The award-winning photographer Nish Nalbandian came in for a conversation with documentary filmmaker and journalist Matthew Cassel for his latest book, A Handful of Dust – a 148 page reportage of Syrians forging new lives in southern Turkey.
Some of the slides from the book formed the background of the conversation and Cassel started by asking Nalbandian if he could explain his work in his own words. He said:
“There are almost 3 million Syrian refugees living in Turkey and every time I send pictures out for publicity they, (the media), want to run pictures of refugee camps but since many don’t live in camps I only have two pictures of them in the book. They in fact live all over…you’ll find people living in villages, some squatting in camps or renting apartments in smaller towns and cities in Istanbul and Ankara. So, it’s hard to give a blanket statement about what people are doing and where they are staying.”
He showed pictures of Rehanli in Hatay province and explained how he spent an afternoon with the family where the local farmer let a family of refugees stay but the building was not suitable for winter. The only help they had received from the Turkish government were bags of coal that the photograph showed the children playing with. Nalbandian said: “I was there right before Christmas and it struck me how happy the kids were because they had these bags of coal to play on.”
Matthew Cassel, who hosted the event is an award-winning filmmaker and multimedia journalist based in the Mediterranean region.
As a majority of the pictures were of the refugees living outside camps Cassel asked Nalbandian how they were supported, he said, “by everyone and no one”. He pointed to the efforts of Turkish people, from Syrians themselves and international NGO’s. He also added:
“But some families were not on the radar and they don’t register, (for fear of being put into camps). The Turkish Red Cross/Red Crescent does have programmes, but it doesn’t reach everyone.”
Tomorrow: @frontlineclub are hosting award-winning photojournalist Nish Nalbandian and showcasing his portraits from "A Handful of Dust". The exhibition focuses on Syrian refugees living in Turkey. Get your tickets here https://t.co/VSuGgWVvc4 pic.twitter.com/kVjxmuHdPY
— One World Media (@onewm) April 16, 2018
Talking about the title of the book Nalbandian said it is selected from T. S. Eliot’s poem, The Waste Land, as it captured the way in which people were scattered from their homes. He also commented that the book starts with images of camps, showing the refugees eking out an existence but explained: “The whole book is not like this, which I hope you’ll see.”
He added that he has stayed in touch with almost all the families he photographed but most them move on and the neighbours of one particular family he depicted said they chose to go to a camp in order to access essential services and care.
Talking about his thoughtful approach to representing everyday realities of migrants and refugees Nalbandian said: “I think it’s important to get to know what they are feeling and get a sense of what’s going on with them and that emotional connection is important, it’s what gets you the picture.”
In terms of photographic equipment Nalbandian took a a medium-format film camera instead of just shooting Polaroids. He suggested: “It gave a formality to the picture and to the process and people responded to that, they felt you’re taking the time to do something import for them.”
“It struck me what was happening now was something which had happened previously with the Armenians”- Nalbandian talking of his own Armenian heritage and his interest in documenting migration stories pic.twitter.com/In6LyCNSLH
— Frontline Club (@frontlineclub) April 17, 2018
Toward the end of the talk Nalbandian paused in front of a panoramic view of Gaziantep, a city where some of the subjects of his book lived, and said it had a particular resonance with him as it showed an old Armenian Catholic church now being used as a mosque and this reminded him of his own Armenian heritage. He explained:
“It struck me how in 2015 I was documenting a migration a hundred years later on exactly the same routes, just in reverse. There was a huge flow of people in 1915 from Anatolia (present-day Turkey) to Syria. The reason why I do portraitures like this is because I have a photograph of my grandfather from 1915 in Iskenderun, southern Turkey wearing his French Armenian Legion uniform and I wanted to make portraits that spoke to me in that way. I would like to go back and recreate that portrait and have people stand in the same pose using the 8×10 old film camera to show people in the same place a hundred years on. ”
One of the points raised in the Q&A session was if the people he photographed wanted their stories to be told, To this he said:
“In many cases yes, especially early on 2012 people were clambering to tell their stories. Later on, I think they became jaded saying, ‘telling my story isn’t going to make a difference so please leave me alone’. In cases like this I sat down and talked to them and asked them to tell their story anyway, but I don’t think many at this point think their stories will make a difference.”
