UK media blackout on terror suspects
Thursday, 18 August 2005, 22:38
American newspapers are waking up to the fact that the Contempt of Court Act is effectivly gagging the British media’s reporting of the investigations into suspected would-be suicide bombers.
Here’s a story by Mary Jacoby of the Wall Street Journal about why the story has all but disappeared from British newstands after the saturation coverage of a few weeks ago:
The change wasn’t due to lack of interest in one of the world’s most competitive media markets. Rather, as soon as the suspects appeared in court on Monday, charged with conspiracy to murder and other crimes, the news media are prohibited by British law from reporting information that might prevent their fair trials. That means until their trials begin in a year or more, virtually nothing about them can appear in London’s 12 daily newspapers and other media beyond such basic facts as their names, ages and the charges against them.
The legal restrictions are designed to ensure potential jurors don’t read, watch or hear any reports that might influence their view of a case. Defense lawyers and the government say such measures are especially important because Britain’s newspapers are notoriously intrusive and aggressive but often inaccurate and sensationalistic. “Got the bastards” read the page-one headline of the big-circulation Sun tabloid the day after the final arrests took place.
The media rules, however, are posing increasing problems. The proliferation of the Internet and other alternative media is limiting the British government’s ability to restrict information since Britons can read online coverage by foreign newspapers and independent bloggers. In theory, foreign news media are subject to the same restrictions on print editions that are sold on British newsstands and on their Web sites, which can be read in the U.K. But no foreign news outlet has ever been prosecuted under the law. “In general, the English papers are perceived to be the papers that will be read by potential jurors,&Rdquo; said Paul Gilbert, a media-law expert at Finers, Stephens, Innocent LLP in London.
In terror investigations that tend to drag on for years, some politicians and lawyers complain that the media blackout leaves the British public in the dark about alleged terrorist networks, contributing to a false sense of security and making it difficult for politicians like Prime Minister Tony Blair to argue for more forceful action against potential security threats.
…
Already, U.K. Attorney General Lord Goldsmith warned the press, in email messages to news organizations and their lawyers, that he would “have no hesitation in taking appropriate action” against media outlets whose coverage he deemed to jeopardize a fair trial. Lord Goldsmith, as well as the judge presiding over a trial, may accuse journalists of violating the ban, and the charge is then tried either in the same court or another court. The maximum punishment is two years in prison and an unlimited fine.
…
Several British journalists contacted for this article declined to comment, saying they feared that even general remarks could get them in trouble with the courts.
…
Press restrictions continue even after a trial has begun in Britain. The news media may report only what is said before the jury. Information gleaned from outside conversations with lawyers and other sources is blocked by law. Only after the trials of everyone accused in a crime have been completed can the news media fully report on a case.
CBS news correspondent Richard Roth has a similar view:
… a major reason why information tends to flow freer in the U.S. than in the U.K. lies in the law.
Despite their shared foundation in common law, there are sharply divergent views and practice in America and Britain on what the public is entitled to know about crimes, criminals and the justice system; in particular, where the line gets drawn between a defendant’s right to a fair trial — and the public’s right to know.
At the extreme, media free-for-alls that surrounded the prosecutions of O.J. Simpson and Michael Jackson have been seen here as illustrations of the U.S. system gone awry. When evidence and legal strategy are topics for comment outside the courtroom; when lawyers and witnesses talk to the press; and when reporters write about all this in detail, commenting on the strength of the case and even speculating on the jury’s demeanor – the British have always argued that justice suffers.
In Britain, under the Contempt of Court Act 1981, newspapers and broadcasters can be prosecuted for publishing anything that might “create a substantial risk that the course of public justice will be seriously impeded or prejudiced.”
In practice, once an arrest warrant has been issued, the law amounts to a gag order on the press. In trial coverage here, the cue to the reader or listener that a reporter is operating under restrictions comes at the end of the story, with the words, “the case continues.”
