Censorship Archives - Page 2 of 6

SLAPP Cases Targeting Many Public Actors Besides Journalists – Report

Posted on March 17, 2022January 26, 2023 by Ivana Jeremic

A new report by the Coalition Against SLAPPs in Europe, CASE, “Shutting Out Criticism: How SLAPPs Threaten European Democracy”, published on Wednesday, says although journalists are most likely targets, these lawsuits also target activists, human rights defenders and academics.

“Journalists are targeted with SLAPPs because they bring information to light while activists, civil society organisations, and academics are confronted with SLAPPs because they challenge the status quo,” the report says.

Its data also show that the number of so-called Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation in Europe is growing, and that claimants are “becoming increasingly creative”.

The report recalls the example of Elitech against Friends of the Earth, FoE, Croatia and the civic initiative, Srdj je nas (“Srdj is ours”).

In 2013, the citizens’ initiative, together with the Croatian Architects Association, requested the Constitutional Court to assess the legality of the construction of a luxury resort and golf course on Srđ hill by the multinational manufacturing company Elitech. FoE Croatia placed a billboard criticising the project in a public place.

“FoE Croatia subsequently faced two different lawsuits: civil defamation against the organisation, with a request for a gagging order; and the president and two vice-presidents of FoE Croatia were criminally prosecuted for libel,” the report recalls, adding that this case “shows how SLAPPs are used as a means of silencing those speaking out about a shared concern”.

The report stresses the “chilling effect” that SLAPPs have, meaning the financial burden, the time defendants have to take to prepare their legal defence, the effort to remember details of events that often took place years previously, as well as the mental and emotional toll.

“Many described the process of dealing with the SLAPP as more taxing and intimidating than actually receiving the legal threat,” the report adds.

The paper quotes data compiled by the Croatian Journalists’ Association, HND, which recorded a total of 905 active court cases against journalists and media outlets in the country in 2020 – not all of them SLAPPS – and at least 924 cases in 2021.

In Poland, the biggest daily newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza has been targeted by more than 60 civil and criminal cases over the past few years, many of them initiated by the governing Law and Justice Party’s politicians, the paper stressed.

The Coalition Against SLAPPS in Europe, CASE, is an umbrella group uniting a range of watchdog organisations.

In January, it published a comprehensive study noting a sharp rise in SLAPP cases across Europe over the last four years – with 539 across Europe today, a fifth of that number lodged in 2021 alone.

Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation are civil claims filed against individuals or organisations. Businesses and government officials often file them against those that oppose them on issues of public concern, with a view to silencing them. They are widely seen as a tool of “modern censorship”.

A SLAPP can be based on a range of legal theories, including defamation, data protection, privacy, business torts and data protection, and often exploit gaps in procedural protections that are often highly specific to the jurisdiction in question.

EU Presses Montenegro to Pull Plug on Russian Media

Posted on March 10, 2022January 26, 2023 by Ivana Jeremic

The European Union urged Montenegro on Wednesday to suspend broadcasting of Russian Today and Sputnik in line with the bloc’s restrictive measures on Russia.

On March 1, Montenegro said it had joined European Union sanctions on Russia over the Ukraine war, but most of the restrictive measures, including a ban on Russian media, remain on hold.

“We urge the government to … provide a legal basis for the competent national authorities, including the Electronic Communications Agency, AEM, to be able to take the necessary decisions,” the EU press release said.

On March 2, the EU, which Montenegro wishes to join, suspended the broadcasting of Sputnik and Russia Today in Member States, accusing them of spreading disinformation and manipulating information as an operational tool of Russia’s assault on Ukraine.

The EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs, Josep Borrel, said that Russian state-owned media were essential to bringing forward and supporting Russia’s military aggression in Ukraine.

Montenegro also committed itself also to ban Russian overflight of its airspace and access to its airports and to ban transactions with the Russian Central Bank and several other banks.

But so far, banning Russian flights is the only measure actually confirmed by the government.

On March 3, the Minister of Public Administration, Digital Society and Media, Tamara Srzentic called on the government to suspend Russia Today and Sputnik broadcasts.

