HARASSING JOURNALISTS

By Venitism

Being a journalist can be dangerous. One journalist is killed a week on average for doing their job of bringing news and information to the public. Many more suffer other kinds of attacks, threats, and harassments, including imprisonment.

Expression of thought is critical to creativity and is a core part of being human. Visual communications today are a hot journalistic practice, so this issue applies to the entire designer community just as much as it applies to journalists.

A new German law introducing state censorship on social media platforms came into effect on October 1, 2017. The new law requires social media platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, to censor their users on behalf of the German state. Social media companies are obliged to delete or block any online “criminal offenses” such as libel, slander, defamation or incitement, within 24 hours of receipt of a user complaint — regardless of whether or the content is accurate or not. Social media companies receive seven days for more complicated cases. If they fail to do so, the German government can fine them up to 50 million Euros for failing to comply with the law.

This state censorship makes free speech subject to the arbitrary decisions of corporate entities that are likely to censor more than absolutely necessary, rather than risk a crushing fine. When employees of social media companies are appointed as the state’s private thought police and given the power to shape the form of current political and cultural discourse by deciding who shall be allowed to speak and what to say, and who shall be shut down, free speech becomes nothing more than a fairy tale.

Meanwhile, the district court in Munich recently sentenced a German journalist, Michael Stürzenberger, to six months in jail for posting on his Facebook page a historical photo of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, shaking the hand of a senior Nazi official in Berlin in 1941. The prosecution accused Stürzenberger of “inciting hatred towards Islam” and “denigrating Islam” by publishing the photograph. The court found Stürzenberger guilty of “disseminating the propaganda of anti-constitutional organizations”. While the mutual admiration that once existed between al-Husseini and German Nazis is an undisputed historical fact, now evidently history is being rewritten by German courts. Stürzenberger has appealed the verdict.

Germany has made no secret of its desire to see its new law copied by the rest of the EU, which already has a similar code of conduct for social media giants. The EU Justice Commissioner, Vera Jourova, recently said she might be willing to legislate in the future if the voluntary code of conduct does not produce the desired results. She said, however, that the voluntary code was working “relatively” well, with Facebook removing 66.5% of the material they had been notified was “hateful” between December and May this year. Twitter removed 37.4%, and YouTube took action on 66% of the notifications from users.

While purportedly concerned about online “hate speech,” one EU organization, the EU Parliament, had no qualms about letting its premises be used to host a convicted Arab terrorist, Leila Khaled, from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) at a conference about “The Role of Women in the Palestinian Popular Struggle” in September. (The EU, the US, Canada, and Australia, have all designated the PFLP a terrorist organization). The conference was organized by, among others, the Spanish delegation of Izquierda Unida (United Left) as part of the European United Left/Nordic Green Left bloc in the European Parliament.

In the UK, Prime Minister Theresa May also said that she will tell internet firms to tackle extremist content:

“Industry needs to go further and faster in automating the detection and removal of terrorist content online… ultimately it is not just the terrorists themselves who we need to defeat. It is the extremist ideologies that fuel them. It is the ideologies that preach hatred, sow division and undermine our common humanity. We must be far more robust in identifying these ideologies and defeating them — across all parts of our societies.”

Prime Minister May keeps insisting that “these ideologies” are spread “across all parts of our societies” when in reality, virtually all terrorism is Islamic. Meanwhile, her own Home Secretary, Amber Rudd, has refused to ban the political wing of Hezbollah. Hezbollah’s

hate speech, apparently, is perfectly acceptable to the British authorities. So is that of South African Muslim cleric and hate preacher Ebrahim Bham, who was once an interpreter to the Taliban’s head legal advisor. He was allowed to enter the UK to speak in the Queen Elizabeth II Centre, a government building, at the “Palestine Expo” a large Jew-hate event in London in July. Bham is known for quoting Nazi Propaganda Minister Goebbels and saying that all Jews and Christians are “agents of Satan”. Meanwhile, a scholar such as Robert Spencer is banned from entering the UK, supposedly on the grounds that what he reports — accurately — is “Islamophobic”.

