Section 14

Reporters Without Borders has named its “Predators of Press Freedom” for 2007. How many can you name? Follow the link for answers and a bio of each.

Thousands of Venezuelans filled the streets of Caracas on Saturday to protest President Hugo Chávez’s plans to shut down Radio Caracas Television (reported here in January).

RCTV is being closed down in revenge for its alleged support of a coup attempt against Chávez in 2002.

Speaking to Cuban news agency Prensa Latina, General Alberto Muller claimed that Venezuela has “as much freedom of expression as anywhere in the world”, although he later confirmed that he was using the authoritarian definition of freedom of expression - the freedom to say whatever you like as long as you don’t disagree.

The general also condemned those who confuse freedom of speech with political insults, which does not allow respectful dialogue and debate.

When you’re talking to a man holding a gun, you’d better make sure that your dialogue is respectful.

Hat tip: FP Passport.

The prosecution in France’s Muhammad cartoons trial has dropped all charges against Charlie Hebdo magazine, which republished the Jyllands-Posten cartoons along with some of its own - including a cover picture of Muhammad saying “It’s tough being loved by idiots.”

Charlie Hebdo was prosecuted for inciting hatred but the trial brought a huge backlash from the defenders of free speech and the prosecution has asked that the magazine be cleared of all charges.

“Free speech is not the issue here. The issue is that, in France, racism is not an opinion, it is a crime,” said Francis Szpiner, lawyer for the Grand Mosque, which has sued along with the Union of French Islamic Organisations (UOIF).

“Two of those caricatures make a link between Muslims and Muslim terrorists. That has a name and it’s called racism.” During the cartoon controversy, offended Muslims demanded an apology and a ban on criticising Islam.

President Jacques Chirac accused Charlie Hebdo of willfully provoking Muslims.

On the side of Charlie Hebdo was an array of philosphers, intellectuals, and politicians:

Even [Interior Minister Nicolas] Sarkozy defended Charlie Hebdo, which typically portrays him as a nightstick-swinging policeman or a rabid pitbull terrier. But Sarkozy - stumping this year as a candidate for president from the conservative UMP party - characterized himself as a critic of “every form of censorship” in a written statement to the court. Sarkozy argued it was better to have “too many cartoons” than “no cartoons” and defended the “right to smile.”

Hat tip: Foreign Policy.

The Dominion Post has launched an attack on New Zealand’s suicide reporting rules with a front page article in Saturday’s paper, an editorial, and a four-page article in its Weekend section.

Reporting on suicides is covered by the Coroners Act 1988 (s 29), which automatically supresses all details of any self-inflicted death, except name, address, and occupation of the deceased. Any further details must be explicity released by the coroner before they can be published. A detailed Suicide and the Media booklet (PDF, 60 pages) is available from the Ministry of Health.

The theory seems to be that if we don’t talk about it it will go away. Chief promoter of New Zealand’s head-in-the-sand approach to suicide and fervent advocate of press censorship is Annette Beautrais, head of the Canterbury Suicide Project at Otago University’s Christchurch School of Medicine. Her attitude to free speech seems to be that it should be illegal to shout “Fire!” in a theatre even if the theatre is on fire.

There is evidence to suggest that high-profile reporting on suicides leads to a temporary increase in the suicide rate (and that these are “extra” suicides, not people who would otherwise have killed themselves). What hasn’t been shown is that a society-wide taboo on discussing suicide is of any use whatsoever in reducing New Zealand’s appalling suicide rate. We’re not talking about a tabloid-style revelling in the gory details of someone’s death. We’re talking about sober reporting of the manner of 500 deaths a year in this country.

Dr Beautrais has backing from Jim Anderton, the minister responsible for suicide prevention. While, in this arena, there can be no doubting Mr Anderton’s good motives, there is no problem he’s found that can’t be fixed by more regulation.

Mr Anderton says he has sympathies for the mainstream media, who, he believes, would take a repsonsible approach to publicity of suicides if the laws were relaxed. But he says, like all laws, they are written to keep a small number of citizens in line, “the lowest common denominator”, and the media reporting element of the Coroners Act is no different.