The proposal was postponed reportedly because it was suspected that such a decision would not have enough support from within the coalition government.

“Montenegro will follow EU measures against Russia, and therefore restrictions related to stopping the spread of disinformation and propaganda through the media, which are recognized for publishing false news,” Srzentic told the daily Vijesti on March 3.

According to Montenegrin law on international restrictive measures, ministries propose measures but the government has to officially confirm them before implementation. After confirmation, the government sends a list of measures to state institutions, which must implement them.

By law, the Electronic Communications Agency can prohibit broadcasts if media promote hatred or endanger state security.

But the Association of Montenegrin Journalists on March 3 opposed the ban, likening it to censorship. “Banning the Russian media in Montenegro is wrong and w expresses fear that the domino effect will lead to censorship of freedom of expression throughout Europe,” it said.

Russia enjoys significant support in multi-ethnic and multi-confessional Montenegro, especially among the large Serbian community which make up just under 30 per cent of the population.

EU Takes RT and Sputnik Off Air, But Not to Universal Acclaim

Posted on March 2, 2022January 26, 2023 by Ivana Jeremic

The European Commission published its sanction to take two of Russia’s state propaganda outlets off the air in the Official Journal on Wednesday, effectively giving national media regulators the power to silence them. Some worry that the EU is overreacting.

It was on Sunday that European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen first announced that the Kremlin-backed RT (formerly known as Russia Today) and Sputnik would be banned from broadcasting across the EU.

“We will ban the Kremlin’s media machine in the EU. The state-owned Russia Today and Sputnik, and their subsidiaries, will no longer be able to spread their lies to justify Putin’s war,” von der Leyen said. “We are developing tools to ban their toxic and harmful disinformation in Europe.”

Three days later, after discussions with member states and the European Regulators Group for Audiovisual Media Services (ERGA), the details were published of the media sanction, which will apply to transmission and distribution through satellite, cable, online video sharing platforms, and applications both old and new.

“In view of the gravity of the situation, and in response to Russia’s actions destabilising the situation in Ukraine, it is necessary… to urgently suspend the broadcasting activities of such media outlets in the Union,” the Commission said. “It shall be prohibited for operators to broadcast or to enable, facilitate or otherwise contribute to broadcast, any content by the legal persons, entities or bodies in Annex XV, including through transmission or distribution by any means such as cable, satellite, IP-TV, internet service providers, internet video-sharing platforms or applications, whether new or pre-installed.”

Even before that, accessing RT and Sputnik content in countries in Central Europe and across the rest of the bloc was becoming increasingly difficult. On February 25, two days before von der Leyen’s announcement, Poland’s media regulator had already deleted a number of Russian channels from the register of permitted TV services in the country. On Tuesday, Facebook and Google’s YouTube slapped their own bans on RT’s content.

As of Wednesday afternoon, it was still possible to access from the Czech Republic RT in Russian, though not Sputnik’s Czech site.

This move by the EU took many by surprise and has not been universally welcomed.

In a rather testy interview with the BBC on Monday, Commission Vice-President Josep Borrell Fontelles said the move was not a case of censoring media or free speech, but to stop the dissemination of “lies and toxic information”. This is not about stopping “free information flow but about massive disinformation flow,” he went on.

While few would dispute that most of RT and Sputnik’s output is drivel and barely disguised Russian propaganda, the European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) said it fears the effects of this spiral of censorship on freedom of expression in Europe.

“This act of censorship can have a totally counterproductive effect on the citizens who follow the banned media,” EFJ General Secretary Ricardo Gutiérrez said in a statement. “In our opinion, it is always better to counteract the disinformation of propagandist or allegedly propagandist media by exposing their factual errors or bad journalism, by demonstrating their lack of financial or operational independence, by highlighting their loyalty to government interests and their disregard for the public interest.”

While several western journalists working for the Russian media outlets have resigned in light of the invasion, others call the move to ban them anti-democratic, a blatant case of censorship and worry about the impact on people’s jobs at a difficult time.

