most dangerous places in the world for journalists.

Please do something to help.

JOURNALISTS CONTINUE TO BE ATTACKED IN THE MIDDLE EAST

2011-02-17T04:49:00.000-08:00

The horrendous assaults on scores of journalists at the peak of the Egyptian uprising raised serious questions about their safety when they cover such upheavals – and they are many more in the pipeline.

The IFJ responded to the events in Cairo by issuing a detailed safety advisory on how to prepare, what to do at the scene and when the situation turns ugly, what to carry, and what to do when attacked with tear gas, when arrested and when confronting road blocks. Several hotlines were set up to give further advice and deal with personal cases. But is this enough?

For many years, the IFJ worked with the International News Safety Institute to provide training for journalists in conflict zones. Much of this training is tailored for war and armed conflict. What happened in Egypt goes beyond journalists having to prepare themselves for demonstrations. The deliberate targeting of journalists by the security forces, police, army and pro-government paid thugs raises new questions about the safety of journalists covering these upheavals. Foreign correspondents are the high profile casualties, but most victims remain local.

With more demonstrations taking place in Libya, Bahrain, Yemen, Morocco and Iran, journalists will be again in danger as it has become clear that governments in these countries will not hesitate to use violence to stop coverage of these upheavals.

Last night ABC news journalists Miguel Marquez was set upon by Bahraini security forces near Pearl Square and beaten with clubs.

The serious sexual assault against CBS correspondent Lara Logan brings up another dimension – the risk of sexual violence and harassment against journalists. The attack against Logan took place in Cairo’s Tahrir Square while she was surrounded by frenzied anti-Mubarak protesters celebrating his exit. She was saved by a group of women and soldiers.

The IFJ has on many occasions discussed safety issues concerning women covering conflict and worked with INSI to determine specific safety considerations, procedure and equipment, for women journalists. A global survey Women Reporting War was organised and its finding discussed by IFJ affiliates. The IFJ also worked hard to raise awareness on this issue in regions such as the Democratic Republic of Congo where attacks against women, involving systematic rape, are rife. Last September we organised at a pan-African conference on safety and protection of African journalists held at the African Union in Addis Ababa a special workshop on the challenges of women reporting wars. The attack on Logan must remind us that, while advising journalists about how to keep safe when reporting these demonstrations, we must set out gender-specific training for women journalists.

UNIONS RESIST MASSIVE JOB CUTS

2011-01-27T02:26:00.000-08:00

IFJ affiliates in the UK and Spain are mobilising their members to start the fight to save jobs at the BBC World Service and the Spanish group PRISA. Unions in both countries are bearing the brunt of the massive crisis that is hitting the economy.

In Britain, the BBC announced that 650 jobs will go, including 480 posts over the next 12 months. Among them 68 jobs will be lost at the World Service’s English-language service where five foreign language services – Serbia, Macedonia, Albania, the Caribbean and Portuguese services for Africa – will be axed and some shortwave broadcasts reduced. Overseas posts will also be cut. The BBC World Service employs more than 2,000 people in 45 countries.

These cuts are the direct result of theBritish government’s decision at the last comprehensive spending review unveiled last October, to reduce its subsidy by 16%. It is estimated that this will lead to the loss of 30 million listeners worldwide.

In Spain the PRISA group, publisher of El Pais, announced restructuring plans that will lead to an 18% scaling back of its workforce and the potential loss of 2500 jobs. Last year the group has already shut down its 24-hour news channel CNN+.

The NUJ kicked off its campaign of opposition to the cuts by mounting a rally yesterday outside Bush House in London, the HQ of the World Service. I will be joining the NUJ in writing to the chairs of the House of CommonsForeign Affairs Committee and of the Culture Media and Sport Committee, asking them to review the cuts at the BBC. Earlier announcements of job cuts hit the BBC online and the monitoring services

JOURNALISTS' STRIKE DISRUPTS BBC ARABIC SERVICE

2011-01-19T03:58:00.000-08:00

I attended yesterday the picket line set outside Broadcasting House in London by NUJ members working at the BBC Arabic service. The majority of the 170 NUJ members are out on a 48-hour strike, to dispute new work rotas being imposed. This may be one of many actions that will be taken by journalists to resist the new wave of cuts planned by the BBC.

