The downward spiral of media freedoms in Egypt in those eight years is well documented. With one hand, the state has corroded access to information, removing websites that may be a “threat to national security”. With the other, it regularly attacks those that would provide the public with such reliable information. In 2018, Egypt jailed more journalists for “publishing false news” than any other country. Many others simply disappeared.

For those that remain, censorship reigns; censorship that shakes the bedrock of independent journalism in Egypt. For media workers in the region, internalising those red lines presents some of the most challenging ethical decisions they will face in their careers and lives. Join us to hear from those who’ve experienced first hand how censorship affects journalists – and journalism – across the Middle East. 

The event will begin with a film screening of “The People’s Property” (16 mins), which discusses self-censorship and press freedom in Egypt. The film was produced by WAN-IFRA (World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers) as part of their Strengthening Media and Society in Developing Countries and Fragile States programme. 

Chair

Zahera Harb

Dr Zahera Harb is a senior lecturer in International Journalism at City, University of London. Dr Harb has more than 11 years of experience as a journalist in Lebanon working for Lebanese and international media organisations. She started as a news reporter and distinguished herself in particular in the coverage of war operations in the battlefield of South Lebanon. Dr Harb was trained in Holland and the UK and has a BA in Journalism from the Lebanese University, a Diploma in Broadcasting News and an MA and PhD in Journalism Studies and Political Communications from Cardiff University. Dr Harb was a member of the Ofcom content board from December 2015 to December 2018. She is a board member and trustee of the Ethical Journalism Network.

Speakers:

Lobna Monieb

Lobna Monieb is an Egyptian journalist who has reported from and about the Middle East for the Financial Times, Le Figaro, DPA, Mada Masr and al-Shorouk since 2012. She holds a Masters Degree in International Journalism from City, University of London

Omar el-Ghazzi

Omar Al-Ghazzi is Assistant Professor in the Department of Media and Communications at the London School of Economics & Political Science (LSE). Dr Al-Ghazzi’s expertise is in conflict reporting and representation, with a focus on digital media and collective memory in the Middle East and North Africa. Before joining LSE, he was a lecturer (assistant professor) at the Department of Journalism, the University of Sheffield. Dr Al-Ghazzi completed his PhD at the Annenberg School for Communication, the University of Pennsylvania. He comes from a journalism professional background and has previously worked at BBC Monitoring and Al-Hayat daily.

Ghias al-Jundi

Ghias is a human rights advocate currently based in London. He has more than twenty years of experience of working on the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) for national and international organisations specialising in human rights, freedom of expression and media development. Ghias ran WAN-IFRA’s MENA Project Strengthening Media and Society programme between January 2016 and June 2018. The project covered Egypt, Jordan and Palestine. Ghias also worked for PEN International, Article 19, Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR), International Freedom of Expression Exchange (IFEX) and Amnesty International. 

The Ethical Journalism Network is an alliance of reporters, editors and publishers aiming to strengthen journalism around the world, working to build trust in news media through training, education and research.

To find out how to support the EJN visit: https://ethicaljournalismnetwork.org/support

This event is presented in partnership with the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

It is the news media’s major preoccupation – how can journalists best serve audiences in a world riddled with misinformation and “alternative facts”, and when the President of the United States makes baseless claims and labels accurate reporting as “fake news”?

But so far the debate has focused mostly on Western news media, where this challenge feels new. How does the discrediting of media take place in the Global South? Have other countries seen a similar rise in the prominence of fake news – or, as with Russian propaganda, has this challenge been around for years? In countries such as Cambodia and Burundi, leaders have been labelling unfavourable journalism as fake news – but is this the ‘Trump Effect’ or its precedent?

We will discuss how journalists new to these challenges learn from reporters elsewhere in the world who contend daily with misinformation and state hostility. This event, held to mark World Press Freedom Day 2017, will bring together journalists from a selection of countries to discuss these issues and explain how they are dealing with the “post-truth” environment.

This discussion will be chaired by John Lloyd. John is the co-founder of the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford, which was established in 2006 with core funding from Thomson Reuters Foundation, where he is a Senior Research Fellow and member of the Advisory Board. Lloyd has written several books, including “What the Media Are Doing to Our Politics” (2004). He is also a contributing editor at FT and the founder of FT Magazine.

