Reporters without borders: The fight for press freedom

Interactive map of Press Freedom in Europe

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We often point the finger at repressive regimes in Asia and Africa, but just how free is the press in Europe? Gabrielle Jaffe asks Jean-François Julliard, head of Reporters Sans Frontières.

In May 2007, a reporter for the Milton Keynes Citizen, Sally Murrer, was charged with abetting misconduct in public office. Her telephone conversations were bugged and she was locked in a police cell for 36 hours. Her crime? A police sergeant had tipped her off about two stories: a local footballer being involved in a brawl, and a 16-year-old boy converting to Islam in a young offender’s institute.

“When they first arrested me it was so surreal. I kept expecting Jeremy Beadle to pop out and say it was all a setup,” says Murrer. But by the time she got to the station, the joke had worn thin. “They strip-searched me, just for fun. They told me I could go to prison for life and that I was guilty for just listening to information, even if I didn’t run the story. None of this was true. They were just trying to intimidate me.”

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In the long run, these tactics seem to have tempered the work of other reporters. Murrer says that “local journalists in Milton Keynes now pussyfoot around the police”. A Crown Court judge threw out the case against Murrer in November 2008, deeming the investigation violated her human rights.

Others have not been so fortunate. In December 2007, the French secret police broke into the home of freelance journalist Guillaume Dasquié at dawn. He was held until he named his source for an article about the 9/11 attacks.

It is repression like this, says Jean-François Julliard, head of Reporters Without Borders (RSF), the international non-governmental organisation which campaigns to protect journalists from censorship, that is undermining the role of the press in a number of Western societies. “Freedom of the press is not a given. It must be fought for,” he says.

During his 10 years working for RSF, Julliard has faced arrest three times. He was first arrested in Tunisia in 2001 for handing out copies of Kaws el Karama, a publication banned by the government. Last year, police dragged him away from the Olympic flame procession in Athens after he disrupted the Chinese premier’s speech, in a protest against China’s detention of dissident journalists. But he says his stay in a British police cell in 2002 is particularly memorable.

With 10 RSF activists, Julliard plastered the windows of the Zimbabwe tourist office in London with posters of Robert Mugabe which bore the slogan “Enemy of Press Freedom”. “They didn’t have to arrest us. We weren’t doing anything criminal and didn’t damage anything. It was important for us to get our message out. The situation in Zimbabwe was extremely troubling then. Today, Zimbabwe’s press lies in ruins.”

If there are battles to be fought against authoritarian regimes such as Zimbabwe, there are also many closer to home. In Europe, journalists are regularly prevented from running politically sensitive stories, or they’re forced to reveal their sources. More serious still, they are frequently not protected from intimidation and physical attacks.

“The press in Europe may not be subject to the kind of state violence you see on other continents, but a number of paramilitary or criminal groups, such as the mafia in Italy or ETA in Spain, pose great problems. Writers who take a position against these groups often receive death threats and beatings. This scares off other journalists,” says Julliard.

Perhaps the most notorious case of this in recent times was that of Roberto Saviano, the Italian reporter whose book inspired last year’s highly-praised movie Gomorra. His exposé of the Neapolitan mafia left him with a price on his head and he was forced to flee Italy. Saviano’s story might seem like a Hollywood thriller, but it isn’t a one-off.

Every year in Italy, crime reporters receive death threats. On 2 September 2007, Lirio Abbate, a crime specialist with the ANSA news agency, narrowly avoided assassination when police caught two men planting a bomb on his car. He now has a permanent bodyguard, which hinders his work. “I have to find other ways of getting information,” says Abbate. “I can no longer go out in the street alone as I did before and meet people discreetly.”

According to RSF’s annual report, 168 journalists in Europe were physically attacked or threatened in 2008 – more than in either Asia or Africa.

Hot spots include the Basque region in Spain where journalists often need bodyguards or armoured vehicles to guard against ETA attempts on their lives, and Ireland, where some journalists have faced similar threats from the Real IRA or militant Loyalist groups.

In September 2007, Belfast journalist Robin Livingstone received an envelope containing a bullet, his name and address, and his car registration number. It was the sixth anniversary of the murder of Sunday World reporter Martin O’Hagan, which was still unsolved at the time. O’Hagan’s killers were finally brought to trial in September 2008, seven years after his death.

For Julliard, this is the problem. “We need to make sure that those who are responsible for violence against journalists are made an example of. Without justice, there can be no real press freedom. Too often the killers are not brought to justice quickly enough, or investigations are not carried out with due thoroughness. So these thugs start believing they have impunity.”

Russia has developed a reputation as a dangerous place for reporters: 20 have been killed in connection with their work since 2000. The most high-profile of these was Anna Politkovskya, whose coverage of Chechnya and outspoken criticism of Vladimir Putin won her many enemies. On 7 October 2006, having already survived being poisoned and endured a mock execution by the Russian security forces, was found dead in the elevator of her apartment building, shot four times.

The case remains unsolved. In February this year, three men accused of the crime, one of whom was a member of the security forces, were found not guilty by a military court. Julliard, like many other international onlookers, sees this as a travesty: “There needs to be a thorough, independent inquiry. They have failed to do this in Russia. I fear that even if one day we find out who pulled the trigger, the person who gave the original order will not be exposed. Is it someone close to the centre of power?”

Most of the time it is hard to prove the culpability of politicians but, on occasion, political parties have resorted to open intimidation of the press. Volen Sidorov, leader of Bulgarian ultra-nationalist party Ataka, burst into the Sofia offices of the daily newspaper 24 Chasa with 50 party activists and threatened the editor in front of all of his staff. Meanwhile, around 100 more Ataka members surrounded the building outside.

“Now that Bulgaria is a member of the EU, it’s just not acceptable,” says Julliard. “The EU must put more pressure on the Bulgarian government to improve the situation. We know that can work. In Romania there were similar problems a few years ago, but EU pressure led to an improvement in the situation.”

Even in countries where it would be unthinkable for politicians to invade newsrooms, journalists are routinely raided by police who are after their sources. Julliard recognises that in a few specific instances sources ought to be revealed, but feels the authorities are going too far. “There have been many cases recently of journalists being searched or hauled before the courts for matters not closely linked to the security of the state, and often the manner in which they are interrogated is disturbing.”

Such abuses are not just an assault on journalists – eventually, they stop the press from working at all. “If journalists are forced to give up the names of their sources, in future people will stop speaking to the press, and the public will suffer,” says Julliard.

All these issues might seem merely of concern to reporters who put themselves at risk, but the fact that half of Julliard’s team at RSF have never worked as journalists suggests that it’s not just those in the industry who are worried. “These problems concern the wider public,” says Julliard. “Without freedom of the press there can be no other freedoms.”