Last week, BBC boss, Mark Thompson, announced he will be seeking cuts of 20% over four years, more than the required 16% resulting from the new funding deal agreed with the government which will see the corporation's income cut by16% in real terms by 2017. NUJ members across the BBC are bracing themselves for hundreds of job cuts.

Already 72 job losses were announced at BBC Monitoring, the division responsible for supplying information on the output of TV, press and internet outlets around the world. More will follow at the World Service which will see its newsgathering teams merge with the BBC's domestic news operation.

The strike has been solid and achieved a near-black out of TV and radio programmes. Throughout the day, output has been seriously disrupted and live programmes replaced with pre-records.

ITALIAN JOURNALISTS RAISE TO THE CHALLENGE

2011-01-16T06:41:00.000-08:00

“Il Giornalismo e le Sfide del Cambiamento” (Journalism and the Challenge of Change) was the title of the 26^th congress of the IFJ affiliate in Italy, the Federazione Nazionale della Stampa Italiana, which gathered last week in Bergamo. It brought together 312 delegates representing the 20 regional associations that make the FNSI. Speaking there on behalf of the IFJ, I was thrilled by the striking passion of delegates and the depth of debates.

And they have every reason to feel upbeat – last year the FNSI called a `demonstration to protest the increasing attacks by Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi against newspapers. It attracted 250,000 demonstrators, a rare feat that our unions elsewhere could never dream of achieving. The FNSI also took their fight to the European Parliament and forced a debate on pluralism which, in effect, was an unmistakable condemnation of Berlusconi. This was lost by the thinnest of margin. Last July the FNSI organised a highly successful Day of Silence where journalists across Italy refused to work in a massive protest against the Berlusconi ‘Wiretapping Bill'.

While congress delegates considered in details the massive changes that are impacting on their media, I did not observe any handwringing or panic. On the contrary, they debated and agreed a sober programme of work to defend and strengthen journalism and journalists. The curtain raiser was a major debate, widely reported in their national media, which attracted some of the biggest players in Italian media, including Carlo De Benedetti, president of the Espresso group and Piergaetano Marchetti, president of the RCS MediaGroup -- another major achievement.

Throughout their congress, delegates displayed a remarkable measure of unity and confidence in their leadership. In the elections, their General Secretary Franco Siddi was re-elected with a whopping majority (221 votes in favour, 4 votes to other candidates, 42 abstentions and 32 invalid votes). The newly National Council (FNSI board) met immediately at the end of congress and re-elected by 98-2 (with 5 abstentions) Roberto Natale as their next president.

HELP SAVE THE NACIÓN

2011-01-09T00:54:00.000-08:00

We started the new year this week with our first global trade union campaign to help colleagues at the National Federation of Media Workers (FENATRAMCO) in Chile to save the main daily newspaper La Nación. Journalists there have been waging for several weeks a tough campaign to deflect plans to close down the paper version of their newspaper, which they believe will lead to its death and the loss of 600 jobs.

FENATRAMCO say that a vicious management have instituted a rule of fear, firing workers in batches, with no attempt at consultation nor a negotiated settlement for the future of the newspaper.

La Nación is publicly owned and belongs to the Chilean nation. For 90 years it has done a first-class public service and gained a special place in the heart of Chilean citizens. I have written to President Sebastian Piñera – the government being a majority shareholder – in support of the rescue plan made by the union: that any financial model for the future of La Nación is drafted by media professionals themselves, that the newspaper is given an autonomy status such as at the national TV and for a transparent and democratic appointment procedure for its director, and above all that the dismissals of workers be stopped forthwith.

I urged all IFJ affiliates globally to join the campaign and support their colleagues. They too should write to the president on behalf of their union and distribute the electronic postcard, and urge their members to use it. President Piñera is only a click away. All the details are on the IFJ website.

