I remind hon. Members that there have been some changes to normal practice in order to support the new hybrid arrangements. Members participating physically and virtually must arrive for the start of Westminster Hall debates and are expected to remain for the entire debate. I also remind Members participating virtually that they are visible at all times, both to each other and to us in the Boothroyd Room. If Members attending virtually have any technical problems, they should email the Westminster Hall Clerks at their email address, which is westminsterhallclerks@parliament.uk. Members attending physically should clean their spaces before they use them and as they leave the room. I also remind Members who are here with me physically that Mr Speaker has stated that masks should be worn in Westminster Hall debates, unless the Member is contributing.
That this House has considered World Press Freedom Day 2021.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Ghani. World Press Freedom Day, which falls on 3 May, is a reminder to Governments of the need to respect their commitment to press freedom; a day of reflection among media professionals about issues of press freedom and professional ethics; and a day of support for media workers who are targets for the restraint or abolition of press freedom. It is also a day of remembrance for those journalists who lost their lives in the pursuit of a story.
I am grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for having granted time for this debate today, which has been the first opportunity to hold it since the start of the new parliamentary Session. I also declare my interest as the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on media freedom, which is supported by Reporters Without Borders.
This debate comes in the wake of last Sunday’s hijacking of a civilian aircraft by the Belarusian Government in order to kidnap the journalist Roman Protasevich, an outspoken critic of President Lukashenko’s illegitimate and oppressive regime. This is one of the most audacious attacks on press freedom we have seen, but it is just another example of the increasingly brazen way in which Governments seek to oppress legitimate journalism with increasing impunity.
In 2018, we saw the murder of Jamal Khashoggi by agents of the Saudi Arabian Government in the grounds of their own consulate in Istanbul. In 2017, Daphne Caruana Galizia, a campaigning journalist who investigated corruption and organised crime and delved into visa-for-sale schemes, energy deals and Caribbean offshore companies set up for Maltese politicians, was assassinated by a car bomb planted by a professional hitman.
I compliment the hon. Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Damian Collins) on securing the debate and on the way in which he introduced the subject. It is absolutely crucial and essential to all our lives that we think seriously about what press freedom actually means. In any free society, the right to know, the right to speak and the right to assemble are important and precious, and indeed are encapsulated in the 1948 universal declaration of human rights.
In considering press freedom, we should also look at media ownership and control, and the concentration of media ownership into a small number of global companies that impose news values on their outlets, which are not necessarily very open and which are often not interested in many of the poorest parts of the world but only in celebrity and the goings on in the wealthiest parts of the world. It is important that we recognise the importance of the right to know, and therefore the importance of diversity of ownership and diversity of access to the media.
As the hon. Gentleman quite correctly pointed out, many people now get most of their information from online sources, through social media and associated outlets. Many people simply do not buy newspapers and do not access newspaper websites or anything else. They rely completely on news that they believe they select themselves from various websites around the world, but they are often unaware of the complex, complicated and very efficient algorithms used to drive people in certain directions on certain stories and news issues.
We must look not only at the freedom of journalists and the importance of independent ownership of all media outlets, but at making social media accessible to everyone. Social media companies have shown themselves to be very happy to operate with authoritarian and oppressive regimes and close down access altogether to certain individuals. For example, in the middle of their strike action in Delhi, Indian farmers suddenly found that they had no access whatsoever to social media, which was a crucial outlet for them. Social media is restricted in a number of countries, and Google and others are quite happy to do deals with national Governments in order to restrict access to information. These things have to be looked at seriously and carefully. We need international agreement on this, which I will come on to in a moment.
I apologise, Ms Ghani. I was not aware that there was a time limit. I will briefly say this. In our complacency, let us not forget brave people who have blown the whistle on the truth around the world. I think of Julian Assange and the work he has done in exposing what has happened around the world in preparation for war and other things. In some countries, he would be called a hero for being a whistleblower; here, he is called something very different. We should think of what news values and freedom of speech values are actually all about. Thank you for the opportunity to speak, Ms Ghani.
I have been practising the black arts of journalism for the best part of 50 years. In that time, I have had quite a few dodgy moments, but I have never been arrested, I have never been tortured and, patently, I have never been murdered. I have published and reported on stories that politicians have not liked, but I can honestly say that I have not been subjected to political pressure and I certainly have not suffered from the online threats that, sadly, today’s journalists suffer from.
