On Tuesday 1st November, in an event organised in partnership with the London Press Club and Index on Censorship, six journalists met at the Frontline Club to redefine Foreign Correspondence.

“Where once we were seen as neutral observers, now we are targets” said Caroline Lees, author of Index’s recent article ‘Under The Wires’. Backed up by a deterioration in journalistic safety and evidence supplied by Assad defectors, it is clear that journalists are now firmly in the military’s crosshairs.

Freelance photojournalist Paul Conroy attributed this to the rise of the use of truth “as a weapon of war”. Kim Sengupta, Defence Correspondent at The Independent noted that the use of kidnapping and public beheading by rebel groups has led to “a huge tranche of Northern Syria not being covered”.

However, this tactic of limiting press freedom through violence is not limited to terrorist organisations.

Conroy is in a court case against the Assad regime after documents smuggled out of Syria proved that he and his colleague Marie Colvin were a victim of an assassination operation. These documents state that “international journalists were to be treated the same as combatants”.

The rise of untrained freelance journalists in the field worsens the problem. Freelancer Samira Shackle mentioned that she had come across numerous “horror stories” of young journalists arriving in hostile zones without even basic precautions. She cited the dangers of young reporters travelling without insurance or basic cyber security.

The problem is exacerbated by the increased role of ‘fixers’. As local employees who offer on the ground support to the international press, these freelancers run many of the same risks as Western journalists but with little of the support. They also must cope with increased hostilities and accusations of being a spy or traitor.

They are also often left out in the cold when it comes to kidnap or imprisonment.

Caroline Lees mentioned the case of Jovo Martinović, the Montenegrin investigative journalist arrested whilst researching a gun running story. Despite the dubious charges, the French station he was working for has done little to help him.

Dr Haider Al Safi formerly of The Independent, said that in many cases, these employees were being exploited: “They are overworked, not getting paid well and also not introduced to their rights”.

There was consensus on how the journalistic world could respond. This included major organisations taking more care in training all it’s employees. Some attempts have been made towards this end.

However, Lees mentioned sources from news organisations who said they didn’t support fixers because it was “too complicated, too expensive and they don’t want to accept liability”. With statements like this it is clear a sea change across journalism is a long way off.

On Tuesday 12 April, the Frontline Club played host to an intimate screening of Syria’s Rebellious Women, followed by a lively discussion between director Zaina Erhaim and Index on Censorship magazine editor Rachael Jolley.

“From my own experience, I tried to research Syrian women from history and I could not find anything,” said Erhaim, who is originally from Idlib in northern Syria. “So when the revolution started I felt we had to capture the work that these women were doing. Because in the future the men will be writing the history and those heroines will be forgotten.”

Adding: “I’m Syrian myself and so I felt it was my duty to do.”

Filmmaker @ZainaErhaim talking about Syria’s incredible ‘Rebellious Women’ at the Frontline Club #IndexAwards2016 pic.twitter.com/1I0EpyRCZh

— Fred Searle (@fsearle91) April 12, 2016

Jolley began the discussion by asking about the obstacles facing women operating as journalists in Syria.

“It’s very difficult,” said Erhaim, who was one of two or three women from her town to study journalism. “It’s connected to open-mindedness, mixing with men and lots of travel which is not accepted in our communities… Now you can imagine that these communities are armed. The masculine powers are now holding arms, so what they do to suppress women is horrible.”

When pushed about feeling any sense of threat or danger, Erhaim conceded her fears about returning to her homeland.

“It is dangerous, anyone who is living inside Syria is expecting to be killed at any moment. I don’t know any who hasn’t at least told their friends about their will. Whenever we gather, the first thing we speak about is did you change your will – are you going to give me your laptop?”

Saw ferociously gifted & brave @ZainaErhaim talk about Syria @frontlineclub last night. Rooting for her at @IndexCensorship awards tonight

— Jessica Elgot (@jessicaelgot) April 13, 2016

Erhaim also discussed the plight of young children, for whom the ongoing violence has become normalised. “What freaks me out is how they become peaceful with what’s going on. I was in a park that has now become a cemetery, but it still had a slide and a swing. So kids were still going to play among the tombs and graves.”

“Kids were still going to play among the tombs and graves.”

“I believe we’ll have a crazy generation who will need lots of psychological support,” Erhaim added.