The British Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) also recently stated that online “hate crimes” will be prosecuted “with the same robust and proactive approach used with offline offending”. The decision to treat online offenses in the same way as offline offenses is expected to increase hate crime prosecutions, already at the highest recorded level ever. Prosecutors completed 15,442 hate crime cases in 2015-16.

Jews in Britain, who have experienced a dramatic increase in anti-Semitism over the past three years, are frequently on the receiving end of hate crimes. Nevertheless, their cases constitute less than a fraction of the statistics. In 2016/17, the CPS prosecuted 14,480 hate crimes. According to the Campaign Against Antisemitism:

“we have yet to see a single year in which more than a couple of dozen anti-Semitic hate crimes were prosecuted. So far in 2017, we are aware of… 21 prosecutions, in 2016 there were 20, and in 2015 there were just 12. So serious are the failures by the CPS to take action that we have had to privately prosecute alleged anti-Semites ourselves and challenge the CPS through judicial review, the first of which we won in March. Last year only 1.9% of hate crime against Jews was prosecuted, signaling to police forces that their effort in investigating hate crimes against Jews might be wasted, and sending the strong message to anti-Semites that they need not fear the law… Each year since 2014 has been a record-breaking year for anti-Semitic crime: between 2014 and 2016, anti-Semitic crime surged by 45%”.

Almost one in three British Jews have apparently considered leaving Britain due to anti-Semitism in the past two years.

British authorities seem far more concerned with “Islamophobia” than with the increase in hate crimes against Jews. In fact, the police has teamed up with Transport for London authorities to encourage people to report hate crimes during “National Hate Crime Awareness Week”, which runs from October 14-21. Transport for London and the Metropolitan Police will hold more than 200 community events to “reassure communities that London’s public transport system is safe for everyone”. The events are specifically targeted at Muslims; officers have visited the East London Mosque to encourage reporting hate crimes.

Last year, London mayor Sadiq Khan’s Office for Policing and Crime (Mopac) announced it was spending £1,730,726 of taxpayer money policing speech online after applying for a grant from the Home Office. Meanwhile, Khan said that he does not have the funds to

monitor the 200 jihadists estimated to be in London, out of the 400 jihadists who have so far returned to the capital from Syria and Iraq. (He also implicitly admitted that he does not know the whereabouts of the jihadists who have returned). When asked by the journalist Piers Morgan why the mayor could not have them monitored, Khan answered:

“Because the Met Police budget, roughly speaking, 15 percent, 20 percent is funded by me, the mayor. The rest comes from central government. If the Met Police is being shrunk and reduced, they’ve got to prioritize and use their resources in a sensible, savvy way.”

When Morgan asked what could possibly be a bigger priority than, “people coming back from a Syrian battlefield with intent to harm British citizens”, Khan did not answer. Perhaps because it is hard to admit in public that fighting “Islamophobia” is now a higher priority than fighting terrorism?

After the Second World War and the horrors of Nazism and Stalinism, a central tenet of Western democracies has been that you can put people on trial, but not ideas and opinions. Europe is now allowing dangerous pseudo-human-rights groups and Islamists to use tribunals to restrict the borders of our freedom of expression, exactly as in Soviet show trials. Militant anti-racism will be for the 21st century what communism was for the 20th century.

A year ago, Christoph Biró, a respected columnist and editor of the largest Austrian newspaper, Kronen Zeitung, wrote an article blaming “young men, testosterone-fuelled Syrians, who carry out extremely aggressive sexual attacks” (even before mass the sexual assaults of New Year’s Eve in Cologne, Hamburg and other cities). The article sparked much controversy, and it received a large number of complaints and protests. Biró needed four weeks off work because of these attacks and later (under pressure) admitted that he had “lost a sense of proportion”. Prosecutors in Graz recently charged Biró with “hate speech” after a complaint by a so-called human rights organization, SOS Mitmensch. The case will be decided in court.