During the evening numerous other comments and questions followed on the intricacies of refugees’ lives and how Nalbandian had tried to show among others people who were enterprising and trying to move away from the tragedies bought on by the war.
]]>The event, held on Tuesday 26th March, was once again a Frontline / Byline collaboration and bought together Cambridge Analytica whistleblower Chris Wylie and CEO of Byline.com Peter Jukes.
However, tonight as the story develops Shahmir Sanni also joined them on the panel disclosing how as a young volunteer at Vote Leave, he was asked to set up a new company, BeLeave, which then sponsored billions of ad impressions and may have breached electoral law.
With the press cameras setup in rows inside a packed Events Room, Byline Media co-director Stephen Colegrave welcomed the audience and reiterated the media group’s support for Sanni’s and Wylie’s efforts for bringing evidence of data breaches to light. He also confirmed that they will also be on a panel in the coming Byline Festival in the August Bank holiday.
Great pictures of last nights @BylineFest event @frontlineclub by Ralph Moran – if you missed it come to @BylineFest 24-27 August last 35% discounts https://t.co/DH21NshH6h pic.twitter.com/hq7xrrlQbg
— Byline Festival (@BylineFest) March 27, 2018
The conversation started with Jukes giving credit to British Journalist Carol Cadwalladr who initially broke the story and how Byline has a tradition of supporting whistleblowers among them Graham Johnson who revealed the phone hacking scandal in 2014. He then turned the audience’s attention to the legal and personality attack which Sanni has come under in recent days.
He said: “Shahmir was outrageously and viciously attacked by Number 10 on Friday.” He was referring to Dominic Cummings, a key figure in the Vote Leave campaign and how he outed Sanni as a gay man before he had a chance to speak to his family.
Amid the noise from camera shutters and blinding flash lights Sanni spoke of his panic when he read the statement on Cummings’s blog, he said:
“Part of me expected it, but I thought maybe they wouldn’t stoop so low. Then the New York Times called me to comment on the statement they had been sent by No. 10. I said, ‘what are you talking about’, then they said, ‘your relationship with Stephen Parkinson’. And that’s when my heart dropped. I came out to my mum the day before yesterday. I hate talking about it… .”
Jukes added:
“I personally think it’s the first time this has happened, an official statement from No. 10. I think it’s probably in contravention of discrimination laws and I hope this never happens again. This is the worst way to attack someone, whatever your political motives. It was clearly designed to shut Shahmir up.”
Shahmir questioned why his relationship with Parkinson had any relevance to the revelations he was making about Vote Leave’s tactics in the run-up to Brexit. But he vowed the politics of personal destruction and homophobic vitriol would not shut him up or distract from the main arguments.
The conversation then turned to the wider debate on Britain staying or leaving the EU and Wylie again expressed that he is a Eurosceptic. He said: “I call into question the democratic legitimacy of the European Union.”
https://twitter.com/MarkDiStef/status/978344098418507779
Jukes then asked Wylie about his work with Cambridge Analytica and how what he was involved in was different to what election campaigns have been doing for years. Wylie replied:
“There’s a fundamental difference between targeting a political message online and targeting disinformation. Cambridge Analytica starts rumour campaigns and it spreads fake news and disinformation to warp people’s perception of what’s actually happening in the world and that’s fundamentally different. It’s stupid to compare Cambridge Analytica with the Obama campaign.”
He added:
“When the message came from the Obama campaign it was a common acceptance of what was true and factual, and the messaging was about an ideological perspective, an argument. Cambridge Analytica, as it admits to going undercover, focuses on warping people’s perceptions of what’s real by presenting them with false information to coerce and mislead voters.”