IT’S STILL OPEN SEASON ON JOURNALISTS

2011-01-01T06:46:00.000-08:00

In the last couple of days, many international news medias gave preference to the figures about journalists killed during 2010 released by Reporters Sans Frontières. According to RSF, 57 journalists died which prompted sighs of relief all around and misguided headlines such as “Fewer journalists killed in 2010”. The IFJ released the figure of 97 killed journalists – almost double the RSF figure – a number verified and agreed by the International News Safety Institute, the global safety organisation. Although it is true that fewer journalists died than last year, down from 139, it still remains open season for killing journalists, fuelled by a rampant culture of impunity.

However, the higher IFJ figure did not fit into the story and was not much used by editors. But seeing it just as an issue of conflicting numbers, plucking the smaller number to justify a feel-good story, ends up masking crucial issues. Neither RSF nor the stories they inspire confront the real issues as to why journalists continue to be targeted. It is left to organisations like the IFJ to analyse the new trends, find explanations and most importantly tackle the employers and governments that are not doing enough to protect journalists.

Thanks to our lobbying work, our profession has made great strides in safety awareness. And as organisations of journalists, we are best placed to lead debates on how our members should balance the risks and rewards when going for a story. We will continue to argue with employers to give priority to the free safety training of their journalists, and work with INSI to provide training to those who need it most. We will also continue to argue with our members that no story is worth dying for. None of this matters to commentators when they decide that the only angle is that “things are getting better”.

POST-ELECTION VIOLENCE TARGETS JOURNALISTS FIRST

2010-12-30T09:43:00.000-08:00

Journalists continue to be the professional group most likely to come under attack whenever a political crisis breaks out. At the height of the festive season, journalists in Belarus and the Ivory Coast found themselves under attack following post-election violence. In Belarus, at least 20 journalists were reported to have been jailed after the December 19th election in the midst of the most brutal repression as security agents raided offices of the country's independent and pro-opposition press, their equipment confiscated and their lawyers forced to sign gagging orders. Aleksandr Lukashenko, who won a fourth term, pledged to make journalists "answer for every word they write”.

In the Ivory Coast, the contested runoff between incumbent Laurent Gbagbo and challenger Alassane Ouattara is leading the country to the brink of civil war. Several hundred civilians have already died and media professionals have been the first to suffer intimidation and censorship at the hands of warring faction. All the international news reports and channels relayed by Canal+ were suspended and soldiers of the Republican Guard, supporting the former president Gbagbo, reportedly raided printing houses in Abidjan to prevent the printing of Le Jour Plus, Le Mandat, L'Expression, Nord-Sud, Le Patriote, Le Démocrate and Le Nouveau Réveil. French media and UN Radio have also been targeted while the UN Radio was seemingly jammed by the national radio.

2011 will see 16 presidential elections in Africa.

FREE AT LAST

2010-12-16T13:40:00.000-08:00

It was a race against the clock. Just as the media scrum and the throng of supporters braved the arctic wind outside the high court in the Strand, London, Julian Assange’s lawyers were scrambling to fill in the paperwork following the decision by the judge, Justice Duncan Ouseley, to uphold the decision by City of Westminster magistrates court on Tuesday to free Assange.

Only minutes before the court was due to close, there were still several cliffhangers that kept us supporters guessing. Would the bail money in cash be received and counted on time? Would all the five new people accepted as surety get to the court or to a nominated police station to sign the papers before the deadline? Would Assange be released so he can be driven to his bail address in Ellingham Hall, the country mansion in Norfolk of Vaughan Smith founder of the Frontline club, before his curfew deadline of 10 pm tonight?

The bail conditions were pretty stiff – a £200,000 cash deposit, with a further £40,000 guaranteed in two sureties of £20,000 and strict conditions on his movement. But his guarantors were some of the most solid pillars of the British establishment – former journalist and author of The First Casualty Sir Phillip Knightley; magazine publisher Felix Dennis; Nobel prize winner Sir John Sulston; former Labour minister and chairman of Faber & Faber publishing house Lord Matthew Evans; and Professor Patricia David.

These rich supporters are just the tip of the iceberg. The plight of Assange and the enormous impact by WikiLeaks worldwide mobilised citizens everywhere on the side of press freedom and the right to know what their rulers are doing in their name. A petition calling for Assange’s release gathered 400,000 signatures in one day.