Journalists, novelists and intellectuals throughout Europe are now told to raise their right hand before a judge and swear to tell the truth and nothing but the truth — as if that were not what they were doing all along and for what they are now being prosecuted. It is an alarming but very common sight today, where “hate speech” has become a political weapon to dispatch whoever may not agree with you.

It is not the right of a democracy to quibble about the content of articles or cartoons. In the West, we paid a high price for the freedom to read and write them. It is not up to those who govern to grant the right of thought and speech, that belongs to the free initiative in the democracies. The right to express our own opinion was paid for dearly, but if it is not exercised, it can quickly disappear.

A grotesque new legal front was just opened in Paris. The French philosopher Pascal Bruckner began his trial, where he opened his defense with a quotation from Jean-Paul Sartre: “The guns are loaded with words”. Bruckner, one of the most famous essayists of

France, is on trial for having spoken out against the “collaborators of Charlie Hebdo’s assassins”.

“I will say the names: The organizations ‘The Indivisibles’ of Rokhaya Diallo and ‘The Indigenous of the Republic’, the rapper Nekfeu who wanted ‘a bonfire for those dogs’ (Charlie Hebdo), all those who have justified with ideology the death of the twelve journalists”.

Countless witnesses testified in defense of Bruckner: the editor of Charlie Hebdo, “Riss”; the political scientist Laurent Bouvet; the former president of “Neither Whores nor Submissives,” Sihem Habchi; and the philosopher, Luc Ferry. Bruckner used the term “collaborator” for “those newspapers which justified the liquidation of the Résistance and the Jews” during the Second World War. Sihem Habchi spoke of the danger of a “green fascism”, Islamism. Bruckner brought his voice before the 17th Chamber court, too often a grave-digger of freedom of expression.

These political trials about Islam started in 2002, when a court in Paris considered a complaint against Michel Houellebecq, who, in the novel Platforme called Islam the stupidest religion. The writer Fernando Arrabal, arrested for blasphemy in 1967 in Franco’s Spain, was called by Houellebecq to testify in in court. “What a joy to be in a trial for crimes of opinion,” Arrabal said in Paris. “Zaragoza, Valladolid, Santander,” the playwright named a number of Spanish cities. “This is the list of the prisons where I have been for the same crime as Houellebecq.”

The late Italian writer, Oriana Fallaci, was also put on trial for her book, La Rage et l’Orgueil, The Rage and the Pride. The French newspaper Libération called her “the woman who defames Islam.” Later the satirical weekly, Charlie Hebdo, and its editor, Philippe Val, targeted by Islamist organizations, were also forced to appear in court.

The death sentence against Salman Rushdie in 1989 by Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Khomeini looked unreal. The West did not take it seriously. Since then, however, this fatwa has been assimilated to such an extent that today’s threats to free speech come from ourselves. It is now the West that puts on trial writers and journalists.

It has become almost impossible to list all the journalists and writers who have had to defend themselves in court because of their ideas on Islam. To quote the French-Algerian writer, Boualem Sansal, the author of the novel “2084,” from an interview with Libération: “We are aware of the danger, but we do not know how to act for fear of being accused of being anti-immigrant, anti-Islam, anti-Africa… Democracy, like the mouse, will be swallowed by the serpent”. And it will be turned into “a society that whispers”.

Journalists are now prosecuted even if they question Islam during a radio debate. That is why today most of writers and journalists are only whispering about the consequences of mass migration in Europe, Islam’s role in the terrorists’ war on democracies and the sultans’ offensives on freedom of expression.

The Red Brigades, the Communist terror group which devastated Italy in the 1970s, coined a slogan: “Strike one to educate one hundred.” If you target one, you get collective intimidation. This is exactly the effect of these political trials about Islam. The debate is rapidly closing.