“Today a darker day dawns at the EU for the freedom of speech and the press,” Vaggelis Kotrozos, administrator of Sputnik Greece, told BIRN. “The attempt to silence a media outlet is anything but democratic but refers to authoritarian regimes. Russia, which is accused by the Western allies of being an ‘authoritarian’ country, has never resorted to such practices except in countermeasures to similar practices of Western countries, e.g. RT licensing in Germany.”

“The Greek office of Sputnik takes all the necessary measures for its smooth operation and the securing of all the jobs against the attempt to silence it,” he added.

Others worry that the banning of the Russian channels feeds into a wider panic about misinformation and disinformation. “RT is by no means the only target for state censorship – and if it’s taken off the air, it will not be the last,” predicted Fraser Myers, deputy editor of Spiked in the UK.

Czechia Mulls Penalising Support of Ukraine Invasion

Posted on March 1, 2022January 26, 2023 by Ivana Jeremic

Publicly backing the Russian invasion of Ukraine might be subject to custodial sentences of up to three years, Czechia’s Supreme State Attorney Igor Striz said in a statement on Saturday.

By the following day, Czech police were already investigating dozens of cases, local news site TN Nova reported. Czech police spokesman Ondrej Moravcik said: “We will carefully evaluate such actions and thoroughly analyse whether they represent such crimes.”

The Public Prosecutor’s Office appealed for Czech citizens to stay within the confines of the country’s constitutional and legal restrictions. Although freedom of expression is stipulated in the Czech constitution, meaning everyone has the right to express their views, it also has its limits just as in any democratic state.

This means that “under certain conditions”, anyone publicly supporting or praising the leaders of the Russian Federation regarding the country’s attack on Ukraine could face criminal charges, including at demonstrations or even online, Striz said.

Striz’s statement cited sections 365 and 405 of the Czech Criminal Code, which state that whoever publicly approves a crime or publicly praises the perpetrator can be imprisoned for up to a year, and that anyone who “publicly denies, questions, approves or seeks to justify Nazi, communist, or other genocide” can face a jail sentence of up to three years.

“We have recorded dozens of internet comments expressing approval for the Russian invasion and the activities of the Russian army. We are closely monitoring the online sphere and apologise for not responding to every sign in the posts,” Czech police tweeted.

Kosovo Defends Decision to Ban Russian TV Channels

Posted on February 28, 2022January 26, 2023 by Ivana Jeremic

The head of Kosovo’s Independent Media Commission IMC, has defended its decision on Saturday to ban the broadcasting of Russia Today and RT Documentary TV channels in Kosovo, saying it took the decision to prevent the spread of Russian propaganda following the Russian military invasion of Ukraine.

The two channels are broadcasted in the Serb-run north of Kosovo by MTS, Serbia’s state telecom company. Serbia and Russia are close allies.

The head of the IMC, Faruk Rexhaj, told Prishtina Insight that it was important to counter misinformation about the war.

“We have appealed to the media to provide sources of information. The decision does not match a violation of media freedom, but measures must be taken not to spread misinformation,” he said.

He said Russia Today and RT Documentary were widely watched in Serb-majority municipalities in northern Kosovo. “Today we are on the ground and identifying all distribution operators, to see if there are other [Russian] channels on platforms,” he said.

According to him, the decision is not a permanent restriction but only temporary prevention, until the situation in Ukraine improves. As Russia’s assault on Ukraine continues, fears about what is being served to citizens through the media, and the security of the source of information, have grown.

“Taking into account that the security of the Republic of Kosovo is related to the fate and security of other democratic countries, the IMC considers it necessary and indispensable to take this decision,” the decision for the ban read.

On Sunday, the President of the European Commission, Ursula Von der Leyen, said Russian TV channels would be banned across the EU, attacking what she called “a media machine”.

“We will ban the Kremlin’s media machine in the EU. The state-owned Russia Today and Sputnik, and their subsidiaries, will no longer be able to spread their lies to justify Putin’s war,” she wrote on Twitter. “We are developing tools to ban their toxic and harmful disinformation in Europe,” she added.