Assange emerged a few minutes after 6 pm flanked by his lawyers. "It's great to smell the fresh air of London again," he said and reserved his warmest words for the British justice system. "If justice is not always the outcome, at least it is not dead yet," he gushed.

The release of Assange this evening is a resounding victory, but the war will be a long one. There are still American legal proceedings being cooked up with rumours that federal prosecutors studying evidence to charge Assange with conspiracy. Until the hearing next February, there is little doubt that the forces wanting to bury him will be working overtime. The news after the court hearing on Tuesday that it was not the Swedish prosecutor but the British Crown prosecution service which was opposing the bail gives a glimpse of the forces at work to get Assange out of the way.

OUR WINTER OF DISCONTENT

2010-12-10T04:43:00.000-08:00

The robust campaign by students in the UK in defence of their future seems to have inspired many other workers. Journalists working in regional newspapers for Newsquest, UK arm of US publishing giant Gannett, have taken action to oppose pay freezes, attacks on pensions, job cuts and redundancies and bring the company to the negotiating table.

This week journalists in Brighton and Southampton went on strike, hoping that soon other colleagues on a myriad of other regional titles will be joining them. Union members at The Herald, Sunday Herald and Evening Times (Scotland), Newsquest Bradford (Telegraph & Argus), Newsquest Blackburn (Lancashire Telegraph), Newsquest Bolton (Bolton News and the Bury Times Group), Newsquest York (The Press and the Gazette & Herald) and Newsquest Warrington (Warrington Guardian) have voted overwhelmingly for strike action, described as the biggest “union militancy in regional titles since the 1970s”.

The overwhelming results in the ballots in favour of action with further announcements still on the pipeline is a measure of the anger among journalists at Newsquest and their American owners continuing to chase bigger profits to the expense of quality. It is reported that during 2009, Newsquest cut more than 300 jobs reducing their workforce by 17%.

The recent remarks by Gannett’s finance that “Newsquest makes a lot of money” made journalists even more determined to fight. According to Gannett its UK operation made in 2009 a pre-tax profit of £88.5 million on turnover of £365.6 million.

For further information on the action in Brighton please go to http://brightonargus.blogspot.com

Pictures NUJ

I'M A PHOTOGRAPHER NOT A TERRORIST

2010-12-02T02:52:00.000-08:00

Not many of our affiliates have a special structure for photographers but the NUJ in the UK has a London photographers’ branch. I attended their monthly meeting a couple of nights ago to make a plea on behalf of their Palestinian colleagues who are now victims of frequent, almost routine, attacks at the hands of Israeli soldiers and settlers. Whenever Palestinian photographers and camera crews line up to record peaceful demonstrations or confrontations they are intentionally targeted by the Israeli army, hit by stun grenades and rubber bullets, beaten up and humiliated (see detailed accounts at www.madacenter.org.)

Years of protest, pleading and negotiation by the IFJ with the Israeli authorities fell on deaf ears. Now the IFJ is determined to put a stop to the attacks against photographers, to ensure the freedom of movement of Palestinian journalists and to have its press card recognised by the Israeli authorities. NUJ London photographers pledged to join the campaign in support of their Palestinian colleagues.

The NUJ photographers also welcomed the decision by the IFJ to adopt “Journalism, and War on Terrorism” as a theme at the next World Press Freedom day in May 2011 which will coincide with the 10^th anniversary of what has become to be known as war against terror. Photographers in the UK have been at the receiving end of the counter-terror legislation. Their union has been waging a fight against the misuse of these laws which have criminalised photographers.

Pictures Jess Hurd: 'Im a Photographer Not a Terrorist' protest bringing together photographers in defence of press freedom and civil liberties.

WIND OF CHANGE

2010-11-29T08:13:00.001-08:00

I attended the first meeting of the new Executive Meeting of the IFJ which I chaired. This meeting consolidated the major shift that was initiated by the IFJ world congress last May in Cadiz, and in itself was a watershed.

The most important decision of this first gathering was the mutual separation agreement reached with Aidan White, General Secretary of 23 years. Since taking over the reins of what was then a small Europe-dominated international, White worked hard to turn it into the international voice of journalists that it is today, a global organisation made of over 130 unions representing 650,000 journalists. The IFJ will now be actively looking to appoint a new chief executive in early next year.