I recognise that around the world there are very brave people going where I, frankly, would have feared to go in the interests of publishing and truth. It is right that we say “Thank you” on occasions to some people in power. I recognise the initiatives taken by the Foreign Secretary in pursuing this issue seriously through the global conference in London and as co-chair with Canada of the Media Freedom Coalition. Last December, the world press freedom conference highlighted the cause again, and I hope that it will be raised at the G7 in Cornwall, when we sit in the president’s chair.
We do not often say “Thank you” to civil servants, so perhaps it is right that we recognise the work of Kanbar Hossein Bor, Louise Saville, Michelle Webster and Justin Williams, who head up the media freedom teams at the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. We also ought to thank Rebecca Vincent of Reporters Sans Frontières, who I understand also provides the secretariat for the all-party parliamentary group on media freedom. They are doing valuable work, and we must be grateful to them.
During my time with the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, we pursued this issue vigorously. My friend and colleague Lord Foulkes was, and still is, stalwart in seeking to defend media freedom. The appalling case of Roman Protasevich, which was instigated by Lukashenko, the President of Belarus, and the equally vile murder of Jamal Khashoggi, at the behest of the Saudi Arabian Government, are frightful. However, every day there is ongoing oppression of journalists in the Russian Federation, in China, in Azerbaijan, in Ethiopia, in Myanmar and most certainly in Turkey. BBC World Service reporters are under desperate pressure in Hong Kong and in Persia, and sadly, because of some careless words uttered by a previous Foreign Secretary, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe is languishing in an Iranian prison on a trumped-up charge of teaching journalism—as if that was something that should not be done.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Ghani. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Damian Collins) for securing this debate. It is appropriate that we celebrate World Press Freedom Day, because press freedom is fundamental to our democracy. It is a basic right. We all know that knowledge is power and that, equally, its absence endangers us. Press freedom allows us to expose totalitarianism, often in the face of danger, as other Members have said.
I was privileged to know James Pringle, who returned to my old constituency to vote in the Scottish referendum back in 2014. He regaled me with tales about, first, having served in the Dominican coup and then having been the first western journalist into Cambodia under Pol Pot, after the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge. I pay tribute to his courage.
Press freedom is vital to democracy. I remember reading Professor Henry Milner’s book, “Civic Literacy”. It is a study of what motivates turnout in elections. A critical factor is not whether it is as easy to vote as to buy a tin of beans in a supermarket; what matters in particular is understanding, and a quality media is fundamental to that. If people do not understand the issues, they will not participate and vote. That factor is normally shown in this country in turnouts being higher in referendums, when there is a clear understanding of the issues, than in wider elections, where turnout can be significantly lower.
As other Members have said, there are obviously ongoing issues—in Saudi Arabia and Belarus, and indeed closer to home, with Julian Assange. I sympathise and agree with the points made by others across the political divide that these people require protection.
I listened with interest to the hon. Member for Folkestone and Hythe, who was correct to point out the changes that have happened in the media. I have been writing for the Scottish media for several years now. The decline is significant. There are actions we have to take to address that and to protect the valuable newspapers that are undermined by other platforms. We should also remember that in many instances now, social media is just as important as the mainstream media.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Ghani. I welcome this debate called by the hon. Member on world press freedom. We should be proud to live in a democracy where the press exercises a high level of freedom to highlight the truth and hold the Government to account. That does not mean we do not still face challenges in relation to the press in the UK and their reporting, in particular towards Muslims and minority communities.
Thankfully, we do not live in a nation where the regime in Government blows to smithereens the towers housing internationally renowned journalists such as in the AP building. Yes, I am speaking about the callous and totalitarian attack by the Israeli military a week or so ago in the tower housing both AP and al-Jazeera journalists. Much will be said in this debate about world press freedom relating to China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, North Korea or Iran, for instance, all of which our nation and I too share concerns about in regards to press freedom. However, just over a week ago, we watched the Israeli military blow up a mainstream media outlet, which the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he had he seen no evidence for. Despite such a devastating attack on press freedom, given the scale of the attack, the response by the so-called defenders of free speech was deafening in its silence, and the outright condemnation by our Government seemed to be written in invisible ink.