In effect, that means, “I know a lot more about what’s going on here, what the evidence really shows, what the lawyers are trying to establish, what the defendant’s alibi will be — but I can’t share it with you until it comes out in testimony or the trial’s over.&Rdquo;
The idea is to ensure that jurors will be able to hear and evaluate the evidence free of any outside interference; that only what’s said and shown in court will count. …
It will be intersting to see what stories about the attempted bombings emerge from the rest of the world’s media as, um, the case continues.
Police gag call for CCTV pictures
Friday, 12 August 2005, 13:59
Sky News’ Nick Pollard says the BBC is mad for continuing to use the CCTV images of the men suspected of attempting to carry out the London bombings on its web site.
Mad? No, just doing the sensible thing. The BBC is defying a police request not to show the pictures, which were originally issued by the police and are now available from web sites all over the world, because showing them in Britain might compromise the fairness of their trial.
A police request can’t result in contempt of court charges, but this could change if the Attorney General or the court issues a gag order, it could happen.
The London bombings have for the past few weeks demonstrated how the freedom of the UK media is routinely constrained by Britain’s antiquated contempt of court law.
Neil: Contempt laws gag UK media
Monday, 8 August 2005, 16:54
In the Guardian, Andrew Neil today became the second media commentator to condemn Liberty’s strange defense of Britain’ contempt of court law, which in the last few weeks has had the effect of gagging the British media’s reporting of the investigation into the London bombings.
Referring to Liberty’s letter to the Attorney General urging him to remind the media of the sub judice rules, Neil writes:
… an unholy alliance of the civil-liberties industry and the burgeoning human-rights branch of the legal profession that seems keen to champion everybody’s freedom — except that of the press. When supposedly freedom-loving folk want Lord Goldsmith to determine what we can read, you begin to appreciate how wafer-thin press freedom is in this country. True libertarians would be calling for an end to Britain’s anachronistic sub judice rules — rather than their strict application by his lordship.
The idea that a jury risks contamination and that jurors will not be able to come to a fair verdict because they have read some (possibly warped) report about the case or the accused hails from a bygone age when the ruling elite thought juries could not be trusted to come to the “right” verdict unless closely protected and guided by the legal establishment. In this more democratic age it is surely time to start treating jurors as adults equipped to sift through the evidence.
In the United States, sub judice fought a losing battle in the 20th century with the first amendment to the constitution, which guarantees freedom of the press. Whenever US judges were asked to choose between sub judice and the first amendment, they tended in general to side with the newspapers’ right to print whatever they thought fit for publication. But then US judges, unlike their British counterparts, have an admirable record in defending press freedom.
A few things need to be added here, though. Like it or not, the often-meek American press has used its greater feedom with more care than British papers, particularly the tabloids.
After the arrests last week, some tabloids conveniently forgot the presumption of innocence, with the Sun screamed “Got the Bastards” on the front page, and the Express splashing “”Brave police catch ALL the suicide bombers”.
I can’t quite imagine an American publication running a headline like that.
The Guardian has a good media section today. Also worth reading are Roy Greenslade on the citizen photojournalist services Flickr and Scoopt and Jeff Jarvis’s advice to old media for coping with the Internet.
Contempt for contempt laws
Friday, 5 August 2005, 21:55
Four years ago, T.R. Reid, who was at the time the London bureau chief of the Washington Post, came to visit American politics students at Sussex University. His speech puzzled many people in the audience because he spent a lot of time complaining about how restricted the British conception of a free press is compared to the United States.
But it actually made a lot of sense: To American journalists, the level of routine secrecy in British government is bizarre. Even more bizzare, though, is how accepting most British hacks are of the status quo.
Perhaps it takes an American ex-pat journalist to speak up on these issues. Heather Brooke has been going a good job of this, advocating the new Freedom of Information laws in a book and blog. But open government is about much more than just the ability to demand data from government departments using FOIA.
For example, she has a very good idea why the ABC in the United States scooped the London-based media on the tube bombing photos:
…the information lockdown operating at all times, not just during the present crisis, among the police and judiciary, makes a mockery of open justice. It is no surprise that we know more about the Italian bombing suspect than any other part of the terrorist investigation. Or that the American public was the first to see photographs of the bombed tube carriages. These countries are free from such stifling Contempt of Court laws.