This continued transition, started in Cadiz, marks a clear shift of power from Northern Europe and the Anglo-Saxon world into a much moreglobal representation of the issues of concern to journalists worldwide. The old democratic structures are now heavily influenced by the surge forward of complementary regional powers who are playing an increasingly influential role in the decision-making process. The maturity of these regional powers is now reflected in their ability to roll out major initiatives and mobilise their journalists in campaigns, organise their communications and build expertise for donor-based projects.

The leaders assembled last weekend put the final touch to their working programme for the coming period, which emerged from the deliberations at the world congress. At its heart are today’s major changes in journalism and the work of journalists. Other issues continue to be high on their agenda, such as safetyof journalists, human rights, and the enormous social changes and the momentous movement of resistance, taking place as a result of the increasing crisis of world capitalism.

ZUJ ACTIVISTS IN PRESS FREEDOM MISSION

2010-11-22T11:38:00.000-08:00

There is nothing more comforting than to see scores of young students of journalism getting together in a powerful show of strength, debunking the many obituaries of unions made by media employers.

Over 120 student members of the National Union of Journalists in the UK assembled at a conference in London last Saturday, a living proof that our unions are in good stead and the next generation of journalists is in the making, ready to defend their rights and the principles of journalism.

I was invited to speak to the students along with top-flight reporters from major UK dailies who gave the students tips on how to get into the media and how to build their skills. They also heard from seasoned investigative journalists who gave them a glimpse of watchdog journalism.

The students gave a special welcome to the international platform where I spoke. Cameroonian journalist Charles Atangana updated them about his battle against deportation back to the Cameroon and the support he is receiving from the NUJ and fellow journalists, and how his life changed just because he was doing his job as a journalist. Foster Dongozi, General Secretary of the Zimbabwe Union of Journalists, and Jennifer Dube, a reporter at The Standard in Harare, freshly arrived from Zimbabwe, gave a harrowing description of the life of journalists, working under some of the most dangerous conditions in the world.

They described how, despite a lull at the time of the setting up of the coalition government and many promises made to turn over a new leaf on six years of intimidation and stifling of independent journalists, attacks against journalists in Zimbabwe have again flared up in recent weeks with a series of hostile incidents against journalists, including the arrests and harassment of Nkosana Dlamini and Anderson Manyere, both freelance journalists, and the beating up of another freelance journalist, Sydney Saize, in Mutare. Only a week ago the ZUJ president Dumisani Sibanda was arrested and detained, after he wrote a story in The Standard involving the police force.

The ZUJ delegation is touring newsrooms and will be hosted by NUJ colleagues in Scotland and Ireland to explain the recent developments to journalists, human rights and press freedom activists as well as politicians.

NUJ STRIKES TO STOP BBC PENSION’S ROBBERY

2010-11-06T07:56:00.000-07:00

The 48-hour strike by the 4000 NUJ members at the BBC entered this morning its second day, bringing major programmes to a halt. Yesterday’s action was rock solid throughout the country. High-profile presenters joined the strike, which has led to the scrapping of popular programmes and forced editors on air.

The BBC put on a brave face trying to deny the massive impact of the strike, prompting NUJ General Secretary Jeremy Dear to compare BBC Director General Mark Thompson to “Comical Ali standing outside Baghdad Airport saying there are no Americans in Baghdad as the troops swarm in."

The strike went ahead after marathon negotiations over draconian new pensions plans, set to be imposed by the BBC, failed to make significant changes. Under the plans BBC staff were to loose thousands of pounds after they retire and the value of their pensions will be threatened every year by inflation.

An initial industrial action ballot returned a 93% yes vote and forced the BBC to tablea further improved proposal which, they say, is now final. In the consultative ballot 70% of NUJ members rejected the proposals and the NUJ has announced industrial action.

The NUJ is planning another 48-hour strike beginning on 15/16 November and threatening further disruption over Christmas.

For live news of the strike, see the NUJ's website at www.nuj.org.uk.

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