Wellington coroner Garry Evans said in a submission to the select committee considering changes to the Coroners Act that

We live in an open, and not a closed, society. It follows that strong reason must exist for the suppression of evidence relating to important matters affecting society, including, among other things, the frightening phenomenon of self-inflicted teenage deaths… It is at once a community tradgedy and a community problem. The community must know what is going on. Concealment of evidence from the community disempowers it in dealing with the problem. It is a truism that knowledge is power. There is a difference between the gratuitous publication of evidence which is of no interest to the community, and the publication of eveidence that is important to a healthily functioning democratic society.

Outside the debate on whether censorship helps or hinders the battle against suicide there is a wider point. A free press is vitally important to an open society and we tamper with it at our peril. We must not give in to the temptation of censoring the press and closing our society in the long term in the (possibly vain) pursuit of short-term goals.

The press have the right to report the facts - and opinions - surrounding any story. Knowledge is superior to ignorance. In other areas, such as incitement of violence towards others, a free and open society will only allow speech to be curtailed if there is an immediate danger of harm. The link between publishing stories on suicide and people choosing to kill themsleves, even if real, is not direct enough to justify censorship.

President Hugo Chávez has taken a further step towards turning Venezuela into a Soviet-style socialist republic with his decision not to renew Radio Caracas Television’s licence.

Much to the bane of the government, [RCTV] also features Miguel Angel Rodriguez, whose three-year-old program, “The Interview,” makes mincemeat of Chavez’s government every weekday morning. Sitting before a giant screen where Chavez’s speeches are replayed, Rodriguez and his guests, usually staunch foes of Chavez, dissect the president’s statements and declare his government anti-democratic and incompetent.

“Could we say to Venezuelans that a person of this sort, Hugo Chavez, is rising up against the liberty of Venezuelans?” Rodriguez asked a guest on a recent morning. “Is this constitutional reform, the enabling law and this giant step to consolidate 21st-century socialism a method of finding a legal way to install totalitarianism?”

Chávez is certainly leading Venezuela down the path to Cuban- or Soviet-style socialism and his closing down of media that disagree with him illustrates his totalitarian leanings. Chávez’s cheerleaders will often point out that he was democratically elected. They would do well to remember that democracy is there to support human freedom, not the other way round.

UPDATE 31/1/07: Chavez’ power is about to become total. The National Assembly is ready to pass a law allowing Chavez to rule by decree.

The Fijian military has arrested the editor of the Fiji Daily Post and ordered his immediate deportation to Australia. (Hat tip: No Right Turn)

[Editor-in-Chief Robert] Wolfgramm said his removal was probably because the paper was “a voice for democracy” in the 20 months he held the post.

He continued to maintain “it is not the place of the military to have a political role”.

The deportation followed a meeting when staff were warned to tone down the content of images and anti-military sentiment it had been publishing.

This attack on Fiji’s press freedom is just the latest in a series of crackdowns the military has launched since the coup.

Update 16/12/06: Wolfgramm is back at work after complaining to the Fiji Human Rights Commission. (Hat tip: Anonymous comment on the NRT post.)

Managing Director of the Fiji Times, Tony Yianni, suspended publication of his newspaper last night rather than publish a censored version of the news. An article on the paper’s website explains:

The Fiji Times Limited has suspended publication after the Fiji military ordered the paper not to publish any “propaganda” against the new political leadership.

Armed soldiers came to the Victoria Parade officers at 7.30pm last night, and asked for “assistance”. After a brief discussion outside, the soldiers entered the building for a discussion in the papers newsroom.

My Yianni then explains his decision:

“We were ordered to breach the Constitution and not publish any dissenting views that may be sent to us by free citizens, as well as the views of legally elected members of the Qarase government.

“If we do not have the freedom to publish with responsibility, then we do not publish.”

Reporters Without Borders reports that the newspaper Fiji Daily Post has also suspended publication and Fiji Television has cut its news service saying that, “Fiji Television’s news service will not resume until it can be independent and free of censorship.”

