Where Do You Draw The Line In Passing Laws Protecting Against Terrorism and Infringing On The Free Flow of Information?

Philip M. Stone June 6, 2007

Democracies everywhere are being caught between the rock and the hard place. They want more police and court powers to combat global terrorism, and yet the very being of a democracy is the free flow of information and free speech, and there are times when all of that comes very close to clashing. Does it need to?

There’s no question it is a balancing act, but the World Association of Newspapers (WAN) has laid down what it believes are useful guidelines that countries should follow that serve to protect basic human rights. Without such guidelines WAN fears that tightened security and surveillance measures can be used as a direct attack on the freedom of the press.

Those guidelines would:

• Guarantee public availability of officially held data, information and archives accessible under Freedom of Information laws or related legal provisions.
• Guarantee the right of journalists to protect their confidential sources of information, as a necessary requirement for a free press.
• Make electronic surveillance of communications dependent on judicial authorization, control or review, to protect the imperative independence and confidentiality of newsgathering.
• Ensure that searches of journalist offices or homes are conducted uniquely by warrant issued only when there is proven ground for suspicion of lawbreaking.
• Guarantee journalists the right to cover all sides of a story, including that of alleged terrorists, and to restrain from any hasty and unjustified criminalization of speech.
• Abstain from prosecuting journalists who published classified information. In free societies, courts have held that it is the job of governments, not journalists, to protect official secrets, subject to the common sense decisions that editors normally make against, for instance, endangering lives.
• Abstain from resorting to “black” propaganda - in other words, peacetime use of government services to plant false or misleading articles masquerading as normal journalism as well as the false use of journalistic identities by intelligence agents.

As a final resort WAN urges governments planning to pass anti-terrorism measures that they should ask themselves whether those proposed measures  violate Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which guarantees freedom “to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media.”

But it’s not just government action against terrorism that has the global newspaper organization concerned. It’s also continued actions by governments and international organizations to stifle free speech and a free press under the guise of protecting religious sensibilities. WAN is taking particular aim at the March 30 resolution approved by the UN Human Rights Council that attempts to justify censorship of free speech on the grounds of stopping religious defamation.

It brings up reminders how another UN organization, UNESCO, back in the 1970s tried to introduce the global licensing of journalists. Now another UN organization is passing resolutions that stifle a free press on the grounds of preventing religious defamation.

The UN Human Rights Council resolution, sponsored by Pakistan on behalf of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, condemns defamation of religions in general, although it mentions only Islam specifically. Presented as a measure to protect the religious sensibilities of Muslims, the resolution asserts that freedom of expression “should be exercised with responsibility and may therefore be subject to limitations as provided by law”. The resolution passed the Council by 24 votes to 14, with nine abstentions.

WAN is calling on the UN Human Rights Council President to take all necessary steps to ensure that international standards of freedom of expression are fully supported by the Council and not undermined by that March 30 resolution.

In other resolutions WAN has not forgotten that it was just one year ago that it met with President Putin in the Kremlin and complained  at how the killers of many Russian journalists have never been brought to justice. There were plenty of pleawsantries and tough talking, but in the end nothing changed, and three months later Anna Politkovskaya lay dead in the lobby of her Moscow apartment and no one has been arrested to this day.

A WAN resolution calls for an end to what it called the seeming impunity of those who have executed, or ordered the execution, of Russian journalists. The organization estimates that 21 journalists have been killed since Russian President Vladimir Putin came to power in March 2000, and in the great majority of cases no one has been convicted for the murders.

Two African resolutions asked  Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe to put an end to arbitrary and violent arrest, detention and torture of journalists, to firmly commit to the rule of law and to uphold international standards of freedom of expression and freedom of the press in Zimbabwe, and asked Senegal President Abdoulaye Wade to immediately halt the intimidation of Avenir Communication.

The Sengalese government’s closed Premiere FM hours before it was due to launch on 31 May. The station is owned by Madiambal Diagne’s Avenir Communication, also publisher of Le Quotidien, Week End magazine and the satirical Cocorico, all of which have been critical of the government. About 70 armed soldiers raided the Dakar offices of Avenir Communication as Diagne held a news conference to launch Premiere FM. When he refused to stop the station broadcasting the soldiers removed equipment, leaving the station off the air.

And no matter how much African leaders talk about press freedom that, unfortunately, is how things are still done in much of Africa.

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