Journalists and Media Workers: Safety and Security

Question for Short Debate

Asked by

To ask His Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking, as a member of the Media Freedom Coalition, to ensure the safety and security of journalists and media workers worldwide.

My Lords, I am extremely grateful for the opportunity to raise the important and pressing issue of the safety and security of journalists and media workers worldwide. Of course, the UK is a member of the Media Freedom Coalition and has a sincere commitment in this regard, but around the world there are more and more examples which illustrate that we are collectively falling short.

We live in a world where anyone can potentially be a target for those whose political views may differ. Politicians can be sanctioned by hostile actors, and many colleagues in this House and the other place would testify to that. Charities are de-banked, businesspeople are falsely maligned and individuals are intimidated and silenced the world over by autocratic regimes, and even by so-called democratic allies, often with little between them in the way of tactics. That is the chilling reality of today’s world. So one can imagine the strength of character and courage required to be a journalist or media person in a conflict zone, striving to discover the real facts of the situation on the ground.

Brave men and women risking their lives for the truth should be both honoured and protected, for freedom of the press is not merely a democratic ideal but a cornerstone of democracy. It is a guardian of accountability, a check on power and often the only voice for communities in conflict and crisis that might otherwise go unheard. Yet, around the world, that voice is increasingly under threat. The 2024 World Press Freedom Index paints a stark picture. Journalists are being silenced at an alarming rate: they are harassed, intimidated, detained and even killed simply for doing their job.

The United Kingdom, a founding member of the Media Freedom Coalition, has both a moral duty and a strategic interest in defending global press freedom. We must not only continue to champion media freedom globally, but redouble our efforts, especially as autocratic regimes and armed actors increasingly view the press as an enemy rather than a custodian. Here, I offer just a few of the many examples shared with me by Internews Europe, an international NGO I am happy to support.

In Afghanistan, since the fall of Kabul, there has been an escalating wave of repression. Dozens of journalists have been arrested, tortured or forced into hiding by the Taliban. In 2021 alone, Internews evacuated and helped to resettle 62 journalists and media workers facing extreme risk. In Sudan, since civil war erupted in 2023, Sudanese journalists have faced harassment, detention and exile. Yet they offer the most vital of lifelines, for in times of conflict, access to accurate, timely information can mean the difference between life and death by helping people avoid danger or find safe passage.

In Myanmar, local journalists have been eternally enterprising, committed and resilient in their efforts to bring information to the people of Myanmar. Yet 35 were imprisoned in 2024, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. With international media banned and internet shutdowns frequent, these individuals continue to do brave, risky and vital work, such as reporting on the recent earthquake.

My Lords, in the interests of brevity, I will restrict myself to asking my noble friend the Minister whether we plan to take action on four specific recommendations made by the Media Freedom Coalition’s high-level panel.

In 2019, it published four reports, each of which concluded with a specific recommendation. Other member states have begun to act on these, but the UK, despite its status as a founding member of the coalition, has not. First, it recommended the establishment of an emergency visa for journalists at risk. Secondly, it called for the creation of an independent investigative task force that can be deployed contemporaneously with the commission of the crimes to help tackle impunity for them. Thirdly, it advocated the use of targeted sanctions to provide accountability for such crimes and the ability to utilise sanctions in cases of arbitrary detention of journalists. Lastly, it suggested the enactment of a legal duty on states to provide consular assistance to journalists when arbitrarily detained abroad.

I know that some progress has been made on the latter, with the Government pledging to introduce a legal right to consular assistance for those affected by human rights violations, but real challenges remain. When will this be implemented and how can it better protect journalists who are arbitrarily detained abroad, such as British citizens Jimmy Lai, detained in Hong Kong, and Alaa Abd El-Fattah, detained in Egypt? Can my noble friend the Minister tell your Lordships’ House whether consideration is being given to following the example of other MFC members in adopting the high-level panel’s recommendations?

We know that the opposite of free speech is not silence but an uninterrupted monologue, and that the work of journalists in oppressive states is vital in protecting freedom and exposing governmental oppression.

