What is the document referred to in the title?
It is a letter addressed to the British Prime Minister, released three days ago. It is signed by seven leaders of world institutions related to the press, media and journalism.
It is motivated by the reaction of the UK to the Snowden case. More specifically, the letter challenges the response of the British authorities - supposedly a top democracy - to the reporting of Snowden's leak by the British newspaper (see? one of their own papers) The Guardian.
But there is a single fact that has just come along and has led those entities to make them voice a passionate demand in the name of freedom and, more broadly, democracy. Such fact is the ruling of the High Court in the UK regarding the detention of the Brazilian David Miranda last August at Heathrow Airport, where he also had Snowden's documents confiscated. The Court decided that the detention and the confiscation were just right and legal.
Of course, the fact Miranda is a Brazilian makes it easier for the judges to rule according to the "terrorism" sordid allegation.
Miranda and Glenn Greenwald make up a couple - they live together in the city of Rio de Janeiro. Greenwald, as most of you must know, is an American who until recently worked for The Guardian, where he published Snowden's story. Our guess is that Greenwald was forced to leave the British paper; he left shortly after having published Snowden's shocking revelations based on NSA documents. His last day in The Guardian was Oct 31.
Such developemts have everything to do with Aaron Swartz, who did so much in defence of the freedom of ideas.
While I go now looking for the full ruling of the British Court, you can appreciate the letter to David Cameron below. It is a copy from https://www.cpj.org/blog/Coordinating_Committee_Letter.pdf
CPJ stands for Committee to Protect Journalists, whose main director signed first in the letter.
The link above points to versions of the letter in Spanish and in French.
The Rt. Hon. David Cameron
Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
10 Downing Street
London SW1A 2AA
Great Britain
February 18, 2014
Dear Prime Minister Cameron:
Last month members of the Global Coordinating Committee of Press Freedom Organizations
met in London to assess threats to press freedom around the world and to plan joint action.
The Coordinating Committee includes many of the leading international press freedom
organizations. When we selected London for our annual meeting, it was because it is a
convenient gathering point. We did not expect that the press freedom challenges in the United
Kingdom would feature so prominently on our agenda.
But in the two days preceding the annual meeting, many Coordinating Committee members,
including representatives from the Committee to Protect Journalists, the Inter American Press
Association, the International Press Institute, the World Press Freedom Committee, and the
International Association of Broadcasting, had an opportunity to participate as observers in a
fact-finding mission organized by the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers
(WAN-IFRA). We heard a full spectrum of views—from academics and political analysts;
industry groups; freedom of expression organizations including Article 19, Index on Censorship,
and English PEN; and pressure groups like Hacked Off, who introduced us to some of the
victims of the phone hacking scandals. We also had a chance to meet with members of
Parliament, and some members of the WAN-IFRA delegation were also hosted by the Rt. Hon.
Maria Miller MP, Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport.
The mere fact that WAN-IFRA would take the unprecedented step of organizing a press freedom
mission to the United Kingdom shows in and of itself the level of concern in the global press
freedom community. While WAN-IFRA plans to issue a separate in-depth report at a later time,
we are writing to you directly as members of the Coordinating Committee to share our views. As
groups fighting for press freedom and freedom of expression around the world, we are deeply
concerned that actions taken by your government will embolden autocratic leaders to restrict the
media under the guise of protecting national security or improving media performance. In fact,
this is already occurring.
A key area of focus for the WAN-IFRA delegation is the government pressure that has been
applied to the Guardian newspaper and its editor, Alan Rusbridger. The pressure began in May
2013 after the Guardian began publishing a series of stories based on documents leaked to them
by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. These documents, some of which the Guardian
shared with U.S. media organizations including The New York Times and ProPublica, revealed
the existence of a massive government surveillance effort carried out by the NSA and
Government Communications Headquarters. These stories sparked a broad public debate around
the world about the appropriate limits of government surveillance in the electronic age. That
debate reverberated throughout the capitals of Latin America and Europe; led to the introduction
of resolutions at the United Nations; and sparked a broad policy review in the United States that
is playing out both in the courts and the political arena.
Unfortunately, the focus of attention in the U.K. has been less on the implications of the
Snowden revelations and more on the journalistic efforts undertaken by the Guardian to make
this critically important information available to the global public. In August 2013, David
Miranda, the partner of then-Guardian reporter Glenn Greenwald, was detained under the U.K.’s
anti-terror law while transiting through Heathrow airport. Journalistic material that he was
transporting on behalf of the Guardian was confiscated. Subsequently, Rusbridger revealed that
a senior government official compelled the Guardian to destroy hard drives containing the
leaked Snowden documents, even though the copies of the material were available to Guardian
reporters operating outside the U.K. who are continuing to report on the revelations.