The IMC is responsible for regulating, managing and supervising the spectrum of broadcasting frequencies in Kosovo.

It licenses public and private broadcasters, determines and implements the broadcasting policy and regulates the rights, obligations and responsibilities of natural and legal persons who provide audio and audiovisual media services.

BIRN itself monitors the media in Kosovo, tracking information with unreliable sources about the attacks in Ukraine.

As fierce fighting continues in Ukraine, a meeting was scheduled to take place between leaders of both countries. Airstrikes have targeted several cities and overnight Russia bombed Chernihiv and Kharkiv, Ukrainian officials said.

Turkey Gives Foreign Media Short Deadline to Obtain Licence

Posted on February 9, 2022January 26, 2023 by Ivana Jeremic

Turkey’s Radio and Television Supreme Council, RTUK, the state agency that monitors and sanctions radio and television broadcasters, has given international media outlets operating in Turkey a 72-hour deadline to get a national licence.

If media outlets of Voice of America, VOA, Euronews and Deutsche Welle, DW, do not apply for a national licence, their websites will be blocked in Turkey, Ilhan Tasci, a board member at RTUK from the main opposition Republican People’s Party, warned on Wednesday.

“After the national media, the international media is next for monitoring and silencing. The real target is press freedom and plurivocality. They want a press that is silent and does not criticize,” Tasci said.

The RTUK has become a tool of Turkish President Erdogan’s autocratic government, experts say. Gurkan Ozturan, Media Freedom Rapid Response Coordinator at the European Centre for Press, told BIRN that RTUK applies disproportionate fines to independent media houses.

“Targeting national media institutions on the one hand and on the other international media institutions which have become prominent due to the poor news environment in the country raises the question of whether a new series of steps are being taken, targeting the right of society to receive information,” Ozturan said.

A recent report by independent media website Bianet on January 25 said Turkish state institutions for monitoring and regulating the media continue to target independent journalists and media houses, “in a mediascape where 90 per cent of national media outlets are controlled by the government”.

It noted that the remaining independent newspapers, including Evrensel, Sözcü, Cumhuriyet, Korkusuz, BirGun, Karar, Milli Gazette, Yenicag and Yeni Asya, were barred from carrying advertisements for public institutions in 2021, deliberately depriving them of revenue.

It also said RTUK had imposed fines on media outlets that aired critical or inquiring broadcasts, such as Fox TV, Halk TV, Tele1 and KRT. In total, broadcasters were fined 31,630,000 Turkish lira – more than 2 million euros – in 2021.

Turkey’s government increased its control on online media houses under a new law in 2019. Three years on, RTUK has decided to expand its control and monitoring of foreign media outlets, based on this law.

In a similar move, Russia banned Germany’s Deutsche Welle from operating in the country on February 4, also because of an alleged national licence issue.

Albania’s Rama Appoints Spokesperson to Run New ‘Information’ Agency

Posted on January 28, 2022January 26, 2023 by Ivana Jeremic

A BIRN Freedom of Information Request has revealed that Prime Minister Edi Rama on 29 September last year appointed his own former spokesperson, Endri Fuga, as head of the newly established Media and Information Agency, MIA. The appointment was not published and was disclosed only recently following the FOI request.

The establishment of the MIA has alarmed rights organisations, who fear it will enable the government to further stifle freedom of the media and further reduce media access to government.

Fuga has been a spokesperson for Rama since at least a decade ago, when Rama was still Mayor of Tirana. For a short period he was the Socialist Party chairman.

“The General Director of the Media and Information Agency, Endri Fuga, has been appointed by order of the Prime Minister, No 96, on 29.9.2021,” the written answer to BIRN’s FOI reads.

The new agency will have a staff of some 61 and its job includes producing print and audiovisual materials to promote the work of the government and to “monitor means of mass communications” for assessing public opinion on the government. The new agency director will have “the level of State Minister,” the decision reads.

The agency will control all government communications, including that of separate ministries and other state agencies. It will hire and fire PR officers in any state institution and will organise the press conferences of any minister.

