Journalist Safety and Self-Censorship

Anna Grøndahl Larsen, Ingrid Fadnes, Roy Krøvel, Anna Grøndahl Larsen, Ingrid Fadnes, Roy Krøvel

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9781000074871
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Journalism
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

This book explores the relationship between the safety of journalists and self-censorship practices around the world, including local case studies and regional and international perspectives.

Bringing together scholars and practitioners from around the globe, Journalist Safety and Self-Censorship provides new and updated insights into patterns of self-censorship and free speech, focusing on a variety of factors that affect these issues, including surveillance, legislation, threats, violent conflict, gender-related stereotypes, digitisation and social media. The contributions examine topics such as trauma, risk and self-censorship among journalists in different regions of the world, including Central America, Estonia, Turkey, Uganda and Pakistan. The book also provides conceptual clarity to the notion of journalist self-censorship, and explores the question of how self-censorship may be studied empirically.

Combining both theoretical and practical knowledge, this collection serves as a much-needed resource for any academic, student of journalism, practicing journalist, or NGO working on issues of journalism, safety, free speech and censorship.

1

Introduction

Safety for journalists and self-censorship

Ingrid Fadnes, Roy Krøvel and Anna Grøndahl Larsen

Introduction

Unsafe working conditions for journalists are a growing concern on a global level. Every day we see forms of censorship and other means and actions that may directly or indirectly contribute to repressing free speech and freedom of the press, including surveillance, criminalization of encryption and anonymity, acts of terror, anti-terror laws, hate speech and harassment (Carlsson & Pöyhtäri, 2017). While a murder of a journalist today rarely goes unreported, we know less about practices of self-censorship among journalists, where journalists for safety reasons choose to avoid certain topics, angles, perspectives and so forth in their reporting. Addressing vital issues pertaining to freedom of speech and the press, the present book concerns the relationship between the safety of journalists and self-censorship. Drawing together local case studies from around the world, as well as regional perspectives, the book’s main objective is to help us better understand the safety of journalists and self-censorship in both country-specific contexts and from regional perspectives. Together, the contributions in this book add to our understanding of the causes and consequences of self-censorship in different contexts and under different circumstances, as well as what can be done to improve the safety of journalists.

Organizations like the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), Reporters Sans Frontières, Article 19, International Media Support, International Press Institute, IFEX, and local and regional unions increasingly focus on the safety of journalists. In recent years, we have also seen an increased academic focus on the topic. In 2014, UNESCO developed a ten-point research agenda in line with the UN Plan of Action. The agenda has stimulated scientific studies on the very broad and complex matter of journalistic safety. Several higher educational institutions, such as the Center for Freedom of the Media at the University of Sheffield, the University of Gothenburg, the University of Helsinki and Oslo Metropolitan University, have followed up the agenda (Fadnes, Orgeret & Krøvel, 2019). In the search for more knowledge and discussion of self-censorship and the “chilling effect”, the 4th Annual International Conference on the Safety for Journalists in 2018 at Oslo Metropolitan University – OsloMet, organized to coincide with UNESCO’s International Day to End Impunity for Crimes against Journalists, had a particular focus on this subject. In the call for abstracts the conference asked:

We need to know more about self-censorship and how it works in relation to journalists’ security and freedom of expression in general. How can you talk about self-censorship? How can you know that self-censorship exists? What can make journalists better equipped to secure themselves without having to tie themselves up and jeopardize freedom of speech? What role do state authorities or journalist associations play here?

Studies from around the world were presented at the conference, whose participants included scholars from Bangladesh, Colombia, Egypt, Estonia, Ethiopia, Finland, France, Germany, India, Malta, Mexico, Namibia, Nepal, Nigeria, Norway, Pakistan, Turkey, Uganda, UK, USA and Zimbabwe. This book is coming out of this conference. Bringing together scholars and practitioners from around the world, the book provides new and updated empirical insights into issues concerning the safety of journalists and self-censorship, including attention to a variety of factors – such as surveillance, legislation, threats, gender, violent conflict and digitization – that may affect patterns of self-censorship and in turn impact free speech. In addition to providing empirical insights into safety concerns facing journalists in different geographical contexts, and how these influence journalists’ ability to do their job, the book seeks to contribute theoretically and methodologically to the conceptualization and empirical study of self-censorship. Self-censorship is a contested concept, and practices of self-censorship are more challenging to identify than direct censorship. It is our aim to contribute to conceptual clarity – to illustrate and discuss how self-censorship may be studied empirically.

In the following, we discuss the notion of self-censorship, and define self-censorship as used in this book. We then highlight current challenges related to the safety of journalists and self-censorship, before briefly discussing issues concerning responsibility and solutions in addressing self-censorship. Finally, the chapters in the volume are presented.