The problem here lies in our judicial system’s unrealistic expectations. Many judges seem to inhabit a fantasyland where they believe everyone who comes to trial does so without a reputation and jurors’ minds must be an absolute blank. This is justice by myth and the danger of being so out of step with society is that collective justice will cease to satisfy individual desire for retribution. A more pragmatic approach is needed that understands and respects the public’s interest in seeing justice done.
The contempt of court laws prohibit the publication of any information that could be judged to seriously impede or prejudice judicial proceedings while those proceedings are active. They also prevent publication of a suspect’s background or previous convictions. This gag on freedom of expression is bad for many reasons. It assumes that juries (and by default the public) are incapable of rational thought once exposed to the media. Such a patronizing elitist attitude is clear when you consider that this type of contempt only refers to trial by jury: a judge is deemed sufficiently intelligent to discount media coverage.
She’s right. She’s also right to criticise Liberty’s strange stance on this issue. It’s hard to imagine its American equivalent, the ACLU, calling for the press to keep schtum.
Union: media shouldn’t exploit amateur bombing pictures
Tuesday, 2 August 2005, 12:46
The Chartered Institute of Journalists, one of Britain’s journalists’ unions, has also condemned the use of amateur photographs by broadcasters in their coverage of the bombings.
In a letter to the jounralists’s trade newspaper Press Gazette, the CIoJ expressed concern that big media organisations are exploiting citizen reporters by “grabbing” the potentially-lucrative rights to their footage with no payment and no responsibilty for the danger amateurs might face collecting images:
The union said that US-based broadcaster CNN “takes the prize” for “sheer effrontery”. On its website CNN tells those who send in material: “You agree to indemnify defend and hold harmless CNN, its parent and affiliated companies, its and their licensees, successors and assigns, and each of its and their officers, agents and employees from all liabilities or losses, including, without limitation, reasonable attorney’s fees”.
The CIoJ said: “These TV companies deserve condemnation for their outrageous demands and their disregard for the danger they may be subjecting their viewers to in their attempt to obtain picture material. Just in case anyone thinks these dangers are exaggerated, remember that two Press Photographers in recent times have met their death while attending major news stories in London alone. One killed by the IRA Bishopsgate bomb blast in the City of London, the other during rioting in Brixton.
“We, at the Chartered Institute of Journalists recommend that non-professionals should not send in material to these above mentioned TV companies while they continue to exploit and denigrate news photography and their potential contributors, both professional and non-professional, in this way.”
To some extent, there is an element of photojournalists protecting their professional turf here.
Their point about the dangers press photographers face is a odd, because professional crisis photographers chose to attend high-risk locations. The 7/7 cameraphone pictures, by contrast, were taken by people who happened to be caught up in the attacks. They did not chose to be put in the position of being able to gather that material.
But on the other hand, the CIoJ have a point about exploitation. Posting your cameraphone pictures on a blog is one thing, but handing them over to a big media outlet to sell is a completely different relationship.
If you have a particularly good picture, why should you hand it over for someone else to profit from? Freelance journalists get paid for this sort of thing, and so should you.
Media coverage threatens London terror trails
Tuesday, 2 August 2005, 12:33
The arrested suspects alleged to be the failed London suicide bombers might not be able to get a fair trial in Britain because of the media’s reporting of their arrests, Press Gazette reported this week.
In an open letter the human rights group Liberty urged the atterney general, Lord Goldsmith, to remind the media of the contempt of court laws. They are particularly concerned about the reporting of an alleged confession by Osman Hussain, the suspect arrested in Italy. These reports were apparently based on a leak from Italian law enforcement sources (letter, PDF).
As I understand it, there is no seperate media law for bloggers, so everything being said about newspapers here also applies to us.
Sassygate: Can’t blogs do better?
Saturday, 30 July 2005, 22:11
EasyJetsetter has what ought to be the definitive statement on the whole Dilpazier Aslam brouhaha:
Boys, I know you’re enjoying yourselves immensely, but I was rather proud that the British blogging world wasn’t as focused on “scalping” and “fisking” and such. Please go lower your own country’s discourse.