The government has awarded the agency office space at the Palace of Congress, a Communist-era palace in Tirana.

Rights organizations have condemned the creation of the agency, noting the established practice of the government of producing its own “news” and of banning journalists or video reporters from following its activities directly.

A letter signed by six international rights organisations last September called for the cancelling of the agency.

“Rather than improve journalists’ access to public information, the establishment of the MIA may result in the exact opposite,” the joint letter read.

“Context is vital here,” it added. “Journalists in Albania currently work in an extremely difficult climate for accessing information from government sources. The government communicates with journalists via WhatsApp groups instead of using official communication channels.

“Reporters working for independent media are regularly discriminated against when seeking information or comment from ministers. Journalists viewed as representing ‘opposition’ outlets are denied accreditation or barred from asking questions at press conferences,” it continued.

The letter said the agency’s stated role of “observing mass communication means” was problematic and “sets alarm bells ringing”.

“Following major revelations about the collection of citizen’s data by political parties via state institutions, the notion of tax-payer money being used to fund the monitoring of the press and social media by a government agency sets alarm bells ringing,” it read.

Rama dismissed such concerns as false alarms.

Turkish Media Overseer Penalising Independent Media With Fines – Report

Posted on December 10, 2021January 26, 2023 by Ivana Jeremic

New research published by the independent online newspaper T24 says Turkey’s Radio and Television Supreme Council, RTUK, the state agency that monitors and sanctions radio and television broadcasts, is deliberately targeting independent media outlets with financial and other penalties to silence them.

“Tele 1 was fined for the same reasons as other media houses. RTUK penalises media houses that report the truth and do journalism. They want us to stop reporting,” Murat Taylan, General Coordinator at Tele 1 TV, told BIRN.

Taylan added that RTUK has become a government mechanism to control Turkey’s remaining independent media.

“We report on poverty, corruption, bans, rights and freedoms, which the government does not want us to report on. These fines will not change our editorial policy – but we have to share a part of our budget for fines, instead of improving our coverage and reports,” Taylan added.

It is calculated that RTUK has this year alone fined media outlets 92 times, with a total of 27 million Turkish lira, equal to 1.8 million euros; also, most of the fines were imposed on independent TV channels; 52 per cent of them on one channell, FOX TV, Turkey’s most watched TV channel.

RTUK has sanctioned news channels 57 times, and again, imposed most of the sanctions on independent and critically oriented media.

Of that number, 19 sanctions were imposed on Halk TV, 18 on Tele 1 and eight on KRT TV.

The pro-government A Haber news channel, by comparison, was fined once, after a court order because of a slander case.

“It is intended to put pressure on organisations that are followed, can form public opinion and, more importantly, can or do try to do journalism and broadcast using universal standards as much as possible,” Okan Konuralp, RTUK board member from the main opposition Republican People’s Party, CHP, told T24.

He added that the ultimate aim of the fines is to silence the independent media.

International rights groups have repeatedly accused the RTUK of going all out to punish independent media in Turkey, and of acting as a tool of the authoritarian government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Turkey ranked in 154th place out of 180 countries in 2020 in the latest press freedom index of watchdog organisation Reporters Without Borders, RSF, which classifies the Turkish government’s control over media outlets as high.

Turkish Govt Increasing Internet, Social Media Censorship: Report

Posted on August 17, 2021January 26, 2023 by Ivana Jeremic

A new report published by the Freedom of Expression Association in Turkey on Monday says that the Turkish government under Recep Tayyip Erdogan has increased its censorship over the years on internet and social media.

The report, entitled ‘Disabled Web 2020: Fahrenheit 5651, The Corrosive Effect of Censorship’, says that more than 467,000 websites have been banned in Turkey since 2006, with 58,809 website bans in 2020.

Since 2006, the Turkish authorities have also banned access to 150,000 URLs, 7,500 Twitter accounts, 12,000 YouTube videos, 8,000 Facebook posts and 6,800 Instagram posts, according to the report.

