10 Informed International


UK sets up body to protect journalists


session about defending press freedom. She said if the UK government was serious about promoting press freedom around the world, its first priority should be to lead by example at home where use of data protection laws are used to harass journalists and “the creeping law of privacy, that is entirely the product of judges and celebrity-funded lawyers, or the use of biometric recognition systems that could compromise a journalist’s sources”.


Amal Clooney and Jeremy Hunt at the Global Media Freedom Conference


Former Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt is a politician who occasionally has a bright idea. As culture and media minister it was the launch of Local TV, so when he proposed a Global Media Freedom Conference what could possibly go wrong? For Jeremy, the timing was terrible. He


was in the middle of a batle to become the next prime minister with his personal ambition, not a free global media, his top priority. Te first news from the event in London, co-hosted by the Canadian government, was that a conference to promote press freedom had banned two Russian news organisations, Sputnik and RT. To be fair, Ofcom, the media regulator, had censured RT for lack of “impartiality” in its coverage of the nerve agent atack in Salisbury. Ten “legitimate” journalists found the online media accreditation line blocked them. Hunt did have one coup, he had persuaded Amal Clooney to provide the glamour he singularly lacks. Te human rights lawyer had represented the Reuters


journalists Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo jailed by the Myanmar authorities and is counsel for Maria Ressa, the fearless journalist arrested for her hard-hiting reports on human rights in President Duterte’s Philippines. She also spoke of violations closer to home, including the arrests of Belfast journalists and NUJ members Barry McCaffrey and Trevor Birney (see page 12) and she chided world leaders for responding with “litle more than a collective shrug” following the death of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul last year. Hunt, responsible for £648m arms sales to the regime since the Washington Post columnist’s death, didn’t even have the grace to blush. Te main failing of the event was to


initially exclude journalists’ organisations such as the NUJ and the International Federation of Journalists with its 600,000 media professionals from more than 140 countries. Belatedly the IFJ was invited to join a panel talking about women journalists’ safety and Michelle Stanistreet asked to speak on a panel


Coinciding with the event, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg was hearing a case brought by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism and other human rights organisations over UK intelligence agencies’ mass surveillance of millions of UK citizens, including journalists’ communications. Announcements made at the global media freedom event were the seting up of a High Level Panel to develop legal frameworks to help protect media freedom, and a UK National Commitee for the Safety of Journalists to “ensure that those who threaten journalists are held to account and to examine current protections offered to journalists in the UK”.


FCO fact box


• Nine in 10 cases of journalists killed remain unresolved.


• 2018 was the worst year on record for violence and abuse against journalists


• Only 10 per cent of the world’s population enjoys a free press, and media.


• Almost 1,000 journalists and media workers have been killed in the past decade.


• Of those killed, 93 per cent were local journalists and 7 per cent were foreign correspondents. Figures collated by the Foreign & Commonwealth Office


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