He further explained:
“Cambridge Analytica engages in mental heuristics and programmatically injects information into that person and into that sphere and this means that your target audience is seeing information on blogs or fake news sites that leads them to start thinking that certain things are happening. When they turn on the channel, a mainstream news site they start to distrust that…and once you have established that distrust you have primed that voter, then you can engage with them with an ideology.”
Awkward moment at last night's @frontlineclub @BylineFest event with @guardian whistle blower @shahmiruk passionately and credibly criticising #No10 & @BorisJohnson in front of foreign secretary's dad… Amazing story, still evolving.. pic.twitter.com/V7ocVvavJJ
— Thomas Stoeckle (@thomasstoeckle1) March 27, 2018
Sanni on the other hand went on to explain how he got involved with Vote Leave and BeLeave campaigns and his outreach work. Chris then added how he worked with him to looked at the workings of the campaigns and saw evidence on computer drives and shared legal documents.
After this the floor was open to questions from the audience. One of them was on the sources of funding, possibly from Russia. Another touched upon possible coordination between DUP and Veterans Group Britain. A point was also raised if Wylie really had a significant role to play in Cambridge Analytica which would mean he had substantiated knowledge of the firm’s inner working. He replied:
“I was the director of research, I can show you evidence, evidence which the New York Times and The Guardian has seen…it was the work that I was doing at SCL which lead to the creation of Cambridge Analytica.”
The discussion ended with a huge round of applause for Wylie and Sanni’s work and some members of the audience joined them in the members room below to further discuss the weight of evidence against Cambridge Analytica and the Vote Leave campaign.
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The discussion was a Frontline / Byline collaboration and chaired by the Byline.com CEO Peter Jukes.
I'm at the @frontlineclub where Facebook data scandal whistleblower Chris Wylie is about to speak. We'll be covering live on @SkyNews tonight and analysing his claims afterwards. #CambridgeAnalytica pic.twitter.com/lgyMoPlBJM
— Joe Tidy (@joetidy) March 20, 2018
He began by setting out the aim of the conversation which was to tell the story behind the story and how the Observer journalist Carole Cadwalladr found Wylie and persuaded him to speak out.
Wylie said:
“She found me on the recesses of the internet. The first time I talked to her on the phone it was for four hours and that says a lot about Carole, that she can make somebody she’s not met before so comfortable that they are willing to chat for long hours on a very complex story.”
Describing the situation Wylie found himself in while speaking out against Cambridge Analytica, he recalled the many legal threats to silence him. However through Cadwalladr he found lawyers like Tamsin Allen, who was also in the audience, to fight for his right to speak out against misuse of Facebook’s data.
He added:
“There are a lot of people behind the story and it’s because of Carole’s perseverance that this was made possible. I started talking to her in May last year and in her investigation she didn’t just speak to me but to 15 other people, collecting documents and being methodical and patient and this is why this story has been made possible.”
I've never seen the @frontlineclub so a-quiver with anticipation. Paps outside, queues up the stairs, full bar!#CambridgeAnalytica whistleblower @chrisinsilico & the @guardian journalist @carolecadwalla who broke the story #livestreaming at 8PM (20mins)https://t.co/04vqFHf5Le pic.twitter.com/MflvZTpEXc
— Stefan Simanowitz (@StefSimanowitz) March 20, 2018
Jukes then went on to ask Wylie at what point did he decide it was time to speak up against the data harvesting technologies of Cambridge Analytica to influence voters. Wylie replied that he came out originally as the anonymous source who was cited in Cadwalladr’s article in May last year which detailed the global operations of Cambridge Analytica involving big data.
He said:
“It (the article) was one of the most read things in The Guardian because it was written in a very human manner and that made it an accessible story, which is a very powerful tool. Storytelling is one of the only cross-cultural rituals people have for remembering and understanding something.”
He added:
“The, discussion about the role of technology in politics and society should not just be the exclusive domain of technical people…because everyone is on social media because everyone uses a computer, so this discussion needs to expand.”