In the Netherlands, the trial for the pseudo-crime of hate speech against Geert Wilders was concluded. The brave Dutch politician had asked supporters if they wanted fewer Moroccans in the country. Convicting Wilders, a court criminalized freedom of expression for the first time in Dutch history. Wilders was acquitted five years ago in a similar trial.

In France Ivan Rioufol, one of the most respected columnists of the newspaper, Le Figaro, had to defend himself in court against the “Collective Against Islamophobia.” The writer Renaud Camus, who has expounded on the “great replacement” theory, which holds that France is being colonized by Muslim immigrants with the help of mainstream politicians, was charged with “hate speech.” Marine Le Pen also had to appear in court. In Germany, there was the case of Jan Böhmermann, a comedian who satirized Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on television. German judges then put on trial Lutz Bachmann, the founder of “Pegida,” the anti-Islamization movement. In Canada essayist and journalist Mark Steyn was charged with “flagrant Islamophobia” by a “Human Rights Tribunal” (and later cleared). Lars Hedegaard, the president of the Danish Free Press Society, was also charged with “hate speech” (and later aquitted) for comments critical of Islam.

It is fundamental that these writers and journalists are acquitted. But the goal of these trials is not to find the truth; it is to intimidate the public and to restrict freedom of expression on Islam. These are purges to “re-educate” them. Sadly, as we see from the Wilders trial, they have often been succeeding.

After the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, Milan Kundera’s novels disappeared from bookstores and libraries. The intelligentsia lay in sterility and isolation. Cinemas and theaters offered only the Soviet performances. Radio, newspapers and televisions streamed only propaganda. The Russians rewarded the bureaucrats who pressured writers and journalists, and punished the rebels. Those who spoke out were often obliged to work as unskilled laborers. Prague, restless and fascinating, became silent and whispering.

 

Despite being founded on ideals of freedom and openness, censorship on the internet is rampant, with more than 60 countries engaging in some form of state-sponsored censorship. A research project at the University of Cambridge is aiming to uncover the scale of this censorship, and to understand how it affects users and publishers of information.

For all the controversy it caused, Fitna is a great film. The 17-minute short, by the Dutch far-right politician Geert Wilders, was a way for him to express his opinion that Islam is an inherently violent religion. Understandably, Islam did not see things the same way. In

advance of its release in 2008, the film received widespread condemnation, especially within the Muslim community.

When a trailer for Fitna was released on YouTube, authorities in Pakistan demanded that it be removed from the site. YouTube offered to block the video in Pakistan, but would not agree to remove it entirely. When YouTube relayed this decision back to the Pakistan Telecommunications Authority (PTA), the decision was made to block YouTube.

Although Pakistan has been intermittently blocking content since 2006, a more persistent blocking policy was implemented in 2011, when porn content was censored in response to a media report that highlighted Pakistan as the top country in terms of searches for porn. Then, in 2012, YouTube was blocked for three years when a video, deemed blasphemous, appeared on the website. Only in January this year was the ban lifted, when Google, which owns YouTube, launched a Pakistan-specific version, and introduced a process by which governments can request the blocking of access to offending material.

All of this raises the thorny issue of censorship. Those censoring might raise objections to material on the basis of offensiveness or incitement to violence (more than a dozen people died in Pakistan following widespread protests over the video uploaded to YouTube in 2012). But when users aren’t able to access a particular site, they often don’t know whether it’s because the site is down, or if some force is preventing them from accessing it. How can users know what is being censored and why?

The goal of a censor is to disrupt the flow of information. Internet censorship threatens free and open access to information. There’s no code of conduct when it comes to censorship. Those doing the censoring, usually governments, aren’t in the habit of revealing what they’re blocking access to.

We haven’t got a clear understanding of the consequences of censorship: how it affects different stakeholders, the steps those stakeholders take in response to censorship, how effective an act of censorship is, and what kind of collateral damage it causes.

Because censorship operates in an inherently adversarial environment, gathering relevant datasets is difficult. Much of the key information, such as what was censored and how, is missing.