The latest siege on Gaza and targeted Israeli air force attacks have destroyed the premises of 23 Palestinian and international media outlets, according to some reports, in a single week. A statement by the nine experts to the United Nations Human Rights office stated:
“The indiscriminate or deliberate bombardment of civilians and towers housing civilians in Gaza and Israel, as well as media organizations and refugee camps in Gaza, are war crimes that are, prima facie, not justified by the requirements of proportionality and necessity under international law. All parties who engage in such attacks must bear individual and State responsibility as appropriate.”
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Ghani, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Damian Collins) on securing this important debate to mark World Press Freedom Day 2021. It could not be more pertinent at a time when attacks on press freedom across the world and in parts of Europe are intensifying. Authoritarian Governments across the world have yet again demonstrated that, before all other things, they fear the power of the written word.
I start by paying my respects to Roman Protasevich, a Belarusian blogger and journalist who was captured by the Lukashenko regime in an aeroplane hijack last Sunday. Roman faces charges of terrorism in his native country for the pivotal role that his Nexta blog played in instigating and co-ordinating the peaceful pro-democracy protests of last year. Belarus is the only country in Europe that retains the death penalty, which is a very real threat that Roman may now be facing. I believe all Members present share my deepest concern for Roman’s wellbeing, and I insist in the strongest possible terms that the UK Government do everything in their power to help secure his immediate release.
Thirty-four journalists are now in prison in Belarus, and dozens of independent media outlets are being prevented from operating freely. This week, Alexander Lukashenko signed a decree that erects even more explicit legal barriers to the freedom of the press, including a prohibition on news outlets making live reports on unauthorised mass gatherings, new powers for the information ministry to order the closure of media outlets, and a ban on the publication of opinion polls that are unauthorised by the Government. The Belarusian police recently raided and shut down TUT.BY, the largest independent Belarusian media outlet, as a follow-up to revoking its media credentials last year.
2:10 pm
Claudia Webbe (Leicester East) (Ind) [V]
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Ghani. I congratulate the hon. Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Damian Collins) on securing this important debate.
Press Freedom Day comes at an important time: not only have we just witnessed the bombing of the building of two major outlets—al Jazeera and Associated Press— we have also just witnessed the latest example of wide- spread misreporting on the crisis between Israel and Palestine. The systemic violence against Palestinians and the continued illegal Israeli occupation is an international atrocity. Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestine territories have been identified by the United Nations as being in breach of international law, but across the British and western media landscapes the crisis is too often reported as a conflict, yet it is not a conflict between equals. It is about the occupier and the occupied. The Gaza strip is effectively an open-air prison, with 97% of the population having no access to clean water, and each bombing campaign further eroding living standards. It is a colonial war. The British empire was instrumental in the displacement and subjugation of the Palestinian people.
The UK and western press either fail to report on atrocities against the Palestinian people, or label the abuses as clashes and consistently misreport the systemic aggression, dispossession and violence directed at Palestinians. Such framing serves only to legitimise and obscure the scale of oppression in occupied Palestine. It is encapsulated by the case of US journalist Emily Wilder, who was sacked by Associated Press after it was unearthed that she had previously supported Palestinian rights. I urge the Independent Press Standards Organisation to do much more to ensure the accurate, contextualised and fair reporting of the crisis. A strong, diverse and independent media is a cornerstone of a healthy democracy and society.
I am also concerned by the continued imprisonment and attempted extradition of Julian Assange. That case presents a real danger to the freedom of the press. It extends the judicial reach of the US Government, and it deploys the US Espionage Act against a journalist for the very first time. We must oppose this attempt to criminalise journalism that involves reporting on classified information. If not, it could set a chilling precedent with grave implications for the functioning of our democracy. I believe that the US Government must drop the attempted prosecution, and the British Government must do all they can to halt a process from which there can be no satisfactory outcome for the freedom of the press.
A free press is essential for our public life, but sadly much of our press is really not free at all. A 2019 study by the Media Reform Coalition found that just three companies—News UK, the Daily Mail group, and Reach—dominate 83% of the national newspaper market, and that has actually increased by 11% in just four years. Looking at who owns those outlets, the right-wing bias in our media ecosystem becomes clear: five billionaires own around 80% of all UK media, and two billionaire press barons own half of the UK’s top ten daily newspapers. The fact is that since 1979—a period spanning 11 general elections—no party has been able to reside in Government without the explicit backing of a newspaper owned by Rupert Murdoch.