Wylie further stated that he had to describe to Cadwalladr, and other journalists she worked with, the technical terms such as relational database, sequels, algorithm, machine learning and neural network and we need more voices such as hers who can question it. Right now the conversation around technology is dominated by people from within the field of technology and it intimidates others.
Talking about the headlines dominating the media in the past couple of days around the data leak of the millions of Facebook accounts Wylie explained:
“Facebook makes me out be the suspect, some kind of nefarious person, but what they are not saying is that I am the one who was working proactively with the information commissioner’s office, I was the one who brought this to the British authorities. I am the person who has been proactively, openly and transparently working with the British authorities and that’s why ICO can get a warrant and search Cambridge Analytica tomorrow…this idea that I am somehow a suspect in all of this is really frustrating because I have been working hand in hand with the information commissioner for months now.”
Expressing his frustration at the sidelining of the issues around the inner workings of Cambridge Analytica Wylie added:
“This has partly been a distraction because I came forward to talk about Cambridge Analytica and my experience, and to take my share of responsibility and blame for being the research director when Cambridge Analytica was being set up. I feel like after we reached out to Facebook, my thinking was that we can work with them, I can own up to this and this company can face the scrutiny that it deserves and people can be notified of what’s been happening. The frustrating thing for me is that this story has spiralled into Facebook’s bizarre reaction to it rather than what the original story was meant to be about.”
Head still spinning from #cambridgeanalytica whistleblower @chrisinsilico in conversation with @peterjukes last night. Leaves some big questions for democracy. Huge respect for all involved in breaking this story. pic.twitter.com/kZNd6ZPLah
— Jessica T Rose (@jessicatroses) March 21, 2018
In the Q&A session at the club which has a history of supporting whistleblowers a member of the audience asked about Donald Trump’s election win in 2016, to which Wylie explained:
“My ears perked-up when I heard phrases like ‘we’ll build the wall’, ‘drain the swamp’ ‘the deep state’ because these were all the narratives that had come out from the research we were doing.”
A number of other questions followed in the remaining 30 minutes of the discussion with Wylie where he briefly touched upon the relationship between building datasets and algorithms along with possible use of this breached data by the Russians and why he felt this is the right time for him to lift the lid on Cambridge Analytica.
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Sergei Skripal, a former double agent and his daughter Yulia Skripal remain critically ill in hospital after being exposed to the Nerve agent, novichok in the town of Salisury earlier this month.
The panel that came together to discuss the attempted murder were, Jane Bradley, an investigations correspondent for BuzzFeed News; Marina Litvinenko, widow of Alexander Litvinenko and writer of Death of a Dissident: Poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko; Chris Phillips former Head of the National Counter Terrorism Security Office and Mary Dejevsky a writer and broadcaster and chief editorial writer for the Independent. The evening was chaired by Oliver Bullough, a prize-winning writer, broadcaster and journalist, who has written about the former Soviet world for the last decade and a half.
Bullough began by asking Phillips if he could give the security service’s view as to what is happening in terms of investigations into this case. He said:
“There is a very close liaison between the police, the MI5 and MI6 and GCHQ and that’s just as well. This is one of the reasons why we have a been reasonably successful against terrorism. There are other agencies involved from across the world who work very closely on intelligence gathering. So all these will be coming together to try and formulate what’s happened. And to be quite honest, the people who did this could well have been out of the country before we even realised the attack had taken place.”
The question of how members of the public should read what has been reported in the media was then raised by Bullough, especially as a number of them gave different accounts of how Mr Skripal and his daughter came into contact with the substance. To this Bradley replied:
“There’s been a lot of sensationalist and single source reporting on this. But there’s been some great reporting as well. What you really are looking for is how many sources are saying the same thing and who the sources are.”