The primary reasons for government-mandated censorship are political, religious or cultural. A censor might take a range of steps to stop the publication of information, to prevent access to that information by disrupting the link between the user and the publisher, or to directly prevent users from accessing that information. But the key point is to stop that information from being disseminated.

Internet censorship takes two main forms: user-side and publisher-side. In user-side censorship, the censor disrupts the link between the user and the publisher. The interruption can be made at various points in the process between a user typing an address

into their browser and being served a site on their screen. Users may see a variety of different error messages, depending on what the censor wants them to know. 

The thing is, even in countries like Saudi Arabia, where the government tells people that certain content is censored, how can we be sure of everything they’re stopping their citizens from being able to access? When a government has the power to block access to large parts of the internet, how can we be sure that they’re not blocking more than they’re letting on?

In the case of the blocking of YouTube in 2012 in Pakistan, a lot of the demand went to rival video sites like Daily Motion. But in the case of pornographic material, which is also heavily censored in Pakistan, the government censors didn’t have a comprehensive list of sites that were blacklisted, so plenty of pornographic content slipped through the censors’ nets. 

Despite any government’s best efforts, there will always be individuals and publishers who can get around censors, and access or publish blocked content through the use of censorship resistance systems. A desirable property, of any censorship resistance system is to ensure that users are not traceable, but usually users have to combine them with anonymity services such as Tor.

It’s like an arms race, because the technology which is used to retrieve and disseminate information is constantly evolving. We now have social media sites which have loads of user-generated content, so it’s very difficult for a censor to retain control of this information because there’s so much of it. And because this content is hosted by sites like Google or Twitter that integrate a plethora of services, wholesale blocking of these websites is not an option most censors might be willing to consider.

In addition to traditional censorship, a new kind of censorship – publisher-side censorship – where websites refuse to offer services to a certain class of users. Specifically, the differential treatments of Tor users by some parts of the web. The issue with services like Tor is that visitors to a website are anonymized, so the owner of the website doesn’t know where their visitors are coming from. There is increasing use of publisher-side censorship from site owners who want to block users of Tor or other anonymizing systems.

Censorship is not a new thing. Those in power have used censorship to suppress speech or writings deemed objectionable for as long as human discourse has existed. However, censorship over the internet can potentially achieve unprecedented scale, while possibly remaining discrete so that users are not even aware that they are being subjected to censored information.

It’s often said that, online, we live in an echo chamber, where we hear only things we agree with. This is a side of the filter bubble that has its flaws, but is our own choosing. The darker side is when someone else gets to determine what we see, despite our interests. This is why internet censorship is so concerning. The cat and mouse game between the censors and their opponents will always exist.

An independent press is one of the essential pillars of a democracy, and we need to support journalists and whistleblowers alike to protect it. The First Amendment of the US Constitution is only 45 words, but it packs a punch. It protects free speech and a free press in America (in addition to religion, assembly and petition); without it, the country would look completely different. The First Amendment is the safety valve of our democracy. It has always been the bulwark against secret government, against authoritarianism and against tyranny.

Americans take great pride in their press freedom. But the truth is, it’s under attack. What’s not known is the Obama administration’s prosecution of a record eight whistleblowers for leaking government secrets to the media. Journalists are also increasingly being stopped and searched at US borders, and they’ve recently been arrested for covering protests at the inauguration and at Standing Rock. For these reasons, the US ranks number 43 out of 180 countries on the World Press Freedom Index. That’s right — 42 countries, including Ghana, South Africa and Jamaica — are judged by Reporters Without Borders to have greater press freedom than the United States, whose freedom is enshrined in its most important document.

The US owes its existence in part to a free press. Some of the most important voices before and during the American Revolution were anonymous pamphleteers who were writing under pseudonyms, talking about the crimes of the British government. Speeches, pamphlets and newspapers were critical in informing and galvanizing public support for the revolt. And because a free press was so pivotal in their efforts to overthrow British rule, the Founding Fathers decided to protect that right with the First Amendment, ratified in 1791.