My Lords, we need assurance that this Government understand the vital role that journalists play in bearing witness, and the crisis that is enveloping journalism across the world. Journalists are increasingly being harassed, imprisoned and killed with impunity. As the noble Baroness, Lady Mobarik, mentioned, in Gaza and the West Bank alone over 175 journalists have been killed since the start of the conflict—a conflict where they are prohibited unless accompanied by designated officials.

Will the Minister join me in congratulating the Marie Colvin Journalists’ Network on its work supporting female journalists in the Middle East? I declare an interest as being on its advisory board. It was established in memory of my brave friend who was murdered in Homs by the Assad regime. She was inspirational in her belief in the power of journalism to bring about change. There is also the MFC, an advocate for press freedom and journalists under threat. Why will the Government not support the call from the International Federation of Journalists and the NUJ for a UN convention for the protection of journalists?

I have just returned from the US, where the effect of Trump is chilling. The Associated Press has been excluded from attending press briefings because it insists on calling the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of Mexico. CBS News has been sued for the way it edited its own interview with Kamala Harris. Voice of America has been gutted, which makes support for our BBC World Service only more important—a beacon of non-partisan factual reporting which reaches a global audience of 320 million. Some 80% of the World Service budget is currently classed as ODA; can the Minister confirm that this funding will be protected?

When our Arabic radio service was withdrawn from Lebanon because of lack of funds, the frequency was taken over by Russia. Does the Minister not believe in sustainable investment in the World Service and that ultimately it should be financed through general taxation via the FCO, rather than by the licence fee?

My Lords, Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights guarantees the right to freedom of opinion and expression, including the freedom to hold opinions without interference, and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media, regardless of frontiers.

In exercising Article 19, too many journalists face harassment, prosecution, asset freezing, disinformation, kidnapping and even death—UNESCO suggest that, in 2024, at least 68 journalists were killed—all at a time when media outlets are being closed through hostility or funding cuts. Does the Minister agree that, when crimes against journalists are left unpunished, the lack of accountability and impunity merely emboldens the perpetrators?

Some of these crimes involve transnational repression, the subject of a current inquiry by the Joint Committee on Human Rights. We have received 1,244 pages of written submissions and oral testimonies, including evidence of systematic targeting of BBC staff and their families in countries such as Russia and Iran. Over 300 BBC World Service journalists, around 15%, now operate in exile.

We heard from Jimmy Lai’s lawyers about his imprisonment in Hong Kong: jailed by the Chinese Communist Party for the crime of journalism and for promoting free media. We heard of the shocking attempted murder in London of an Iranian journalist, left bleeding on the pavement outside his studio as three assailants headed for Heathrow and out of the country.

The JCHR has been told, “There has been a serious escalation of harassment and security threats directed at journalists reporting on Iran from abroad”, including credible death and kidnap threats. The committee will this week publish some of this evidence. Will the Minister urgently look at the evidence, engage with the JCHR, respond to the BBC’s call for “better co-ordination across government departments” in providing support for journalists and their families, and tell us how we intend to use international fora to make more effectively the case for Article 19 and to challenge impunity?

My Lords, I begin by thanking my noble friend for initiating this debate and by referring to my interest as a member of the media law Bar.

In the brief time available, I will mention only one subject: Jimmy Lai. He is a journalist and newspaper owner. He is 77 and a British citizen. He is a prisoner of conscience who has been unjustly imprisoned in Hong Kong for over four years. His 12-month trial for national security offences and sedition is now adjourned until 14 August. For the rest of the hot Hong Kong summer, he will be incarcerated in a small, hot cell. He is on trial because he is a journalist and a pro-democracy activist. This is an affront to the rule of law, and to his and our internationally recognised human rights. It shows up the authorities in Hong Kong and China as weak, afraid and foolish.

I urge the Minister and the Government as a whole not to forget Jimmy Lai. I urge noble Lords in every part of this House not to forget Jimmy Lai. When at least one democratically elected western leader is appeasing a murderous thug—the very type of person he and we should be confronting—this House, Parliament, Government, country and democracy must stand up for Jimmy Lai and let China know that he is not forgotten.