China has lifted a series of restrictions on the media in the run-up to the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. As part of its bid the Chinese government promised the International Olympic Committee that it would allow free reporting before and during the Games. The reporting restrictions have been suspended for the period 1 January 2007 to 17 October 2008.

Currently reporters are not allowed to travel freely and are not allowed to interview people without official permission. Those rules are now gone. The biggest concern is how the rules are enforced, given China’s secretive official culture. Christian Science Monitor reports

The strength of that culture is clearly evident in an official police language-training manual obtained by the Monitor. It is being used to teach Beijing policemen the English phrases they might need when dealing with Olympic visitors.

Published by China’s Public Security Bureau University and the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau, “Olympic Security English” contains a practice dialog entitled, “How to Stop Illegal News Coverage”.

The dialog teaches policemen the English phrases they would need to detain a foreign reporter found talking to a Chinese citizen about Falun Gong, an outlawed spiritual movement.

Beijing city patrolmen are given the manual as part of a home study program according to one city police officer who asked not to be identified. They are taught how to say, “You’re a sports reporter. You should only cover the Games,” and to tell the reporter that Falun Gong is “beyond the permit” and “beyond the limit of your coverage and illegal.”

How effective these changes are remains to be seen but let’s hope that under the world’s gaze Chinese society is prized a little more open and that with the genie out of the bottle that openness lasts long after the closing ceremony.

The High Court injunction forbidding anyone from releasing the contents of Don Brash’s e-mails raises some very interesting free speech questions.

The interim injunction was gained by Don Brash on Friday. It enjoins unknown respondents (John and Jane Doe) from copying, issuing to the public, broadcasting or making an adaptation of any of Don Brash’s e-mails. There is already a criminal investigation going on into the copying of these e-mails from Brash’s computer.

Nick Russell of Chen Palmer says in this morning’s Dominion Post (Brash blocks ’stolen’ e-mails) that this sort of prior restraint is very unusual.

“This is absolutely a gagging writ on the media.”

It’s worth noting as an aside that this injunction doesn’t cover documents tabled or read out in Parliament or select committee as these arenas are covered by parliamentary privilege.

There are a whole swag of questions here: In what circumstances (if ever) should we allow prior restraint of the press? To what extent can a “public figure” (or anyone) expect privacy? Should the probably illegal manner in which the information was gathered have an impact on whether it can be published? Are copyright restrictions relevant here and how should they apply?

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I’ve received a reply from Reporters Sans Frontières about why New Zealand’s press freedom index rank slipped this year.

RSF preface their comments by saying that in the past New Zealand’s ratings have been “especially good, even perfect”. The two reasons given for our drop are

1. tensions and pressure around the Mohammed cartoons [when Helen Clark attacked the Dominion Post and The Press for printing the cartoons, saying the issue “is not one of freedom of the press but of taste and judgement and the cartoons will do nothing to bring communities together”], and
2. TVNZ’s Board being hauled before Parliament’s Privileges Committee during the Ian Fraser affair.

RSF gave New Zealand black marks for having Parliament interfering in the running of TVNZ (interference from the politically appointed Board was Fraser’s original reason for resigning) and then, when the TVNZ Board punished Fraser for what he’d said to the Select Committee, the Greens defended Parliament’s punishment of TVNZ’s Board on freedom of speech grounds.

Both of these comments are about government meddling in the media. The temptation to meddle will always be there for politicians who think they know best, but clearly the meddling is more effective when the medium in question is state-owned.

Reporters Sans Frontières (Reporters Without Borders) has released its 2006 Worldwide Press Freedom Index.

New Zealand has been ranked a creditable 19th behind a number of Scandinavian and Central European countries and ahead of the likes of the UK, the USA, and Australia. (The previously mentioned Turkmenistan came second-to-last with only North Korea worse.)

New Zealand’s ranking has dropped this year and, more importantly, our absolute score has got worse. My guess is that this is due to the handling of the Mohammed cartoons brouhaha and I have written to RSF to ask for the details.