Speakers:

Liz Wahl is an American journalist. She was a correspondent and anchor for the U.S. branch of RT TV and made international headlines following her resignation from the channel.

Maher Abderrahmane is former Senior Editor of Tunisian Television News.

Katya Gorchinskaya is a Ukrainian journalist and CEO of Hromadske TV

Abiye Teklemariam is an Ethiopian journalist based in the UK

Over the years, officials have offered inconsistent explanations for the arrests – accusing the journalists of involvement in anti-state conspiracies or skirting military service. Meanwhile, information smuggled out of the country by Eritreans fleeing into exile piece together an alarming picture of the dangers faced by journalists who report stories that fall outside official state communications.

Has Eritrea become Africa’s North Korea?  With only state communication remaining, contacting the outside world has become nearly impossible. What was once a relatively unknown and underreported country is now at the forefront of the EU’s mind, as Eritreans make up a significant number of those entering Europe on dangerous crossings. Who are Eritrea’s forgotten journalists, and how did this extreme stifling of press freedoms come to be?

Chaired by Dr Idil Osman (@idil_osman). Idil holds a PhD from Cardiff University’s School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies and her thesis examined the role of diasporic media in conflict zones. She has worked for over a decade as a national and international journalist for the BBC, the Guardian and the Voice of America. Previously a Teaching Fellow in Media and Communication at University of Leicester’s Department of Media and Communication, she’s now a Research Associate and Senior Teaching Fellow in the Department of Development Studies at SOAS.

Eyob Teklay Ghilazghy is an Eritrean author, academic and advocate for human rights. He holds an MSc. in Sustainable Development from SOAS, University of London.  Eyob fled persecution in Eritrea and lives in exile in Uganda. In 2013, Eyob co-founded Africa Monitors, a human rights organisation based in Uganda. Eyob also co-founded and is secretary of PEN Eritrea in exile. During the period of October 2016 to April 2017, Eyob is a resident writer with English PEN, based in London, during which time he is working on a report on the situation of freedom of expression in Eritrea.

Vanessa Berhe is an Eritrean activist currently studying law at SOAS. She founded the organisation One Day Seyoum to raise awareness about the lack of press freedom in Eritrea and put pressure on the Eritrean government to release unjustly imprisoned journalists. The organisation carries the name of her uncle, journalist Seyoum Tsehaye, who was imprisoned in 2001 without trial.

Antonia Benfield is a barrister specialising in human rights and refugee law and an advocate for social justice. In 2016 she was involved in the key legal case examining the country situation in Eritrea and what is driving increasing numbers of Eritreans to flee the country. The case successfully established that there has been a decline in the human rights situation and that persecution by the Eritrean government is endemic. The case particularly focused on the repression of free speech and the reliability of sources from within the country.

Presented in partnership with English PEN

The craft of drawing has an important role to play in shining a spotlight on the people and places left unseen.

Artist and journalist Molly Crabapple joined an audience at the Frontline Club on Wednesday 6 April to discuss the unique purpose of her art in uncovering injustice and activism around the world. She also held a book signing session for her recently released memoir Drawing Blood, a colourful mix of autobiographical writing and illustrations.

How to draw censorship, how to draw the unseen? Great talk by @mollycrabapple at @FrontlineClub

— Veronique Mistiaen (@VeroMistiaen) April 6, 2016

Starting out as a model and artist in the sex industry, Crabapple has gone on to draw and report from Guantanamo Bay, Syria, the West Bank, Iraqi Kurdistan, and became a crucial voice during New York’s Occupy Movement in 2011. Long-time friend and journalist Natasha Lennard joined Crabapple to chair the discussion, describing her as “a crucial voice of our time, in a moment when journalism is in flux and open for necessary experimentation.” Lennard began by asking her motivations for using art for journalistic purposes.

“Photojournalists, they went into the world and captured everything, captured a story, they captured all these people and all these places,” Crabapple replied. “And I thought, my god, we artists used to do that before the camera came. The camera stole the image-making power from us. And I wanted to do that too.”