Yes, Dilpazier Aslam is a tit and he said some idiot things. But there are lots of tits saying idiot things in Britain’s newspapers. I’m bloody proud that we have a partisan press. It’s a lot more interesting that dry, supposedly objective dusty tomes. There’s a reason they call it dead-tree media over there.
I agree wholeheartedly with this.
I’m not sure where I stand on this particular story: I have a lot of respect for the Guardian as a journalistic institution, and I hate to see political points scored against it by right-wing bloggers. On the other hand, they clearly screwed up by allowing a partisan reporter cover events and state opinions without declaring his interest.
But I am sure that if collecting scalps of journalists from ideologically-opposed publications comes to be seen as the gold standard around here, something will have gone terribly wrong with the British section of the blogosphere. Back in February, when the Eason Jordan thing was in full swing, Kevin Drum made a similar point about the sparce achievements of American blogs:
In the wider world, throw in Trent Lott, Ward Churchill, and Jeff Gannon — and probably some others I’ve forgotten about — and you start to wonder: is this really the blogosphere’s biggest contribution to public discourse? Collecting scalps?
Sure, these guys bear varying amounts of culpability and deserve varying amounts of criticism, but if you take a look at the standard history of the blogosphere it becomes clear that its best known incidents on both left and right — Lottgate! Rathergate! Easongate! — all revolve around public figures being viciously hounded out of their jobs. Positive accomplishments, conversely, are pretty thin on the ground.
I guess we all have our own ideas of what the blogosphere is good for. But when the history books are finally written, I hope that cranking up the politics of personal destruction yet another notch isn’t what we end up being most famous for.
I’ve been posting about this primarily because I’m interested in contributing to the rough first draft — or at least the marginal notes — of the history of political blogging in Britain, and like Kevin Drum in the US, I hope we don’t end up famous for this sort of thing, either.
From a theoretical point of view, this story has raised some interesting questions. I used to think that because of the tradition of a partisan press and the lack of a 30-year campaign by the right to decertify mainstream journalism, this sort of thing would not catch on in Britain the way it has in the United States.
Clearly, though, that’s not quite right. There are still things that are culturally beyond the pale, even in a partisan press. There are still professional values of journalism that need to be policed, and the bloggers are clearly patrolling those boundaries.
The American media scholar Daniel Hallin described this realm of acceptable partisan debate as the “sphere of legitimate controversy”. In the context of “objective” American journalism, he wrote, there is a realm of opinions which are mainstream and must be framed as competing viewpoints in a political argument. But outside that zone, there is a zone of devience where journalism’s rules of “objectivity” are summarily defenestrated. Radical ideas deemed beyond the pale are open to ridicule and disdain wherever they appear.
By extension, members of radical parties whose views are deemed beyond the pale cannot be trustworthy journalists, even in a partisan publication that makes no claim to objectivity. Policing the boundary between these zones is clearly what this scandal is all about, as Shiv Malik, the freelance journalist who first brought this story into the mainstream in the Independent on Sunday made clear in a recent New Statesman column:
What readers of the Guardian were not told was that Aslam is a member of the extreme Islamist organisation Hizb ut-Tahrir. Though it publicly dissociates itself from violence, Hizb ut-Tahrir is shunned by most British Muslims and banned from many mosques. As I have reported in the New Statesman, it manipulates people and can be seen as part of a conveyor belt towards violence — its literature was found, for example, in the home of Omar Sharif, the Derby man who volunteered for a suicide bombing mission in Israel. Hizb ut-Tahrir is banned in Germany.
My strongly held view is that members of such a group should not be allowed to write on this subject in the national press (just as the British National Party, which also claims to be non-violent, is very rarely given space), but if they do their connection should be made clear, preferably at the beginning of the article.
It’s interesting to see that a the “zone of legitimate controversy” also exists in a partisan newspaper system. Quite rightly, the BNP and Hizb ut-Tahrir are outside that zone in Britain. Their views are not described in the media as if they were a serious part of mainstream policy discussions.