A point was then raised on the British government’s response to this latest attack as compared to when Mr Litvinenko was killed by radioactive poisoning in London in 2006. Marina Letnvenko who was married to him at the time replied:
“We waited for two weeks just to conform it was poisoning, it was only after Sacha’s (Alexander’s) death it was realised that it was Polonium 210. This investigation was absolutely brilliant. But when it went to an inquest it started to get very difficult, it was made as narrow as possible. But now this is completely different, the press immediately attended and Theresa May says it was definitely Russia.”
Members of the panel Mary Dejevsky, Chris Phillips, Marina Litvinenko, Jane Bradley with host Oliver Bullough
Turning to Dejevsky who is a former Moscow correspondent Bullough asked if she thinks the lessons of Litvinenko’s inquiry can be applied to the poisoning of the Skriplas. She explained:
“Personally, I felt it (The Litvinenko inquiry) was a total scandal and reflected appallingly on UK’s boost on being a country ruled by the rule of law. That inquiry took so long to hear evidence. What is happening now is over compensation by the government in the way they responded to the Litvinenko inquiry and they risk being exposed for elevating this to a diplomatic crisis so soon without any more evidence.”
She also thought the cooperation of the different agencies as pointed out by Phillips was not a good thing and went on to explain:
“A lot of the things have not come out from Salisbury which are absolutely basics, when did this happen, what time, how did it happen. I am very sceptical of the official explanation because I don’t understand why the Skripals were targeted so many years after they were living here, apparently blamelessly. Litvinenko was different because he was part of the Berezovsky set and he had been quite public in condemning Russia. The other thing is why Putin would do this in the run up to an election, in the run up to the Wold Cup in Russia? He is generally risk averse and he would not sign off on something that was unpredictable and could destabilise things.”
Bradley, bought in the dimension of affiliated business interests of many Russians living in UK. She is the co-author of Buzzfeed’s investigation into the suspected Russia-linked assassination of Alexander Perepilichnyy ‘Poison in the System’ and 14 other suspected Russia-linked deaths on British soil. She said:
“Putin has made it very clear that the Russian state does not tolerate traitors. He went on state TV after the Skripals’ attack to say that traitors are not safe on UK soil and actively listed all of the deaths that we’ve reported on, it was almost like they were taunting UK.”
Mary Dejevsky and Chris Phillips
Members of the audience on this evening’s debate included lawyers, analysts, journalist as well as television camera crews. Some of them raised the point of a Russian extradition list and the murder of Nikoli Glushkov on 13th March. Another question was also raised as to who else could have sanctioned the attack on the Skripals and if it could be Russian linked but without Putin’s knowledge.
Maria Litvinenko replied it was Russian policy to deny everything. However, for Dejevsky the question was not ‘if Russia then who’ but more of ‘if not Putin then who’? For Bradley the manufacturing requirement to weaponise the chemicals used in the poison novichok amounted to a state involvement. Phillips however pointed to the evidence that Russia has carried out similar attacks before and had reason to be involved in this latest attempted killing of Sergei and Julia Skripal.
Elena Tsirlina who represented the Litvinenko family throughout the inquest and the public inquiry was also in the audience and asked Dejevsky:
“Is it ignorance or manipulation of facts in terms of the way in which you continue to question the findings of the inquiry.”
To this Dejevsky replied:
“It is certainly not wilful ignorance. It’s my judgment on the evidence I heard and the knowledge that, as you say, some of the crucial evidence was missing because the two-accused refused to testify, and Russia refused to extradite them. The other way it was defective because there was no intelligence service evidence which was available to the lawyers on either side or to Marina, or to the journalists and that is why in my view the inquiry was defective.”
The discussion between the panel members and the audience carried through to the members room and over dinner in the Frontline Club Restaurant.
]]>The area of East Ghouta is said to be one of the last strongholds of resistance by Syrian opposition forces and as such the target of renewed violence by the forces of President Bashar al-Assad and his foreign allies.
The panel invited for the talk included Dr Abdulkarim Ekzayez, a Syrian medical doctor and an epidemiologist; Leila Al-Shami, a founding member of Tahrir-ICN, a network that aims to connect anti-authoritarian struggles across the Middle East, North Africa and Europe along with Dr Idrees Ahmad, a Lecturer in Digital Journalism at the University of Stirling. The evening was hosted by BBC Middle East editor Jeremy Bowen.