20 of 32 shown
According to Reporters Without Borders, 50 journalists were killed around the world last year, and a further 13 have already been killed in 2021. These include Sadida Sadat and Shahnaz Roufi in Afghanistan, who worked for Enikass TV’s dubbing service and were gunned down in an alley in Jalalabad as they were walking home at around 4.30 pm. Their colleague Mursal Waheedi was shot in the rickshaw she had taken to go home. All three women were aged 20 or 21. Furthermore, in 2020, 387 journalists and media workers were held in detention: 117 of those were in China, and 34 were in the next highest country, Saudi Arabia. In the Philippines, in the five years since President Rodrigo Duterte came to power, 16 journalists have been killed in connection with their work, the latest of whom was beaten to death in May 2020.
Media freedom is being threatened not just by violent physical attack, but by the use of dubious legal procedures to intimidate or close down journalists. In the Philippines, Maria Ressa, a journalist and the chief executive of the digital news service Rappler, has been under repeated legal attack since the election of Duterte. Rappler has tirelessly investigated human rights violations and the country’s increasingly authoritarian Government, and Ressa, whom I am proud to serve alongside on the Real Facebook Oversight Board, currently faces 10 open charges against her, relating to nine separate cases. Some of those have been brought retrospectively through new laws created since the alleged offences occurred.
In this country, too, our legal system is being used to intimidate legitimate journalism through lawfare—the misuse of legal systems and principles against an opponent by seeking to damage or delegitimise them, wasting their time and money—and what is known as SLAPP, a strategic lawsuit against public participation. Such actions are intended to censor, intimidate and silence critics by burdening them with the cost of legal defence until they abandon their criticism of the opponent. The initiator of such a lawsuit does not usually expect to win, but to wear down the defendant until they succumb to fear, intimidation and mounting legal costs or exhaustion, and cease their otherwise legitimate criticism. A current example is the journalist Catherine Belton, author of “Putin’s People”, which was published last year by HarperCollins, who is facing lawsuits, along with her publisher, filed in London by four Russian businessmen, including Roman Abramovich.
Mr Abramovich has also recently forced apologies from British newspapers—The Times and The Daily Mail—for stating that he gave a yacht, Le Grand Bleu, to Eugene Shvidler, a Russian-American oil billionaire, despite the fact that Mr Shvidler had stated this himself in English court proceedings on 14 November, 2011, during the hearing of the Berezovsky v. Abramovich case. I also understand that in 2019, Mr Abramovich’s lawyers were also successful in preventing the broadcast of a BBC “Panorama” investigation. It is interesting that Mr Abramovich, who is not a resident of the UK, has not visited the country since 2018 and has not been granted a new UK visa, can nevertheless retain the services of the London law firm Harbottle & Lewis and has full access to the English courts.
Data protection legislation is also being routinely abused to make multiple requests against investigative journalists and corporate research and intelligence companies, for any information that they hold on any individual or organisation. In Australia, the Protection of Public Participation Act 2008 seeks to
“protect public participation, and discourage certain civil proceedings that a reasonable person would consider interfere with engagement in public participation.”
In the USA, high-profile public figures are also limited in their access to the courts to pursue such cases. It is time we looked at whether such reforms are required in the UK, and also to review the GDPR legislation to prevent it from being used to intimidate those engaged in legitimate investigations acting in the public interest.
We also have to consider the commercial pressures faced by the news industry today, which pose perhaps one of the greatest threats to the freedom of the press. In 2019, the Cairncross review, commissioned by the Government, highlighted that the sales of both national and locally printed papers have plunged. They fell by roughly half between 2007 and 2017, and are still dropping. In addition, print advertising revenues, which used to carry much of the cost of producing news, have fallen even faster, declining in that decade by 69%. To cut costs there have been mergers, as well as heavy cuts in staffing numbers of frontline journalists in the UK, and in that period those numbers have dropped from 23,000 to 17,000, and the numbers are still falling.
These pressures came to light recently in Australia, where an investigation by its competition authority has highlighted that for every $100 of online advertising spend, $53 goes to Google, $28 to Facebook, and $19 to everybody else. This creates enormous pressure on other organisations, particularly news companies and publishers that have in the past relied on advertising revenue to pay their journalists and investigations. The decline in ad revenue for publishers is a direct challenge to the news industry itself, which has already led to the closures of a great number of publications, and many of those that have survived have had to make significant cuts and reductions.