In December 2013, Rusbridger was called upon to testify before a Parliamentary Select
Committee regarding the newspaper’s decision to publish the Snowden documents. In the course
of those proceedings, Rusbridger’s patriotism was called into question. Speaking before
Parliament, you claimed, without evidence, that the Guardian’s actions had damaged British
national security and urged Parliament to carry out an investigation. Parallel to the Parliamentary
investigation, the Metropolitan Police are reportedly carrying out a criminal inquiry into possible
violations of the anti-terror law.
We view these actions and the consistent government pressure on the Guardian as incompatible
with the British tradition of press freedom, and deeply damaging to the country’s international
prestige. If there is evidence that the Guardian has broken the law—and we would like to stress
that we have seen absolutely nothing to suggest that this is the case—then the competent judicial
authorities should carry out an independent criminal investigation free of government
interference. Your comments, and those of some members of Parliament, have at a minimum
undermined the perception of impartiality by suggesting that the process is being driven by
political rather than legal concerns.
We note that the unprecedented pressure on the Guardian comes at a time when the British
public is engaged in a fierce debate over media regulation. We believe the issues are linked, as
together they create the impression that British authorities are seeking to constrain and control
the work of the media. In fact, the debate over media regulation was sparked by the Guardian’s
and other newspapers’ reporting on criminal phone hacking and other abuses committed by some
members of the media over the course of many years. In response to these revelations, you
announced that a commission led by Sir Brian Leveson would carry out a systematic inquiry into
media practice and propose steps to curb abuses. The revelations also sparked the mobilization of
hacking victims, led by Hacked Off.
At the end of his 18-month inquiry, which documented a culture of abuse and arrogance in the
media, Leveson proposed the creation of a new, more robust mechanism for what was termed
“independent, voluntary press self-regulation.” He also proposed that participation in the new
self-regulatory body be incentivized by a system of rewards and punishments grounded in
statute. We were pleased that you rejected such an explicit statutory framework for media
regulation, describing it as a “Rubicon” that Britain could not cross.
A Royal Charter was proposed as a compromise. A medieval vestige, a Royal Charter is more
commonly conferred on a public institution. In this case, the language of the charter was crafted
by government ministers and presented to the Queen for signature by her advisory body, the
Privy Council. In a convoluted process virtually incomprehensible to anyone not versed in its
arcana, the Royal Charter establishes a recognition body to certify that any self-regulatory entity
created by the media itself conforms to the Leveson recommendations. To compel participation
in this regulatory body, Parliament was called on to pass several measures that impose high
punitive damages on media outlets that do not join the system and also require that they pay legal
costs of plaintiffs in libel actions, even when the media organizations prevail in civil libel cases.
This Parliamentary action, in our view, establishes statutory underpinning for media regulation.
This means that the Rubicon has, in fact, been crossed. After listening to all sides of the debate,
we recognize the gravity of the problem of media abuse that the Royal Charter seeks to address.
We also recognize that the Leveson inquiry took a deliberate and thoughtful approach to a
complex issue. But the deliberative nature of the process does not mean that the best outcome
has been recommended. It is our view that the Parliamentary action that essentially compels
participation in the regulatory mechanism belies claims that it will be “voluntary.”
Indeed, it should be a source of serious concern to your government that autocratic leaders
seeking to limit media freedom now cite the British example. President Rafael Correa of
Ecuador, who has championed one of the most repressive media laws in all of Latin America,
has explicitly invoked the British example in defending his actions. In an August 2013 speech,
he noted:
“The Communication Law, the gag law, threat to freedom of expression, words that the
Mercantilist press uses to lie and assert that this is [a] country [where] no [one] can
express an opinion and that free voices are silenced. But now foreign counties show that
Ecuador is right. The United Kingdom has created a communication law to regulate the
excesses of a certain yellow press in that country.”
Mercantilist press uses to lie and assert that this is [a] country [where] no [one] can
express an opinion and that free voices are silenced. But now foreign counties show that
Ecuador is right. The United Kingdom has created a communication law to regulate the
excesses of a certain yellow press in that country.”
The WAN-IFRA mission heard from Lord Anthony Lester of Herne Hill that government representatives from South Africa to Malaysia had asked how the British approach to media regulation could be adapted to their circumstances. Zafar Abbas, the editor of Dawn newspaper
in Pakistan and a member of the WAN-IFRA delegation, described to us how Pakistani officials
now routinely cite actions of the British government in pressing the Pakistani media to “selfregulate”
or face government action.
We write to urge you to take immediate steps to safeguard press freedom in the U.K. and to ensure that the actions of your government are never used to justify media restrictions elsewhere in the world.
Specifically, we urge the following:
- Distance yourself from the Parliamentary investigation into the Guardian and refrain from any public comments about the criminal investigation, to avoid the perception of political pressure.
- Urge Parliament to repeal the amendments to the Crime and Courts Bill and other legislation that provides statutory underpinning to the Royal Charter.