Her first assignment as a journalist was in 2013, when she visited Guantanamo Bay to document the detention centre and its inmates. Later that year, she was shortlisted for a Frontline Award for her stark portrayal of the prison, and the anonymous figures locked within its walls.

By Molly Crabapple

“Guantanamo is the most visually censored place on earth,” she explained. “Guantanamo is a place that if you were a photographer, your camera would be rifled through by a soldier at the end of every single session. But… I was able to draw Guantanamo Bay in a way that a photographer cannot photograph it. Not only that, but to draw the censorship itself. To make it explicit.”

Continuing on the theme of censorship, the duo turned to Crabapple‘s work with a Syrian journalist in Raqqa in 2015. She created a series of illustrations from photographs sent from Syria for Vanity Fair showing daily life under ISIS rule, areas too dangerous for most photojournalists to access.

“One of the projects that I’m proudest of was this project I did with a young Syrian writer named Marwan Hisham,” Crabapple elaborated. “I wanted to take images of daily life from ISIS-held territory and not the usual gory images of severed heads that we see on the news. Images of children going through the trash trying to find something to sell, or images of families on breadlines. Images of just daily prosaic life there. I wanted to, with my own skills as an artist, imbue them with craft and all the attention and time that a photojournalist would normally view something with.”

By Molly Crabapple

One audience member asked, given the traumatic and sometimes horrifying nature of the material she was dealing with, how drawing Syria had affected her.

Crabapple replied: “I am completely in awe of courage, of Syrian journalists working in the field, and the intense risks that they take… No one even cares if they die. It’s staggering and I feel a sense of shame. That’s how it transforms me, it gives me a sense of shame because in many ways my collaborators are better than me.”

Throughout the evening, many people in the audience expressed gratitude to Crabapple for her work, adding that it encouraged them to explore politics, human vulnerability and activism through art. After thanking her, one audience member asked Crabapple how she would imagine an ideal world.

“I think we are facing a fundamental challenge to the idea of borders,” Crabapple responded. “I think with the internet and the way people interact globally, that the way people are chained if they have ‘poor-world passports’, despite these global interactions that they have… I think that cannot stand. The ‘First World’ is going to have a choice– to either be part of the rest of the world, which they’ve often been exploiting… or they can engage in massive violence to keep the rest of the world out. I fear very desperately that they’re going to choose the second. But a small step toward making the world better might be them choosing the first.”

Music is the beating heart of Malian culture. But when Islamic extremists took control of northern Mali in 2012, they enforced one of the harshest interpretations of sharia law in history and, crucially for Mali, they banned all forms of music. Radio stations were destroyed, instruments burned and Mali’s musicians faced torture, even death.

Overnight, Mali’s revered musicians were forced into hiding or exile – where most remain even now. But rather than lay down their instruments, the musicians are fighting back, standing up for their cultural heritage and identity. Through everything, they have used music as their weapon against the ongoing violence that has left Mali ravaged.

‘Disco’ is a renowned singer, UN-recognised humanitarian and outspoken activist. She organises gigs from her refugee camp base in Burkina Faso and is a constant support for musicians in exile, who look to her to eventually lead them home.

Known as the “Nightingale of the North” and speaking all seven languages of the country, Khaira’s home was raided by jihadists and her materials, records and instruments destroyed. Yet she remains firm in her criticism of their actions despite threats to her life. She campaigns tirelessly for elections and is organising the first public concert in Timbuktu since the conflict to prove that musicians will not be silenced. But the rise of ISIS has given Mali’s extremists new life, and realising Khaira’s dream is risky for everyone.

With a specially commissioned soundtrack from Mali’s most exciting artists and a score written by the Yeah Yeah Yeah’s Nick Zinner, They Will Have To Kill Us First leaps headfirst into a tale of courage in the face of conflict.

Directed by: Johanna Schwartz
Country: United Kingdom
Year: 2015
Runtime: 105′

This screening will be followed by a Q&A with director Adam Sjöberg.