In order to preserve the future of public interest journalism, the Australian Government presented the news media bargaining code to oblige companies such as Facebook and Google to enter into commercial arrangements with the news industry to ensure fair renumeration for their content. It was only because they legislated to require this, and to give a regulator the power to mediate and set the term of renumeration if no deal was done, that Google and Facebook eventually did move. We have to consider what the role of journalism is in the digital age, where people increasingly use the internet as their primary source of news and information. The most recent Ofcom “Media Nations” survey, published last summer, showed that around 35% of people now regularly get their news from Facebook.
News media and the freedom of the press face a constant assault every day. Direct challenges are issued, through social media, against “the mainstream media”, which is used as a derogatory term, seeking to persuade the public that they should not believe the so-called mainstream media on anything they write, whether critical or praiseworthy, and putting people in a position where they simply do not know what they should believe anymore. In the world of social media, where algorithms of engagement drive content through those platforms, often it is the misleading or the downright lies and conspiracy theories that gain a bigger audience, are more interesting and are actively promoted by those platforms. When Parliament considers the online safety Bill later this year—it is currently in draft form—we must take into account the impact of harmful disinformation, spread through and sometimes amplified by social media, which is undermining news and, through that, democracy itself.
We need to protect journalism and the freedom of the press if we are to remain an open and democratic society. We need to recognise that those values are increasingly under attack from authoritarian Governments around the world who actively and deliberately target journalists, sometimes physically, sometimes emotionally, sometimes economically, but always with intent to suppress their necessary work. We need to ensure that our modern media landscape, driven by social media platforms and their engagement, still works to provide fair remuneration for journalists creating content, because if journalists cannot be paid for what they do, few will do it. The people who will win in that situation will be those who fear legitimate investigation and questioning.
I have in front of me the “White Paper on Global Journalism”, produced by the International Federation of Journalists, of which I am a member, in the sense that I am a member of the National Union of Journalists in Britain. This report makes for chilling reading. Since 1990, as the hon. Gentleman has pointed out, 2,650 journalists have been killed around the world. Those are the ones we know of—there may well be more. A good friend of mine, Anabel Hernández, a Mexican journalist, launched a book called “The Sorrows of Mexico” with Lydia Cacho and others at the Edinburgh international book festival three years ago. I was there. She described what she had gone through in preparing the book and in writing about the power of drug cartels, corrupt police forces and the role of the military. She described the threats made to her:
“Ever since, I have lived with 24 hour protection, if you can call that living.”
The threat never goes away. On 21 December 2014, a dozen men, armed with AK47 rifles and handguns, closed off the street where Hernández lived, and started asking her neighbours in which house the journalist lived. They deactivated the security cameras in the immediate area, including those installed in her house. She was lucky that day, because she was not at home; she was away. That is the kind of life that she and other very brave journalists live in Mexico, in Colombia, in Egypt and in other countries where journalists are consistently under threat.
We mourn those who have been killed, but there are many others in jail and the threat of jailing journalists is a form of censorship. Many of the world’s Governments know that by consistently threatening journalists, they will either tone down their reporting or simply not report what is going on where corruption, drug cartels and so on are involved. There is a kind of league table of journalists who are in prison. Globally, there are 235 of them in prison—those are the ones we know of —including 67 in Turkey, 21 in Egypt and 20 in China. They are all people who have been imprisoned because they were trying to report the truth.
The hon. Gentleman quite rightly pointed out what happened to Roman Protasevich. Obviously, it is appalling that the plane was effectively hijacked and he was taken to Belarus because he had been writing stories that were critical of its regime. Obviously, action should be taken. I am a member of the Council of Europe and my fellow members and I will make our views very well known at subsequent meetings. Unfortunately, Belarus is not a member of the Council of Europe; it is the only European country that is not a member.
Our complaints and objections about the way in which Roman Protasevich is being treated would be far more credible if the London Stock Exchange was not at the same time hosting financial servicing arrangements and opportunities to raise cash for the Belarussian Government. If we are serious about press freedom and freedoms in general, we must think very carefully about what financial institutions and others are doing.
The terrible events in Gaza and the west bank over the last few weeks and the loss of life of people both in Israel and in Palestine are obviously shocking and appalling. It is also very clear that the bombing was very effectively and efficiently targeted in Gaza. Two towers were taken out completely; they were demolished by targeted bombing. They included the offices of al-Jazeera and a number of other journalistic outlets in the region, so they could no longer effectively report what was happening in Gaza. Some brave journalists managed to use satellite phones and so on to keep in communication, but they were reporting while under fire from Israel that was quite clearly targeting those places where journalists were trying to report the reality of what is going on. And Yousef Abu Hussein, a young journalist, was killed during that whole process.