Bowen began by asking Dr Ekzayez how he manages to work and provide medical care in hostile situations such as East Ghouta to which replied:
We see the same patients that we discharged a few days ago, with even more serious injuries, but they (hospitals) don’t have space to treat patients, they don’t have the medical supplies…they don’t have food, water or any essentials. Even the word catastrophe can not describe what’s happening in East Ghouta.
What can done about the conflict in Syria? UK could expand its Syrian vulnerable persons resettlement scheme, support the 5.5m Syrian Refugees into work + schools & help rebuild Raqqa – @BowenBBC at @frontlineclub with @LeilaShami pic.twitter.com/64thtTW1ap
— James Denselow (@jamesdenselow) March 13, 2018
He went on to explained that the Assad regime causes delays and confiscates certain medical supplies provided by UN humanitarian convoys and they hardly reach the population or meet their basic needs.
He further added: “My interpretation is that they (Assad Regime) use this tactic to weaken the community, because this scenario happened many times before…in Baba Amr in Homs, in Eastern Aleppo and other places. First, they besiege the area, then they target all the civilians, so people don’t have access to healthcare or any essentials.”
The lack of a concerted effort on part of the international community was raised by Al-Shami. She pointed out that the UN has not managed to get aid in these besieged areas such as Eastern Ghouta and starvation is being used as a weapon of war. She commented:
This should not be a negotiating principle, this is a basic humanitarian standard. The aid has to reach these communities in need. We need more efforts, we need air drops of aid. The international community has to start asking questions when a regime purposefully stops aid and starves people, what they can do?
"Civil society, suppressed under Assad but multiple in opposition controlled areas = hope for future of #Syria" #EastGhouta @frontlineclub pic.twitter.com/NYsZSDvL2C
— Suzy Madigan (@Suzy_Madigan) March 13, 2018
Further along in the discussion Bowen turned to Dr Idress to see what he thinks the international community can do besides watching the conflict unfold and discussed UN’s classification of words such as ‘besiege’ and ‘hard to reach areas’.
In terms of expectations from the UN agencies Dr Idress explained:
The problem is that the UN has no international backing. The UN alone cannot enforce resolutions. Its efforts have been repeatedly thwarted even for humanitarian efforts and we have had 11 vetoes from Russia which blocks any kind of accountability. In the absence of this it doesn’t have any mechanism with which to confront the regime. So, it’s incumbent on the states which are supposed to be guarantors of world order, but what we have seen is a collapse of that.
One of the questions raised from the audience in this open discussion was on the support for the Syrian government. On this Dr Ekzayez commented that the Syrian regime is not similar to any other authoritarian regime. It relies roughly on 2500 people within its core structure and each person from this inner core was holding positions of power within institutions such as the army, The Ba’ath Party and society agencies. They similarly had links within communities who had shared interests with the regime.
After the formal ending of the conversation for the evening the panel and audience continued to discuss their individual points on the unfolding of events in East Ghouta in the members room on the lower floors of the Frontline Club.
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It was chaired by Hannah Storm, Director of the International News Safety Institute (INSI) with guests Rachel Corp, deputy editor of ITV News; Louise Ridley, co-founder of Second Source and freelance journalist currently running news special projects at HuffPost UK; Jasmine Andersson, also a co-founder of Second Source and an investigations reporter at PinkNews along with Mark Di Stefano, media and politics reporter for Buzzfeed News, London.
Welcome to the @frontlineclub's panel discussion on how to deal with sexual harassment in the media – we'll be tweeting highlights from the panellists, and the event will also be made into a Frontline Club podcast! pic.twitter.com/N1RePPRMBo
— The Second Source (@the2ndsource) March 7, 2018
Starting the discussion Storm asked Corp to share her experiences when she began working in the industry roughly twenty years ago and if she thinks there has been a cultural shift in the way women are treated within the newsroom.