But whether their rank-and-file members should not be allowed to be employed in national newspapers is a much more complicated matter. They should certainly identify their interests when writing about political topics. But shouldn’t that rule also apply to Guardian columnists who are Labour or Lib Dem partisans? Or does that standard not apply to parties inside the sphere of legitimate controversy?
London media scooped on bomb photos
Thursday, 28 July 2005, 18:07
Was the grainy, black-and-white x-ray photograph of a nail bomb that was splashed across the national papers’ front pages today a blow to the so-called “special relationship”?
The photos were leaked to ABC News, allegedly by sources in US law enforcement agencies with whom British police shared the evidence.
Despite a plea from the police last night not to publish the photos, a number of national newspapers — broadsheet and tabloid — carried them on their front pages.
It wasn’t the only recent leak of British materials in the United States. According to the BBC,
Soon after the bombings a Joint Terrorist Analysis Centre report leaked to the New York Times revealed that three weeks before the attacks British intelligence officials thought there was no group with the intent or capacity to attack the UK.
Now CNN that Met Commissioner Sir Ian Blair is concerned that the leak came from US agencies:
“I am concerned that some of the photos were supplied in confidence to some of our colleague agencies in the U.S. and were published there and subsequently around the world,” Blair said.
…
In the U.S., leading Congressman Pete Hoekstra said the leak could affect the relationship between intelligence agencies in Britain and the U.S.
Hoekstra, chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, said: “We work on this stuff hand in hand and we can’t be looking over each other’s shoulder wondering who is leaking whose information.
“It’s impossible to know how tight police are being with the details in London but if the investigation is put in jeopardy, that would be a tragedy.”
In the age of the internet, asking people not to publish material already readily available in another jurisdiction is a futile excercise.
ABC did ignore the police request not to publish, but can perhaps be forgiven because publishing material from an ongoing investigation isn’t as big a problem in the US as it is in more Britain.
But what was the leaker(s) thinking? What interest is served by putting these images in the public domain? Am I missing something here?
Update: Via Liberal England, I learn that foreign media with foreign law enforcement sources have been beating their British counterparts since the very day of the bombings.
Open justice for terrorists
Thursday, 28 July 2005, 11:46
We don’t need special anti-terrorist laws or to abandon civil liberties or the rule of law to try and convict would-be terrorists. The existing law works just fine, thank you.
Says who? How about U.S. District Judge John C. Coughenour (a Reagan appointee, by the way), sentencing Ahmed Ressam, an Algerian national, to 22 years for plotting to bomb Los Angeles International Airport on the eve of the millennium:
Okay. Let me say a few things. First of all, it will come as no surprise to anybody that this sentencing is one that I have struggled with a great deal, more than any other sentencing that I’ve had in the 24 years I’ve been on the bench.
I’ve done my very best to arrive at a period of confinement that appropriately recognizes the severity of the intended offense, but also recognizes the practicalities of the parties’ positions before trial and the cooperation of Mr. Ressam, even though it did terminate prematurely.
The message I would hope to convey in today’s sentencing is twofold:
First, that we have the resolve in this country to deal with the subject of terrorism and people who engage in it should be prepared to sacrifice a major portion of their life in confinement.
Secondly, though, I would like to convey the message that our system works. We did not need to use a secret military tribunal, or detain the defendant indefinitely as an enemy combatant, or deny him the right to counsel, or invoke any proceedings beyond those guaranteed by or contrary to the United States Constitution.
I would suggest that the message to the world from today’s sentencing is that our courts have not abandoned our commitment to the ideals that set our nation apart. We can deal with the threats to our national security without denying the accused fundamental constitutional protections.
Despite the fact that Mr. Ressam is not an American citizen and despite the fact that he entered this country intent upon killing American citizens, he received an effective, vigorous defense, and the opportunity to have his guilt or innocence determined by a jury of 12 ordinary citizens.
Most importantly, all of this occurred in the sunlight of a public trial. There were no secret proceedings, no indefinite detention, no denial of counsel.
The tragedy of September 11th shook our sense of security and made us realize that we, too, are vulnerable to acts of terrorism.