But the rights protected by the First Amendment have never been absolute. US history has been marked by an ongoing conflict between the government’s attempts to strengthen and protect itself and the press’s attempts to scrutinize and report on the government. Along the way, the US government has scored some key victories in stifling the press. The Sedition Act of 1798 made it criminal to criticize high-ranking government officials; anti-war activists during WWI were jailed; and FDR created an Office of Censorship during WWII in an attempt to control the media narrative around the war effort. However, a number of Supreme Court cases in the 20th century were able to establish robust legal protections for the press. These cases include Near vs. Minnesota (1931), which held that it was largely unconstitutional for a government to censor the press, and New York Times v. United States (1971), which ruled that the Nixon Administration could not use vague pronouncements of national security to censor the publication of the Pentagon Papers.

Fake news is more than an insult — it hampers the press in its efforts to protect the public. Thomas Jefferson famously mused that he’d rather have newspapers without a country than a country without newspapers, and for good reason. An independent press ensures that citizens stay informed about the actions of their government, creating a forum for debate and the open exchange of ideas. And the press also occupies another critical role: watchdog. If people don’t believe the mainstream media can be trusted, then they won’t believe journalists if they publish evidence of corruption or illegal activity by the

government. That’s the troubling situation we could find ourselves in if fake news becomes shorthand for reporting that the government doesn’t agree with.

The press relies on whistleblowers to help keep the government in check. Consider some of the most explosive political scandals of the last 50 years, from Watergate to the Pentagon Papers to the CIA torture program in the early 2000s. The only reason that reforms were made is because investigative reporters talked to whistleblowers in the government and published information the government tried to keep secret. In the last few months, we’ve witnessed a deluge of leaks from within the White House, some of which have aimed to highlight potential conflicts of interest or possible corruption. While the administration has threatened both the whistleblowers as well as the journalists who’ve spoken to them, these types of leaks are essential to a healthy democracy. We understand the press will make the lives of our leaders a little bit harder. But that is as intended. Critics claim that leaks can jeopardize national security and imperil American lives. But responsible news organizations operate according to ethical standards, consulting with government officials before releasing sensitive information and refraining from publishing stories that would cause the public more harm than good.

In recent years, the US government has taken legal action against journalists’ sources. Recent whistleblowers have been prosecuted under the Espionage Act of 1917, a law passed during WWI to prevent insubordination and the disclosure of military secrets to foreign enemies. From 1917 until 2009, only one government whistleblower was convicted under this law. But from 2009 to 2016, the Obama administration used it to prosecute eight whistleblowers, including Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden, and many predict that the law will continue to be used aggressively against sources. The Espionage Act has been called unconstitutional by the ACLU because it is selectively used against leakers who depict the government in bad light and it does not allow for whistleblowers to argue in court for the public interest served by the release of leaked information. Ultimately, the increasing use of the Espionage Act makes sources less likely to approach journalists with classified information, even if it would benefit the general public, for fear of being jailed.

The Espionage Act could be deployed against reporters, too. Nixon tried and failed to use the Espionage Act against the New York Times for publishing the Pentagon Papers. But the narrow Supreme Court ruling in that case leaves open the possibility that it could one day be used to criminally prosecute journalists for publishing leaks. There have been a half-a-dozen cases over the past 50 years of administrations threatening to use the Espionage Act directly against reporters for publishing stories about national security, and they’ve never fully gone down that path. But it’s always been a cloud that has loomed over journalists.

Despite mounting challenges, journalists must continue to keep the public informed. The press should always be antagonistic and aggressive and not kowtow to any administration, no matter what party they’re part of. So in some ways, Trump has brought out the best in journalism. Americans should feel incredibly lucky to have the First Amendment enshrined in the nation’s Constitution — hardly any other countries in the world have such

a clause. Now it’s up to all of us to continue to appreciate this freedom and demand that it remains protected