Crop commented: “When I started working in television and broadcast there was this sense that if you were a young woman you were slightly fair game. It wasn’t necessarily at the desk but around socialising for work which was necessary part of getting on in your career and you had to have sharp elbows. But I hope in certain parts of the media we have come a long way from this fair game culture.”
Talking about the sea change which has come since campaigns such as #metoo Storm asked Andersson how her organisation is pushing for improvemnts. She replied:
…I think now when you enter the industry, it’s a lot about patronage, it’s a little bit more sophisticated, more insidious. So hopefully together we can present an active force and say that, ‘this isn’t going to happen anymore’
Louise Ridley emphasised that Second Source through being an informal network keeps solidarity among women and holds events to bring all the conversations together. It is also collecting sexual harassment and Human Resources policies of different media organisations to see where the loopholes are.
She said: “We are launching a mentoring scheme to help women in the first few years of their career…women who think they might drop out of Journalism, particularly we want to focus on working class women, women from ethnic minorities. We want to offer all the normal career advice and support but what is really important for us is that we offer help on those personal and difficult issues as well.”
On the particular subject of harassment in the newsroom Storm turned to Mark Di Stefano who has recently reported on a number of such cases. He said:
I feel as though there has been a noticeable change particularly in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein allegations and every young man in the industry should pause and take stock and reflect on their own behaviour…it’s also how we deal with our female friends, in group chats, in WhatsApp threads
There’s is a general disassociation within the media on debates around feminism and harassment of women. They are scared of putting their head above the parapet – tonight’s panel discussion on sexism within media. pic.twitter.com/Ujm1ubcgrO
— Frontline Club (@frontlineclub) March 7, 2018
He added: “The hardest thing you come across when you are reporting on harassment allegations in this environment in Britain is that libel laws are very strong and reporting from anonymous sources is very hard…I have had a dozen anonymous sources who have all corroborated each other on something that could have taken down a very senior media person but I could not get past my editors because I needed someone on the record which was very hard.”
A number of questions from the audience followed the formal discussion and some shared their personal experiences of harassment. The question of redress for freelancers who have been sexually harassed was also raised.
For this Storm suggested that organisations working with freelancers, such as Acos Alliance and Frontline Register among offering other support should also embed conversations around harassment into their protection mechanism.
To watch the talk click here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DzmR5mUwypg
For more information about The Second Source visit: http://www.thesecondsource.co.uk/
]]>Last month, in December, Disney agreed to the deal with 21st Century Fox which includes it’s large shares in Sky News from Rupert Murdoch for £39bn.
The evening was hosted by one of the country’s foremost media lecturer, Roy Greenslade. He was speaking to Graham Johnson, Head of Investigations at Byline; Mark Lewis an internationally renowned media lawyer who led cases against phone hacking and Alaphia Zoyab a former TV anchor, who has now swapped roles and is a campaigner working with Avaaz, a platform which aims to stop the Murdoch takeover of Sky.
Mark Lewis, Roy Greenslade, Alaphia Zoyab and Graham Johnson
The evening was attended by media watchers and campaigners for press freedom alike. The takeover is currently under consideration by UK’s Competition and Market’s Authority and is due to give its decision in March.
The panel took the opportunity to discuss issues around standards and ethics of the British Press charting back a number of years from 2011 up the present.
Greenslade stated that Britain had broadcasting rules which meant the presentation style and reporting adapted by US news channels such as Fox News could not prevail here.
However, Zoyab said: “They [Fox News] had been broadcasting successfully here despite these judgments…Just the way Ofcom rules are, you can pass off current affairs programmes which discuss news without actually coming under the constraints of Ofcom’s rules on impartiality. So, because of this loophole you can have highly charged opinionated, primetime programmes which parade as news.”
Alaphia Zoyab and Graham Johnson
Sky stopped Fox News from broadcasting in Britain in August 2017 on the grounds that it attracted fewer audiences.
