freedom of the press | media chinwag

March 6, 2016

Turkey’s Press Crackdown

So much for the Turkish Model? After the Arab Spring, many touted the idea that Egypt and other Middle East countries should follow in Turkey’s footsteps as a Muslim nation operating on democratic principles. Among the cherished democratic principles, of course, is liberty of the press. The latest news from Turkey therefore is as distressing as it is depressing: authorities sent heavily armed police into the offices of the Zaman newspaper on March 4 and seized control of Turkey’s largest daily.

Once friendly to Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who became president in 2014 after a decade as prime minister, Zaman has taken an increasingly critical editorial line on Turkey’s leader. Erdoğan had a political falling out with the Gulen movement, which is closely affiliated with Zaman, in 2013. Prosecutors accuse Zaman of engaging in terrorism propaganda.

The ongoing Turkish crackdown on the press extends well beyond Zaman, to reporters, columnists, and bloggers who criticize government policies or publish information deemed sensitive about national security, Kurdish demands, or Erdoğan’s rule. Turkey’s judiciary has reportedly charged some 1,800 people including many journalists under a law that prohibits “insulting the president.” Turkey has frequently blocked Twitter and YouTube, and Erdoğan has hinted at a total shutdown of social media.

Only days before the Zaman seizure, the state satellite signal provider yanked IMC TV off the air during a live broadcast—at the time, the channel was interviewing two senior Cumhuriyet journalists facing charges of exposing state secrets for reporting on the alleged transfer of weapons from Turkey to Syrian rebels.

Last fall, Turkish authorities seized the Ipek Media Group, firing journalists on its two opposition dailies and two opposition TV channels and transforming the media outlets into government mouthpieces.

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, Turkey is among the worst jailers of journalists in the world, with 14 journalists imprisoned as of the end of 2015. It ranks 149^th of 180 countries in the Reporters Without Borders World Press Freedom Index.

Today’s Zaman, the English-language version, issued a statement on the government’s seizure of the media group:

We are going through the darkest and gloomiest days in terms of freedom of the press, which is a major benchmark for democracy and the rule of law. Intellectuals, businesspeople, celebrities, civil society organizations, media organizations and journalists are being silenced via threats and blackmail.

Speaking to the New York Times, veteran political journalist Asli Aydintasbas, who lost her column in the daily Milliyet newspaper reportedly under government pressure last year, said:

This pattern is appalling, and Turkey is galloping towards an authoritarian regime full speed ahead. Unfortunately, the world, in particular the E.U., remains silent. The government here can sense the vulnerability in the West, especially since the beginning of the refugee crisis, and is pushing the boundaries to consolidate its power.

—Scott MacLeod

November 27, 2015

Covering the Hate Beat

A notable feature of the 2016 race for the White House has been the free flowing comments of some Republican candidates against economic migrants and political refugees and, by association, against the Latino and Muslim communities. The comments go beyond anti-immigration rhetoric and cross the line into the realm of hate speech.

Businessman Donald Trump led the way in his presidential announcement speech on June 16 by describing Mexican immigrants as criminals, drug smugglers, and rapists. After the terrorist attacks in Paris on November 13, he redirected his venom toward Muslims. He called for a database to monitor Syrian refugees and possibly all American Muslims as well. Trump accompanied this view with a statement questioning the loyalty of American Muslims, claiming that immediately after the September 11 terrorist attack on Manhattan’s World Trade Center “thousands and thousands of people were cheering” across the river in Jersey City “where you have large Arab populations.”

Trump’s Islam-bashing actually started long before he became the leading contender for the Republican presidential nomination—he’s been at the top of the polls since June. He was one of the loudest voices in the United States pushing right-wing claims intended to smear President Barack Obama—that he was born in Kenya—which would disqualify him from occupying the presidency—and that he was a secret Muslim.

Ben Carson, an African-American neurosurgeon in the Republican race, chimed in that Muslims are unfit to be president of the United States because of their religious faith. Ted Cruz, a senator from Texas and another Republican candidate, called for banning refugees from Syria if they are Muslim, but letting Christians in. “There is no meaningful risk of Christians committing acts of terror,” he explained. Another contender, Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, echoed a threat by Trump to shut down U.S. mosques as venues inspiring radicalism. In the latest opinion survey, Trump, Rubio, Cruz, and Carson lead the Republican race with 36, 14, 12, and 10 percent support, respectively, among likely Republican primary voters.