Going on to express her disillusionment at the treatment of Syrian refugees in Europe, Erhaim said: “Outside Syria we’re being treated like potential terrorists. We’re becoming frightening creatures… The foreign jihadis who are mainly from the EU are coming to our lands to occupy them – and we’re the ones treated as potential terrorists.”

The depths of the conflict were noted when Erhaim admitted that she had been unable to maintain contact with loyalist family members. “I have two persons from my family that I haven’t spoken to in six years, even when I went back to the regime area in 2011 I hid myself, fearing that they would inform about me and have me arrested.”

While Syria’s Rebellious Women painted a sombre picture, there was some cause for optimism. Erhaim revealed how her efforts teaching Syrians to become citizen journalists had helped women in providing for their families.

“The beautiful thing about it is now they’re gaining money out of it and supporting their families. For the five women who are constantly publishing on our Damascus Bureau website, all of them are supporting their own families. It’s beautiful.”

Watch the trailer for the film here.

On Wednesday 14 October a packed audience convened at the Frontline Club, eager to discuss worldwide censorship and the extent to which technology has increased the scope of surveillance. The event, titled Spies, Lies and Secrets, was held in collaboration with Index on Censorship – the international organisation that promotes and defends the right to free expression worldwide – to coincide with the release of their latest quarterly magazine. 

L-r: Robert McCrum, Xiaolu Guo, Rachael Jolley, Ismail Einashe and Stephen Grey

The distinguished panel included award-winning British investigative journalist and author Stephen Grey, whose recent book The New Spymasters looks at spying in the digital age and how it has evolved since the Cold War; Xialou Guo, fiction writer, filmmaker, political activist, and an outspoken critic of communist oppression in China; associate editor of the Observer Robert McCrum; and freelance journalist and associate editor at Warscapes Ismail Einashe. Index on Censorship magazine editor Rachael Jolley chaired the event.

Grey introduced the event: “It’s quite chilling to know the amount of information that can be unearthed about you [due to the internet], and not just about you but also your friends and family.”

He then questioned whether or not censorship was ever justifiable. “We want to stand up for freedom of expression but some censorship does seem logical. We want to stop our children from being taken into gangs or lured off to Syria.”

Robert McCrum responded to a question about censorship during the Cold War and in the present day: “The difference is that in those days it was simple, you knew who the enemy was and you knew what the enemy did. The big change now is this extraordinary explosion of global consciousness.

“The founders of this magazine were trying to defend literary freedom in the cold war. Now we’re trying to defend freedom of speech and thought and expression across the globe – that’s the big difference.”

Great debate on censorship @frontlineclub tonight with Robert McCrum, Xiaolu Guo @StephenGrey, @IsmailEinashe Rachael Jolley #indexfrontline

— Jacqueline Pietsch (@jjpietsch) October 13, 2015

The discussion moved onto the question of the internet and the impact it has had on freedom of expression and censorship.

Guo said: “The internet has great advantages because it de-centralises the power. There’s no one boss in the internet world – there are many controllers.”

Guo then commented on the strict internet controls enforced in her home country, China. “There are currently at least 2 million internet police there – cyber control in China is vast.”

Continuing on this topic, Grey said: “The freedom that the internet brings puts the fear of God into governments (…) They can’t defend some of the means that the internet provides.”

Einashe responded to an audience question on whether censorship has seen an increase in recent years. “I feel that in different East African countries that I know about that censorship has certainly increased, states are able to censor much more.”

He continued: “The link between social movements and online activity is really important too because you can’t really affect social change solely on the web – you have to connect to social movements too.”

If you want to learn how bananas helped a journalist smuggle banned magazines into eastern Europe, or how information was passed around via lipstick in Pinochet’s Chile, then join Index on Censorship for the launch of Spies, Secrets and Lies – our latest magazine featuring stories of censorship and ingenious efforts to evade it.

Expect a lively evening exploring censorship old and new, hear some stories of heroic stands for free expression shared for the first time in the latest magazine, and debate with us what the future of censorship might look like.

From China’s new security laws and South Korea’s new smartphone spies to Eritrea’s agents and the new fighters for free expression online. Where and what are the challenges today and how do they compare to the past?

• With an introduction by Stephen Grey, journalist and author of The New Spymasters.
• Panelists include Robert McCrum, Xiaolu Guo, Ismael Einashe. Chaired by Rachael Jolley, editor of Index on Censorship magazine.
• Attendees receive a free copy of the latest magazine.