I Am Sun Mu documents the life and work of North Korean defector and pop artist ‘Sun Mu.’ In North Korea, Sun Mu was a prolific propaganda artist for Kim Jong-un’s regime. After swimming to safety and beginning a new life in South Korea, Sun Mu turned his skills against the North Korean regime, satirising those who he once worshipped.

Sun Mu means ‘no lines’ or ‘no boundaries’ in Korean and became the political pop artist’s pseudonym as he rose to visibility. With the Chinese government keeping a close eye on him and the threat of execution looming over his head, Sun Mu is forced to conceal his face and name out of fear for the safety of those he left behind.

His artwork is brightly coloured and bold, but the price for creating political paintings could be fatal. During an exhibition in Beijing, Sun Mu’s friends and family find themselves in danger. Meanwhile, Chinese and North Korean authorities surround the exhibition, banning anybody from entering the space. Artists are interrogated and Sun Mu is forced to once again flee for safety in South Korea.

Gaining remarkable access to a notorious figure who must carefully guard his identity, director Adam Sjöberg brings us into a private world, revealing the stakes involved in countering the North Korean regime.

I Am Sun Mu had its UK Premiere at the 2015 Raindance Film Festival.

Directed by: Adam Sjöberg
Runtime: 86’
Country: South Korea/United States/China

After decades of war and an oppressive Taliban regime, four Afghan photojournalists face the realities of building a free press in a country left to stand on its own – reframing Afghanistan for the world and for themselves.

When the Taliban ruled Afghanistan, taking a photo was a crime. After the regime fell from power in 2001, a fledgling free press emerged and a photography revolution was born. Now, as foreign troops and media withdraw, Afghanistan and its journalists have been left to stand on their own.

Set in a modern Afghanistan bursting with colour and character, Frame by Frame follows four Afghan photojournalists as they navigate an emerging and dangerous media landscape. Through cinema vérité, intimate interviews, powerful photojournalism, and never-before-seen archival footage shot in secret during the Taliban regime, the film connects audiences with four photographers in the pursuit of the truth.

Directed by: Mo Scarpelli and Alexandria Bombach
Year: 2015
Country: USA
Running time: 85′

What are journalists worth in an age where anyone can tell their own story online? Has their diminishing value led to the growing violence against journalists across the world? This is the argument that executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), Joel Simon, put forward at the Frontline Club on Tuesday 17 March. Following the release of his latest book, A New Censorship: Inside the Global Battle for Media Freedom, Simon joined an engaged audience to discuss the reasons behind this ongoing diminishing of press freedom on a global scale. The discussion spanned from the current global spike in the murder, kidnapping and intimidation of journalists, to the futility of media blackouts, to the ways in which the internet has permanently changed the face of the news industry.

l-r: Richard Sambrook and Joel Simon

Speaking to Richard Sambrook, Director of Journalism at Cardiff University and chairman of the International News Safety Institute (INSI), Simon pointed to a paradox: access to overwhelming amounts of information blinding people to the urgency of the crisis in press freedom.

“We’re so deluged by information that I think we fail to see the ways in which censorship and repression are actually creating gaps in the essential knowledge that we need,” said Simon.

Using case studies of Vladimir Putin’s Russia, Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Turkey, Simon‘s book demonstrates how repressive governments use systems of state control to undermine the work of the press.

Sambrook agreed, and added that, “Increasingly, journalism is becoming politicised and the danger is growing of falling on the wrong side of oppressive regimes.”

In situations such as that in IS-controlled areas of Syria and Iraq, journalists are now seen as targets, rather than tools to spread messages, commented Simon. Changes in technology that have allowed anyone to share their own message online have also robbed journalists of their monopoly on disseminating information, he said. Simon noted a clear correlation between increased numbers of people active online and greater threats posed to press freedom.

“The value of journalists as individuals is diminished and that makes them more vulnerable. I believe that’s one of the reasons we’re seeing this spike in violence and this spike in repression.”

In the past, kidnapped journalists were able to argue their usefulness to captors by arguing that they were an invaluable tool for communicating their stories.

“If a journalist said that to IS they’d be laughed out of the room,” said Simon.