To a great extent, American mainstream news media organizations, wittingly or otherwise, have propelled the hate speech. They have hyped the sound bites, replaying them in headline after headline and broadcast after broadcast, to the point that the comments have enabled the candidates to drive news coverage and thus dominate the campaign discourse. Moreover, too rarely are the comments characterized as hate speech, but are rather labeled as “controversial” or “provocative.” Here journalists are pursuing a false objectivity, eager to prove they are not biased for or against any candidate or party. They are also taking refuge in a false equivalency that treats comments defending or attacking Latino or Muslim communities as equally valid and acceptable political discourse.

Hate speech is broadly protected by the First Amendment, giving Trump and the other Republican candidates a constitutional right to make their odious comments. In Europe, they would need to be more careful. Britain’s Racial and Religious Hatred Act of 2006 makes it an offense to incite hatred against a group of people based on their religious beliefs. In France, even an icon such as Brigitte Bardot has been convicted and fined for inciting hatred with anti-Muslim comments, including: “My country, France, my homeland, my land is again invaded by an overpopulation of foreigners, especially Muslims.”

Nor in the United States is the right of free speech absolute. Incitement of violence, for example, is not fully protected—and there are reasons to believe that Trump’s remarks have incited violence. The cartoons mocking the Prophet Mohammed published by the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten became a cause célèbre for many free speech advocates, who argued that by definition free expression must include the right to spout offensive ideas. (The cartoons most certainly were a direct cause of the anti-Danish protests and riots that swept the Islamic World afterwards, with some 200 deaths.) In an aggressive campaign asserting such a right, the French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo famously persisted in publishing insulting cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed. When Muslim extremists attacked the magazine’s offices and slaughtered 12 people last January, massive demonstrations erupted across France proclaiming “Je Suis Charlie,” ostensibly in defense of free speech.

These can be difficult issues, certainly for journalists, who see part of their calling as a mission to defend the right to a free press. Nobody should argue that the news media should ignore hate speech, least of all when it is spewed forth by public figures and even aspirants to the presidency. The question is how to cover it.

When journalists cover criticism of the hate-mongers, they provide readers and viewers with important alternative viewpoints. News media outlets have traditionally called out lies or provided context on their editorial and Op-Ed pages. Some news media and civil society organizations have institutionalized platforms that make fact checking a discrete service holding public figures accountable for the accuracy of their statements. The Washington Post, FactCheck.org, and PolitFact.com have done admirable work in exposing Trump’s untruths about Latinos and Muslims. In September, the New York Times carried a strongly worded editorial criticizing the Republican attack on Muslims.

But this is not enough, not in an era when the best intentions of the finest journalists are often drowned out by the deafening idiocy of “debates” on so many cable and satellite so-called news channels, or otherwise overwhelmed by social media chatter.

News executives and beat journalists alike need to take a long, hard look at how to define and treat hate speech in the digital media age. One of the principles of journalism is pursuit of the truth—and “truth” is not just dutifully recording and endlessly repeating the hate speech of politicians, but also providing background and perspective. Journalists have an important obligation to their societies to be responsible framers of the public discussion—but this is not accomplished when the endless repetition of the hateful sound bites overwhelms the few stories or editorials here and there that attempt to give critical context.

Broadly speaking, the American mainstream news media has failed miserably in its obligation to provide a comprehensive and proportional narrative of American life—including the lives and voices of ethnic and religious minorities. It should go without saying that Latino and Muslim communities and new immigrants—including the undocumented immigrants that Republicans are so fond of baiting—have made enormous positive contributions to the economic and cultural vitality of the United States. America, indeed, is a nation of immigrants. Yet, pack journalism’s obsession with sound bytes and easy headlines reinforces ignorance about minority communities and the issues around them.

There are a number of immediate steps that American editors and reporters can take to address hate speech. They can put the brakes on automatic, continuous, tabloid-style coverage that treats a politician spewing hate speech as if it was just Justin Bieber committing another act of adolescent mischief. Instead, they can provide their readers and viewers with thoughtful explorations and discussions that use universal human values, rather than the false objectivity and balance supposedly conferred by equal column inches and air time, as journalism’s frame of reference. American journalists can devote space to much fuller, more responsible coverage of communities upon which demagogues are apt to prey.