A question was also asked if, looking 10 years ahead, was it the phone hacking scandal and the Leveson Inquiry which spelled the end of Murdoch’s power in Britain.
To this Johnson replied: “The phone hacking scandal is unfinished business. What is incredible is that only a very small part of it has come out in the inquiry…his [Murdoch’s] legacy is that he has chosen his successors and for British newspapers we know that successor as Rebekah Brooks.”
Lewis believed that we are living in interesting times and Murdoch and Sky are not too concerned about British politics as he has US politics in hold. He said: “But we also have Brexit, papers have huge influence on that, and with Trump in the White House who do you find as a common feature, Mr Murdoch, in the centre”.
A number of issues were also raised from the audience. One of them was from Ann Fields who represented a group, The Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom. She said: “we have launched a crowdfunding appeal to step up the battle to stop the Murdochs buying up Sky TV and we believe that it is a fight we can now win especially as their empire starts to shake.”
Some of the audience of the event on the night of the discussion
Later the conversation was carried through to Frontline Club Member’s Room and it’s very own restaurant situated on the lower floors where the panel and some of the audiences further discussed the issues involved.
]]>It was hosted by none other than actor turned rights campaigner Pamela Anderson. She held the conversation with Renata Avila, a Guatemalan human rights lawyer and digital rights expert; Sarah Harrison, a renowned British journalist and human rights defender and Angela Richter, an acclaimed Croatian-German theatre director, activist and author.
@avilarenata, Sarah Harrison and @AngelaRichter_ discuss their new book about #women in digital activism. #Whistleblower #Wikileaks with @pamfoundation @frontlineclub @orbooks pic.twitter.com/URUla3sPq9
— Joseph A. Farrell (@SwaziJAF) January 22, 2018
The evening started by Anderson’s first question which revolved around the role of WikiLeaks in internet activism.
Avila began by taking a critical view of fellow internet activist with regard to this. She said: “In 2010 I was here tackling the avalanche of attack which WikiLeaks was experiencing…if only that community had come strongly against private censorship but they shied away from the principles of freedom of press. We will not be in this mess that we are today…the big social media companies were not that big at the time but now they have become practically ministries of truth.”
She also went on to highlight that WikiLeaks unveiled more than just the documents. In her view, it also exposed the role of the Silicon Valley politics.
“It showed the true colours of many groups and it unveiled the relationship between governments and Silicon Valley as well as between governments and journalists even,” she summarised without hesitation.
Following on from this Anderson asked the panel about the role of the internet in changing the course of contemporary politics.
To this, Harrison replied: “Everything is now concentrated into just a few hands…and this is what we are exporting around the world. Facebook Zero for example is going into Africa…a horrific example of the way the controlling system, which we are trying to fight in the West, are being solidified and exported as modus operandi to other places in the world.”
For Richter who was available through a video link, the question of digital monopolies was the critical one.
She said: “There is a lot of manipulation and power monopolies which are concentrated in very few hands…I refer to Google as, we don’t have governments but have Googlements.”
“Just some years ago I was thinking about the diversity of the internet…now it is overwhelming, with fake news as a huge problem. It is an inflammatory term, strategically used. We have a lot of work to do to change the course,” she concluded.
In an answer to a question from the audience on the role of whistleblowers Harrison thought it was important to make the distinction between sources particularly in the national security realm.
She said: “There is a lot of information out there. But there is a difference between those who come forward with actual documents … and those who say ‘anonymous sources told me’. The later you can’t verify and this is dangerous and an easy trap to fall into.”
The evening ended with a round of applause from the audience for the panel and for what turned out to be Anderson’s one of very first few attempts at hosting such debates. They also applauded Richter for her contribution over the video link and later queued for the signing by their book, Women, Whistleblowing, WikiLeaks by Avila and Harrison.
Members of the audience also had a further chance to talk to the panel over drinks and dinner in the Members Room and The Frontline Restaurant situated on the lower floors of the club.
To watch a summary of the talk click here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vyWDD4DgnS0
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