Index on Censorship is one of the world’s leading defenders and supporters of the right to free expression internationally. 

More on the speakers:

Stephen Grey is an award-winning British investigative journalist and author, perhaps best known for uncovering the CIA’s program of ‘extraordinary rendition’. His latest of three books, The New Spymasters, looks at spying in the digital age and how it has changed since the Cold War. The London-based reporter has also reported from conflicts in Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan and covered the subjects of national security, terrorism and security agencies extensively.

Xiaolu Guo is a fiction writer, filmmaker and political activist. Her award-winning works include Village of Stone, I Am China, and the acclaimed film She, a Chinese. Guo, named one of the ‘Best of Young British Novelists’ by Granta Magazine and an outspoken critic of communist oppression in China, has developed her own unique vision of the country’s past and globalised future.

Robert McCrum is an associate editor of the Observer. For nearly 20 years he was editor in chief of the publishing firm of Faber and Faber and is co-author of the Story of English as well as six highly acclaimed novels: In the Secret State, A Loss of Heart, The Fabulous Englishman, Mainland, The Psychological Moment, and Suspicion. He was the literary editor of the Observer from 1996 to 2008, and has been a regular contributor to the Guardian since 1990.

Ismail Einashe is a freelance journalist, researcher and an associate editor at Warscapes, a foreign affairs magazine. He has worked for national and international media including Prospect, the Guardian and the BBC since he first came to the UK as a child refugee.

This event is organised by:

What is the future of news? Will the public know more or less in the internet age? These questions were the focus of a panel discussion marking the launch of the autumn issue of Index on Censorship magazine at the Frontline Club on Wednesday 22 October.

Shrinking international news budgets, bureau closures, the rise of the freelancer and the citizen journalist all made for gloomy prognoses for the business-as-usual news model, agreed the panel chaired by The Times columnist, David Aaronovitch.

From left: David Aaronovitch, Amie Ferris-Rotman, Rachel Briggs and Richard Sambrook in conversation at the Frontline Club.

In the internet age, where journalists are no longer exclusive gate-keepers of publishing platforms, access to unprecedented amounts of information had not necessarily resulted in better informed audiences, said Richard Sambrook, director of Cardiff University’s journalism centre.

“One of the paradoxes is that we have more information out there than ever and less trust in it than ever,” he said.

Reuters correspondent Amie Ferris-Rotman said the days of traditional foreign correspondents and news agencies parachuting foreign reporters in to do “white saviour journalism” were numbered.

She urged news agencies to invest in training local staff who “often produce better stories simply because they know their countries better”. Above all, the industry must resist ‘deprofessionalisation’.

“Because of what’s happened with the internet people think [journalism is] a hobby, something you should get for free,” said Ferris-Rotman. “This is totally unacceptable. If we don’t change this the world will suffer enormously and get less of a full picture.”

South African freelance journalist and trainer Raymond Joseph then joined the discussion via Skype. He told of efforts to reach remote communities by building investigative tools to gather user generated content.

Joseph said the challenge for journalists was to cut through the “cacophony” of social media noise and empower audiences to become competent news gatherers:

“Increasingly we’re digging up those voices. But we’re going to have to do the journalism because with all those voices out there we have to sort the news from the noise.”

Yet another perspective was offered by Rachel Briggs, director of Hostage UK, an NGO working with hostages and their families.

Briggs said new platforms had empowered news subjects to publish their message directly, highlighting the example of Mike Haines, who turned to YouTube to address audiences after IS militants murdered his brother David Haines.

But Briggs warned these platforms were also available to “the bad guys” with IS now “effectively running its own news channel”. Access to such graphic content presented new challenges to editorial judgement, she said, not only in news rooms but also for users of social media.

In the discussion that followed, the panel agreed that the explosion of raw information online was both a blessing and a curse for journalists, whose skills of objective verification were now needed more than ever.

“We’ve got a whole world opened up to us but it’s a very dangerous world if we’re just going to dive into it,” said Joseph, and praised the rise of verification tools and agencies.

“The same rules apply that have always applied,” said Ferris-Rotman. “If you’re a good journalist you’ve live by certain principles, you’ve been trained a certain way to think objectively to have freedom of bias, to present a nuanced view of events.”