In this debate I hope that we can reflect on the bravery of journalists around the world—those who seek to speak truth to power and who try to tell us the truth about what is happening around the world. We all love newspapers; we all love news and information. However, we need to make sure that those who collect and gather that information—irritating as they often are to politicians; that is the world in which we live—are a crucial part of any democratic society.
The work done by the International Federation of Journalists and others in trying to get global agreement on the protection of journalists is very important. It is also important that the United Nations Human Rights Council continues its work on protecting journalists, and that we have an effective protection mechanism for journalists all around the world. Too many have died, too many are in prison and too many are frightened to report the news they ought to be reporting, because they are scared of what will happen to them if they do so.
We should not be complacent about our own society, either, because often in Parliament we have this sense of complacency that bad things—
I have four questions to put to my right hon. Friend the Minister, and I hope he will be able to answer. First, will the subject of media freedom be on the G7 agenda for Cornwall? Secondly, will the Government of the United Kingdom be prepared to use Magnitsky sanctions in cases of breach of media freedom? Can my right hon. Friend assure us that the BBC’s World Service funding, which at the moment is under an extension due to end in September, will be continued? That contribution to media freedom is vital. Finally, will the Government of the United Kingdom be prepared to back the call from Reporters San Frontières for a UN special representative for the safety of journalists?
We have looked in this country at what happened in the Arab spring. It was not the mainstream media that was the outlet letting people know, both within the countries that were part of the Arab spring, and in the wider world. It was not the papers, held by the regimes. It was social media bloggers and just people tweeting, or writing on their Facebook pages or whatever else. The hon. Gentleman was right to warn about dangerous disinformation and the challenges that we face as a society to protect our democracy. Equally, we also have to remember that it is important that we support that.
That brings me to my own situation within my own jurisdiction of Scotland. It is many years since I first studied law. I have had 20 years practising as a lawyer and seven and a half years as Justice Secretary. I never thought I would face a situation where I was condemnatory of actions that have been happening against the press in my own country.
Since the days of learning about the Gordon Airs case, HM Advocate v. Airs, I always assumed that those who were seeking to put forward information that was appropriate and fair would be protected. Yet in Scotland, in the fallout from the Alex Salmond affair, we have seen Mark Hirst, a journalist, prosecuted. The case, in which he was supported by the NUJ, was rightly rejected by the presiding sheriff in the Borders. We have seen Craig Murray, a blogger and former British senior civil servant, now facing a prison sentence of eight months. That is not only shocking, but drives a coach and horses through a position brought in by the Scottish Government that there be a presumption against a sentence of imprisonment for less than a year. Their absence of criticism and their failure to comment has been quite shocking.
It is not simply cases brought by the Crown. It is the cases that have been pursued by the police, where people so much as tweeting anything that might be seen as possibly identifying a witness have faced a knock on the door from the police. That is fundamentally damaging to Scottish democracy. It is not what I expect and it has not come about by happenchance. It has been deliberate. It has been targeted. It is being driven by the Crown Office. If we are to have a free press, there has to be free reporting. That has to apply to bloggers as much as it applies to the mainstream press.
That people have been charged in Scottish courts and have faced possible terms of imprisonment for simply doing exactly the same as the mainstream press has done but not faced prosecution is simply unacceptable. There is also a reason that I am required to raise it here: it is that the position of the Lord Advocate of Scotland is no longer tenable. There has to be a separation of powers of having one individual who is both a legal adviser to the Scottish Government and also the head of the prosecution service in Scotland. That is no longer appropriate and I am disappointed that the First Minister did not seek to make it faster. It is something that has to come back to this Chamber because as a result of the Scotland Act 1998, the Lord Advocate is enshrined in statute by this Parliament. Action must be taken here as well as in Holyrood.
Let me state just one example. At approximately 4.30 am on Wednesday 19 May, Israeli war planes targeted with three successive rockets, without prior warning, the fourth and fifth floors of the home of Muhammed Abdul Qadr Muhammed Abu Hussein, 63, consisting of five floors over an area of 120 square metres and located on Al-Gala Street near Sheikh Radwan junction north of Gaza City. Yousef Muhammed Abdul Qadr Abu Hussein, 32, a journalist who worked as a broadcaster for the local Voice of Al-Aqsa radio station, a husband and a father of three, was killed in that attack.