At the heart of the matter is the philosophical question of free speech. Without any hesitation, it should be practiced and defended at all costs. Whether one cites Supreme Court decisions or the law of common sense, it is clear that healthy societies are built upon the free flow of information and opinions. That is precisely why it is so important that journalists not abuse their right of free speech, or enable others to abuse it. Journalists need not scapegoat, defame, or humiliate our most vulnerable communities, or provide the megaphone for those who do, to prove that free speech is a value worth defending.

—Scott MacLeod

September 20, 2015

The Press, the Public, and the President

Leslie T. Chang has a good report in NYR Daily titled “Egypt’s Media: Endorsing Repression.” She writes on how journalists, perhaps notably the country’s influential political talk show hosts, are making energetic efforts to build a consensus behind the policies of President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi. It seems to be helping: the leader’s approval rating after a year in office was around 90 percent.

Abroad, the Sisi administration is criticized for allowing more than a thousand people thought to be sympathetic to Morsi to be sentenced to death in mass trials; in Egypt, newspaper columnists say they should be executed without trial. Journalists occasionally criticize government performance on issues like education, health care, or religious policy. But as I discovered in interviews with leading talk show hosts and editors, they regard the defining feature of Sisi’s administration—the use of state-sanctioned violence and politicized trials to maintain order and crush its opponents—with near-unanimous approval.

Chang reports on El-Sisi’s moves to influence the media, holding monthly meetings with editors and presenters, and telling television hosts they are responsible “for promoting unity and raising morale.”

As Chang notes, it’s not simply an issue of control from above. Egyptian journalists, especially those working for the independent media, were increasingly free to report during the last years of the Hosni Mubarak era—criticism of the president and even his family was tolerated. Journalists briefly became more assertive in their watchdog role after the January 25, 2011 uprising that ended Mubarak’s 30-year rule. In one of the most celebrated examples, Ahmed Shafik, an interim prime minister, abruptly resigned from office after being aggressively questioned on Baladna bel Masry, a political talk show on ONTV hosted by Reem Magued.

But the Egyptian public mood has become deeply fearful of instability, due to the polarizing presidency of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohammed Morsi, the protests and violence involved in his removal from office, the rise of jihadist chaos throughout the Arab word including in Egypt, and the nosedive of the Egyptian economy. El-Sisi is seen by millions as the nation’s protector—and only hope. Many journalists share the fears, or at least are influenced by the public’s intolerance for any further destabilization of the state. (The logic was no doubt at play last week in the Egyptian government’s ban on media coverage of the Egyptian military’s lethal attack on suspected insurgents who turned out to be Mexican tourists—few Egyptians want to see their army’s honor besmirched.)

Chang concludes:

In the two years since the army removed Morsi after huge demonstrations against him, the mainstream media has lost most of the openness it briefly enjoyed. Especially during major political events, the press speaks in one voice; journalists who break ranks sometimes find themselves vilified—not by the government but by their own colleagues and the public.

Egypt’s revolution taught the world that the power of a dictator can dissolve in an instant. But the lesson of the years since may be that, in a country threatened by chaos and violence, authoritarianism can hold a powerful appeal of its own.

—Scott MacLeod

August 30, 2015

Reporting from Egypt

Magdi Abdelhadi has a nice piece in Nieman Reports about the struggles of independent media in Egypt. Among other things it highlights the work of Mada Masr and its editor, Lina Attalah (American University in Cairo ’04):

In 2013, Lina Attallah and her colleagues lost their jobs at Egypt Independent, the English-language edition of the flagship daily, Al-Masry Al-Youm. After a dispiriting series of editorial and financial disputes with their bosses, Attallah and her colleagues decided to start Mada Masr (“Egypt’s Horizon”), an English-Arabic news and arts website that caters primarily to Egypt’s well-educated cultural elite, rather than look for jobs at other mainstream outlets. “There was nowhere else to work,” says Attallah. “It was a time when media freedom became more and more limited. No media outlet could afford to hire independent journalists who wouldn’t compromise the content. And that is why we had to build our own space.”

Amir-Hussein Radjy profiled Mada Masr in the Summer 2015 edition of the Cairo Review of Global Affairs. Leslie T. Chang wrote an in-depth report on the organization in The Long Read section of the Guardian last January.

There are brave journalists out there doing the best work that can be done in Egypt under present circumstances. In August, President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi signed a new counterterrorism law that, according to Human Rights Watch, “makes it a crime to publish or promote news about terrorism if it contradicts the Defense Ministry’s official statements and would allow the courts to temporarily ban journalists from practicing their profession for doing so.”

—Scott MacLeod

Category: freedom of the press