The discussion then moved to the frequent media blackouts that are actioned when journalists are kidnapped, under the pretence of allowing direct negotiations to take place. Simon, however, argued that these blackouts only allow captors, such as ISIS, to assume full control of the narrative.

We need to overturn the default press blackout on difficult news events. Coverage should be the default @Joelcpj @frontlineclub

— Tom Jeffery (@tdwjeffery) March 17, 2015

The wide-ranging discussion also looked at the problem of Western governments prioritising national security over freedom of expression in the wake of recent terror attacks on journalists at the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo in Paris.

“I think the freedom of expression coalition lasted a couple of days and it’s been replaced by a national security coalition,” said Simon, and pointed to increased powers of state surveillance introduced in the UK within days of the attack.

To tackle the current crisis of press freedom, Simon proposed a broad alliance between journalists and all groups with an interest in ensuring the free flow of information.

“We need to form a grand coalition between all the forces which have a stake in ensuring that information flows freely,” he said.

Only with the help of the global business and technology communities, NGOs and like-minded governments could journalists make headway in preserving the fundamental right to free speech, he said.

More information on The New Censorship: Inside the Global Battle for Freedom of Expression is available here.

Watch and listen back below:

This screening will be followed by a panel discussion with director Misja Pekel, writers Ben Judah and Peter Pomerantsev, and journalist Richard Gizbert.

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The rocket that shot down flight MH17 was actually intended for Vladimir Putin’s plane. That is, if we were to believe the headline Russia Today (RT) was running in the first hours after the tragedy. The disaster with the Malaysian Airlines flight wasn’t the first time the news channel stirred controversy with its reporting. In November of 2014, Ofcom gave RT a warning for impartial reporting on the uprising in Maidan Square in Kiev.

The channel was launched in 2005 under the name Russia Today to bring the Russian perspective on world events to a global audience. Almost ten years later, RT broadcasts in five languages and can be received almost all over the world. It is now the biggest news organisation on YouTube with 2 billion views, more then CNN and BBC together.

Its critics call it a bullhorn for Russian propaganda, RT claims only to show a different perspective on world events, and presents itself as an alternative to the mainstream media. In Misja Pekel’s The World According to Russia Today, current and former employees, journalists and media analysts dissect RT’s modus operandi. What is it like to work for the channel? How much influence does the Kremlin really have? And is it possible to discern between fact and opinion when Russian interests are at stake?

Directed by Misja Pekel
Duration: 40′
Year: 2015

The Panel:

Ben Judah is the author of Fragile Empire: How Russia Fell In And Out Of Love With Vladimir Putin published by Yale University Press.

Peter Pomerantsev is an author, TV producer, and Senior Fellow at the Legatum Institute. Nothing is True and Everything is Possible, his book about working in Russian media, was released by Faber in February. It has been short listed for the Pushkin House Award for Russia books, and was a BBC Book of the Week.

Richard Gizbert is a Canadian broadcast journalist. He is the presenter of the Listening Post on Al Jazeera English. Over the past 25 years, he has covered stories in more than 50 countries on five continents.

From Egypt to Mexico, Russia to Syria, journalists are increasingly coming under attack. They are murdered, imprisoned and intimidated for doing their job. If this continues we will face a growing crisis in information – a shortage of the news that we need to make sense of our globalised world, and to fight human rights abuses, understand conflict, and hold power to account.

As executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, Joel Simon is on the frontline of the global battle for media freedom. In his latest book, The New Censorship, he details that battle and offers a prescription for how to counter these new challenges.

Simon will be joining us to offer an insight into the problems we face and to examine what needs to be done to ensure future generations are not deprived of a free press.

Chaired by Richard Sambrook, Professor of Journalism and Director at the Centre for Journalism, Cardiff University. He is a former director of Global News at the BBC where he worked for 30 years as a journalist, producer, editor and manager. He is the chairman of the International News Safety Institute (INSI).

Joel Simon is the executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) and has written widely on media issues. He is a regular contributor to Slate and the Columbia Journalism Review, and his articles and commentary have appeared in the New York Review of Books, The New York Times, World Policy Journal, and other publications. He is also the author of Endangered Mexico: An Environment on the Edge.