This was the enduring value of journalistic principles, said Sambrook, in an age where the lines were increasingly blurred for audiences between journalism, PR, propaganda, advertising and lobbying.

“In this new environment if [the public] don’t understand that difference there’s a problem. . . . they’re consuming junk food without realising it.”

You can watch the event and listen again here:

The discussion will tackle questions about whether changes within journalism will leave the public knowing more or less than they have in the past. Will new technologies bring us greater depth of information? Will news survive or will celebrity gossip take over? Will citizen journalism carry more weight than traditional TV channels?

The debate will be introduced by magazine editor Rachael Jolley and hosted by columnist, author and Index on Censorship chairman David Aaronovitch.

Speakers include:

Richard Sambrook, professor of journalism and director of the Centre for Journalism at Cardiff University and former director of global news at the BBC.

Raymond Joseph, data journalist and former regional editor of the South African Sunday Times.

Rachel Briggs, director of Hostage UK and deputy director of the Institute of Strategic Dialogue.

Amie Ferris-Rotman, John S. Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford University and former senior correspondent for Reuters in Afghanistan.

In the chair was the ever cheery Jonathan Dimbleby, who mapped out the key areas for debate. The panelists began with a feisty exchange over newspaper funding. The Times columnist David Aaronovitch argued that tabloids form a crucial part of a sustainable economic model.<

“The only parts of British journalism that make any money and aren’t subsidised are the tabloid papers, which created the sorts of abuses that we’re talking about…The only one (online) that looks likely to make some money is the Mail online. The model of the Mail Online has nothing to do with quality journalism. It’s essentially sex, tits and murder.”

Academic Angela Phillips replied that public interest journalism was actually subsidised in other parts of Europe, suggesting that this model could actually benefit journalism in the UK.

New Statesman deputy editor Helen Lewis stated that Leveson should take the global reach of internet publications into account.

“I’m surprised to find myself agreeing with Martin Clark, editor of the Mail online. We can regulate the British press all that we want but the American press could still publish very intrusive pictures, they will still follow Pippa Middleton around because there’s a market for that there. I’d like to see an acknowledgement that we’re competing in a global market place.”

Dimbleby moved on to the question of how to protect so-called victims of shoddy journalism. Academic and founder of Hacked Off Brian Catchcart expressed his frustration that when bad journalism has sold newspapers, it’s gone unpunished.<

“The journalists who wrote the stuff about Christopher Jefferies are all still in employment. At the lowest levels you need journalists to feel that there will be consequences when things go wrong… There should be statutory underpinned self-regulation. Self-regulation, but you would have certain criteria that the press would have to meet which would be subject to audit by an external body like Ofcom. Editors and proprietors shouldn’t be left to run the show themselves.”

Aaronovitch offered support for this view but struck a gloomy note in his assessment of Leveson’s impact.

“It feels to me that we’re locking the stable door after the horse has died… This is not where the great abuses are going to come from. These are the kind of epiphenomena of the last twenty years coming back to us in a form of belated accountability, just as the system changes irrevocably.”

In summing up, the panel reached a consensus that the Leveson report will hold very little weight and is almost irrelevant. It will remain up to Whitehall whether they choose to implement the Lord Justice Leveson’s recommendations.

It has been a year since the Prime Minister announced an inquiry examining the culture, practices and ethics of the media in light of the phone-hacking scandal. Since then we have heard from journalists, editors, proprietors, politicians and victims of phone-hacking.

As the hearings draw to a close and Lord Justice Leveson begins his report, we will be holding a special event in association with Index on Censorship to discuss what we have learned and the key issues Leveson will have to tackle.

Join us with a panel to map out the questions Leveson will be asking. How should public interest be defined? Is regulation required and if so, what would its purpose be? How should relationships between journalists, proprietors, politicians and police be conducted in the future?

Chaired by writer, broadcaster and filmmaker, Jonathan Dimbleby.

Panelists to be confirmed. 

In association with Index on Censorship

On the one hand, Breivik is gaining another bout of publicity for his crimes.

On the other, the journalist’s role is to document a trial which inevitably has attracted significant public attention.

Although Twitter’s use in court is not new, this is a particularly high profile case which also presents a wealth of potential ethical issues for journalists using the microblogging tool to cover the trial.

I have a new article up at Index on Censorship which explores some of the issues.

Head over there to read more.