In 2020 alone, 15,832 news articles were ordered to be removed from media webpages, the majority of them critical of Erdogan’s government.

“The Turkish state’s complex internet censorship mechanism continues to be more active than ever before,” the report says.

The Freedom of Expression Association accuses the government of using measures to curb the coronavirus pandemic as an opportunity to increase censorship.

The report says that 764 different state institutions – ministries, directorates and the presidency and its branches, as well as courts – have banned access to webpages for various reasons.

However, according to the data collected by the Freedom of Expression Association, a relatively small proportion of the websites and URLs have been banned by the courts – around 35,000 since 2006.

The report also highlights that a how a digital rights law adopted in 2020 has had a serious impact on social media.

According to the data that the Freedom of Expression Association obtained from the Interior Ministry, a total of 75,292 social media accounts were investigated in 2020 and legal action was taken against 32,000 of them.

The report also says that sanctions on the internet are “no longer limited to only access-blocking practices, there has been a significant increase in the number of news and content removed with the content removal sanction, and censorship has begun to be implemented more effectively”.

“The corrosive and destructive effect of censorship and control mechanisms will continue in the years to come,” the report concludes.

Bulgarian TV Accused of Favouring GERB in Election Coverage

Posted on August 12, 2021January 26, 2023 by Ivana Jeremic

International media watchdog Reporters Without Borders has accused Bulgarian National Television BNT, of bias in its election coverage towards the former ruling GERB party, in a statement released on Tuesday.

A report on how BNT covered GERB in the July elections by the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, OSCE, said BNT had failed in its duty as a public broadcaster by giving more airtime to GERB, Bulgaria’s ruling party until last April.

“Reporters Without Borders, RSF, calls on the political forces in Bulgaria’s new parliament to carry out deep-seated, systemic reforms to strengthen public media independence after Bulgarian National Television, BNT, violated its legal obligation to provide unbiased coverage of the campaign for the snap parliamentary elections held on 11 July,” the statement says.

On Wednesday, caretaker Minister of Culture and a key voice in the 2020-2021 anti-government protests, Velislav Minekov, said he hopes the authorities will look further into BNT’s reporting after the RSF analysis.

“This distortion of informational politics deprives the viewers and the tax-payers of unbiased and informative choice, especially as elections are being held,” Milenkov said.

Emil Koushlukov, BNT’s Director General, has not commented on the accusations, and former PM and GERB leader Boyko Borissov also did not address the issue at a press conference on Wednesday.

Koushlukov was a controversial figure even before becoming BNT director in 2019, after siding with different political figures over the years.

He was advisor to the first democratically elected President of Bulgaria, Zhelyo Zhelev, from 1991 to 1996 before becoming an MP in 2001 through the NDSV – National Movement Simeon II – headed by Simeon Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, Bulgaria’s former deposed Tsar.

Between 2013 and 2016, he was working at TV7, then owned by Tsvetan Vassilev, whose Corporate Commercial Bank collapsed and is currently exiled in Serbia, and later at Kanal 3. Between 2016 and 2017 he was a director of Alpha TV, owned by the far-right party Ataka.

BNT’s coverage of the 2020-2021 protest wave has also come under fire, with protesters often gathering in front of its office in Sofia and accusing it of underrepresenting the size and the seriousness of the demonstrations.

On July 14, 2020, a petition seeking Koushlukov’s resignation was published and signed by various intellectuals, journalists, artists, and protest figures.

On August 6, Koushlukov was fined 1,500 euros by the Council for Electronic Media for not following the Law on Radio and Television and offering a right to reply to the caretaker cabinet’s Culture Minister, Velislav Minekov.

In early June, Minekov had said BNT should be investigated over its alleged pro-GERB coverage. This was met by claims about an “unprecedented attack from the authorities” from Koushlukov, who further accused the caretaker cabinet of trying to put pressure on BNT. Minekov demanded airtime to answer these claims.

In the months leading up to inconclusive elections in April, which were followed by repeat elections in July and will probably be followed by a third round in the autumn, BNT often broadcasted press conferences and announcements by former PM Borissov.

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