All that I have stated is a reality of the Israeli regime in only the last few weeks. Even after the ceasefire, AP reported that 17 journalists in Gaza had confirmed their WhatsApp accounts had been blocked. When 23 media houses are obliterated, journalists killed and social media networks blocked, where is press freedom? The question is whether the Government will still support the International Criminal Court investigation into the situation in Palestine, given Israel’s repeated attacks on media outlets and journalists. I also remind the Minister of a statement from his colleague Lord Ahmad on the matter of press freedom. He said:
“Ultimately, we need every country to recognise that attacks on media freedom are beyond the pale. And just like any assault on human rights, and I speak as the UK Human Rights Minister, we must hold abusers accountable, both legally and financially.”
I agree that we need every country to recognise that attacks on media freedom will not be tolerated and legal and financial accountability will be the consequences. I say to the Minister that the mounting evidence of the Israel’s alleged crimes is before him. If the Government truly want to support press freedom worldwide, they should support the investigation by the International Criminal Court into Israel’s actions. At the very least, they should use today’s debate on world press freedom as an opportunity to condemn the totalitarian actions by Israel and to support journalists within the region.
There have also been reports of personal blackmail and the intimidation of journalists, such as the journalist Arina Malinovskaya, who works with the Belarusian independent TV channel Belsat. Arina, who is currently abroad, is reported by the Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza to have received threats from the Belarusian police that unless she returns to Belarus and presents herself at a police station, her sister and grandparents will suffer the consequences. Such tactics are designed to silence and intimidate even Belarusians in exile, and to prevent them from reporting systemic human rights violations in their home country. In August last year, the Government in Belarus removed the accreditation of two BBC journalists, meaning they are no longer able to work for the BBC legally. They are both Belarusian nationals who have worked for the BBC for a number of years. The BBC has called on the Belarusian authorities to revoke the decision and to allow the two journalists to continue to do their jobs.
Another part of the world where press freedom is undergoing a catastrophic deterioration is Hong Kong. Since the introduction of the national security law, the Government of China have been accelerating a full-scale crackdown on Opposition political activity and press. Last month, journalist Choy Yuk-ling was found guilty of making false statements and obtaining public information as part of an investigation into the perpetrators of a violent attack on protestors in a subway station in 2019. Choy was collecting the data as part of a documentary for the public broadcaster RTHK that also explored the conduct of Hong Kong police during last year’s protests. Chris Yeung, the chairman of the Hong Kong Journalists Association, expressed himself plainly when he said:
“The government sent a reporter to the dock, she was found guilty and the fourth power is under threat. Press freedom in Hong Kong is dying.”
As citizens of a liberal, democratic state, we are privileged in many ways to have access to an independent press and extensive civil liberties, and to have the freedom to use our voice to speak up for those whose voice has been denied. I hope that we are able to reflect, as parliamentarians today, on how we can assist the many thousands in Hong Kong, Belarus and across the world whose voices are being silenced.
Polling shows that the British press is the least trusted press in Europe. That is corrosive for our democracy. It is crucial that we support public interest journalism, including through charitable status for some local, investigative and independent media outlets. The BBC is of course an important institution, which we must defend from privatisation, but as recent weeks have shown, the BBC is far from perfect and much must be done to make it more democratic, representative and independent. The BBC must also be wary of amplifying the world view that is shared among the right-wing press. In the light of funding cuts and the loss of investigative reporters, too often it is billionaire-owned media outlets that set the agenda for our public service broadcaster.
I fully support the National Union of Journalists and the rights and conditions of workers in our media. Empowering journalists, such as by enabling them to elect editors and have seats on boards, is beneficial for our entire public discourse. To see a world defined by the imbalance of wealth and influence propped up and obfuscated by a compliant media system is intensely disempowering. Let us take as an example yesterday’s explosive testimony from the former chief adviser to the Prime Minister. It should not have taken a disgruntled Government employee to expose this Government’s deadly handling of the coronavirus. That was a damning indictment of our media ecosystem and revealed the cosy relationship between Government and client journalists. I believe that must end. Following this year’s World Press Freedom Day, let us strive to build a vibrant media that is democratic, representative and truly independent.