Unfortunately, some believe that this threat renders our Constitution obsolete. This is a Constitution for which men and women have died and continue to die and which has made us a model among nations. If that view is allowed to prevail, the terrorists will have won.
It is my sworn duty, and as long as there is breath in my body I’ll perform it, to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. We will be in recess.
(Hat tip: PL on FOI-L)
More London tube bombs?
Thursday, 21 July 2005, 16:01
Europhobia, Perfect, and the Guardian Newsblog are liveblogging.
Local papers recalled reporters after London bombings
Tuesday, 19 July 2005, 10:11
The Dart Center for Journalism & Trauma has produced an excellent roundup and assessment of the coverage of the London bombings and has a list of resources for reporters covering events like the London bombings. Given the attention (and criticism) the “citizen paparazzi” have been getting on this story, perhaps bloggers and owners of camera-phones should read this, too.
Historically, many news organisations were criticised for indifference to reporters’ well-being in hostile environements, traumatic situations, or potentially-dangerous stories. But there has also been at least one over-reaction in the opposite direction, as Alyson Fixter reports for the Press Gazette:
Journalists at more than 60 weekly newspapers were banned from going out to report on the London bombings last Thursday amid fears for their safety — even though some were as far away as Kent and Buckinghamshire.
Staff at Trinity Mirror Southern titles — including the South London Press, The Wharf, the Croydon Advertiser, the Reading Chronicle and even the Whitstable & Herne Bay Times series — received an order to come back to the office or go straight home on Thursday afternoon.
A member of staff who contacted Press Gazette said the decision “went down like a lead balloon” in newsrooms as even journalists who were on jobs unrelated to the bombing, miles from London, were recalled.
London’s ‘citizen paparazzi’
Friday, 15 July 2005, 14:36
The Online Jounralism Review has a story about the Londoners who provided the first pictures of last Thursday’s underground and bus bombings using their camera phones.
The phenomenon of “citizen paparazzi” is making some people uneasy.
That naked impulse to tell a disaster story, glaring kleig lights and all, was once the province of mainstream and tabloid news organizations. But no longer. Now, for better and worse, our fellow citizens stand by, cameraphones in pockets, ready to photograph us in our direst times. Xeni Jardin, a freelance technology journalist and co-editor of BoingBoing, was aghast at the behavior of the citizen paparazzi at the scene described by Justin.
“It’s like the behavior when you see with a car wreck on the highway,” Jardin told me. “People stop and gawk. There’s a sense that this is some sort of animal behavior that’s not entirely compassionate or responsible. The difference here is that people are gawking with this intermediary device. I’m not sure if the people who did this were saying ‘I’ve got to blog this and get it to the BBC!’ But when everyone is carrying around these devices and we get used to this intuitive response of just snapping what we see that’s of interest — as surreal and grotesque as that scenario sounds, I imagine we will see a lot more of that.”
Jardin compared the behavior to the paparazzi that chased Princess Diana before her fatal car crash and noted that the ethical issues raised then are now applicable beyond just professional photographers.
“These are ethical issues that we once thought only applied to a certain class of people who had adopted the role of news as a profession,” Jardin said. “Now that more of us have the ability to capture and disseminate evidence or documentation of history as a matter of course, as a matter of our daily lives — as a casual gesture that takes very little time, no money, not a lot of skill — those ethical issues become considerations for all of us.”
The whole thing is definitly worth a read.
Finsbury Park bomb threat
Wednesday, 13 July 2005, 10:15
Finsbury Park station was closed this morning after a bomb threat.
Police cordoned off the area aroond the north London tube and train station. Bus services were suspended along Seven Sisters Road and Blackstock Road as traffic came to a complete standstill.
One police officer at the scene said a bomb threat had been phoned in.
The area was re-opened just after 10am, but the station remains closed.
Saudi grand mufti condemns London bombings
Tuesday, 12 July 2005, 01:04
Saudi Arabia’s highest religious figure, the Grand Mufti of the mosque in Mecca has condemned the London bombings.
(Via Global Voices, a blog you really ought to have in your RSS feed.)