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Mobarik, for securing this debate and for an introduction that did not fall into outdated 20th century tropes about the idea of us over here with media freedom and them over there without it. The V-Dem—Varieties of Democracy—Institute’s report, Defiance in the Face of Autocratization, concludes that democracy around the world has receded to the level it was at in 1985 and that censorship and the intimidation of the media is a key factor in that. Brazil and Poland are two of the countries it sees crossing over from democracy to autocracy. As the noble Baroness, Lady Bonham-Carter, set out, we are seeing lots of cases of media suppression in the United States but also a huge suppression of academics who are often the commentators and analysts in the media, crucial voices that are now being silenced by the Trump presidency.

The focus has to be truly on journalistic freedom as a good in itself, not on using it as a stick with which to beat the people we want to beat while quietly ignoring what our friends are doing. I will focus particularly on the many journalists and activists who have campaigned on environmental issues around the world, noting the British journalist Dom Phillips who was murdered in the Amazon while investigating illegal fishing, logging and drug trafficking in protected indigenous reserves.

A lot of this repression is about not just states, but the actions of corporate actors. Will the Minister say what we are going to do to strengthen UK law to exclude from our supply chain actors that are involved in the repression of free speech and the murdering of journalists and the activists who supply them with information associated, in particular, with extractive industries that damage the rights and lives of indigenous people?

My Lords, I know the Minister is already well aware of the recent escalation in the Iranian authorities’ harassment and intimidation of BBC Persian journalists and their family members in Iran. The aim is to intimidate the journalists into stopping their work for the BBC World Service and to silence independent reporting on events in Iran. Reports to the BBC’s security team and to counter-terrorism police have not produced any relief or decline in the levels of intimidation. The targeting includes criminal convictions in absentia, freezing of assets, threats of kidnap and death and a disturbing increase of family members in Iran being questioned, harassed and having their passports confiscated.

London-based journalists cannot travel to see their families in Iran, obviously, so travel the other way is essential. However, there are significant problems with patchy advice from the Home Office and long delays in securing responses and the necessary documentation. The BBC has established good engagement on this with the FCDO, for which I am grateful to the Minister and his predecessor the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad, but what is urgently needed now, on which I seek explicit and urgent assurances from the Minister, is a whole-government approach to supporting the Persian Service journalists and holding Iran to account both internationally and in the UK. What would help immediately would be some effective leverage from the FCDO on the Home Office to get it to support and speed up its processing of visa applications for family members wishing to travel to the UK to visit Persian Service journalists based here. Will he agree to take this up with his Home Office colleagues urgently?

My Lords, I begin by extending my mubarak to my noble friend Lady Mobarik for convening this debate. I declare my interest as a non-executive director of Asia Media Group.

In 2019, the then Foreign Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, and I launched the Media Freedom Coalition at the UN, together with our then media envoy Amal Clooney and Abdalla Hamdok, whom I know the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, knows all too well. How things have changed in Sudan since then. At that time, there were 22 members of the Media Freedom Coalition. When we left government there were 51 members.

I have three specific questions for the Minister in that regard. I associate myself totally with the call from the noble Lord, Lord Browne, on the recommendations. On the active use of human rights sanctions mentioned by my noble friend Lady Mobarik, I know the Minister cannot answer specifically whether they are actively being considered but they are a key pillar of human rights and sanctions are there for the Government to use.

How many countries have joined the Media Freedom Coalition since last year? In my experience, breadth of membership is important to seeing collective action.

How much funding is being allocated to UNESCO, the UN body administrating support for journalists, from the UK and collectively? I would appreciate an update specifically on that. UNESCO’s role was about directly supporting journalists. How many journalists were supported with their legal fees in 2024 and in advocacy and representation to other Governments?

Notwithstanding the challenges faced on the ODA budget, I hope that the focus and the prioritisation that I know the Minister is personally committed to will continue on this key human rights priority.