Self-censorship – a definition

Self-censorship may result from different motivations and can have both positive and negative consequences. This entails that self-censorship should not be regarded as inherently bad. This openness of the notion of self-censorship is illustrated by looking at both dictionary and scholarly definitions of the concept. Merriam-Webster, for example, defines self-censorship as “the act or action of refraining from expressing something (such as a thought, point of view, or belief) that others could deem objectionable”. The Cambridge English Dictionary defines self-censorship as “control of what you say or do in order to avoid annoying or offending others, but without being told officially that such control is necessary”. Similarly, scholarly definitions within journalism studies include understandings of self-censorship as “the individual self-restriction of one’s freedom of speech” (Jungblut & Hoxha, 2017, p. 227), and as grounded partly in journalists’ professional norms, personal political attitudes and the editorial stance of the news organizations journalists’ work for (Lee & Chan, 2009). Based on these general definitions of self-censorship – highlighting self-censorship as avoiding saying or doing certain things in order to avoid offending others, and integrated in everyday practices of journalism – it becomes obvious that self-censorship may not only be deemed illegitimate, but could also be regarded as a necessary and legitimate part of social relations. Thus, self-censorship may be rooted in phenomena such as fear of physical harm and in social responsibility (Jungblut & Hoxha, 2017, p. 223). As noted by Miller:

For people to successfully negotiate their social world, they must have the ability to suppress their private feelings and thoughts, and equally important, to disguise the fact that they are doing so … Self-censorship is also essential to the smooth functioning society. Civilized life would not be possible were people not able and willing to censor their strongest antisocial feelings.

(2006, p. 2)

A crucial question, then, is how to assess whether an act of self-censorship should be deemed legitimate or illegitimate, problematic or unproblematic. One way to come closer in answering this question is to look at the motivation behind self-censorship (Jungblut & Hoxha, 2017, p. 229) – that is, the reasons why journalists self-censor in a given situation or context. Skjerdal (2010) distinguishes between what he terms wide and narrow definitions of self-censorship, pointing out that:

[Self-censorship] stretches from a wide understanding, seeing self-censorship as an everyday practice for any journalist anywhere in the world caused by the inevitable selection and de-selection processes while reporting and editing; to a narrow definition, entailing only those practices which are performed for the sake of excluding information from publicity due to felt threats by public authorities.

(Skjerdal, 2010, p. 99)

In other words, in the absence of direct censorship, the news media are always left with a range of choices in terms of what should be published and how to balance various concerns. Journalistic assessments are partly regulated by ethical codes of the press. Yet journalists and newsrooms nevertheless have to make a number of decisions on what issues to report and how issues should be reported. In other words, selection and omission are inherent parts of journalism. From the myriad of events and issues that could be reported every day, journalists routinely make decisions to omit certain topics, angles or perspectives. While many such decisions go uncontested, others are regularly subject to debate and criticism. One perspective to shed light on self-censorship and issues of legitimacy is Cook and Heilmann’s (2013, p. 179) distinction between public and private self-censorship. Within their framework, public self-censorship “refers to a range of individual reactions to a public censorship regime”. Here, “individuals internalize some aspects of the public censor and then censor themselves”. In relation to journalism, Jungblut and Hoxha (2017, p. 227) point out that here, in regard to an existing censor “journalists internalize the rules of what they are allowed to cover and self-censor themselves accordingly”. This could for example entail that journalists refrain from reporting a story out of fear of harassment or to protect their safety. As discussed further below, it is public self-censorship, or a variant of Skjerdal’s narrow definition of self-censorship, that is the focus of this book. Private self-censorship, on the other hand, is, according to Cook and Heilmann (2013, p. 179), “the suppression by an agent of his or her own attitudes where a public censor is either absent or irrelevant”. They further note that this form of self-censorship “is a process of regulation between what an individual regards as permissible to express publicly, and that which he or she wishes to express publicly” (p. 179). In relation to journalism, this entails that “journalists might censor themselves because of an assessment of different values such as professional (e.g. an important story) and ethical norms (e.g. a story that is important but might ruin someone’s life)” (Jungblut & Hoxha, 2017, p. 227).

In defining the forms of self-censorship dealt with in this book, an important question is the reasons why journalists and newsrooms choose not to report news or to omit certain perspectives. An example where both reporting and non-reporting (self-censorship) tend to be contested is terrorism reporting. The Council of Europe report of January 2016 warned against the danger that the fight against terrorism and extremism could lead to disproportionately strict measures at the expense of democratic freedom in order to maintain state security. The report came one year after the terrorist attack on the French satirical weekly magazine Charlie Hebdo that killed ten of its staff and two police officers. The phrase Je suis Charlie, French for “I am Charlie”, was adopted after the attack by supporters of free speech and freedom of expression who were reacting to the shootings. A joint editorial from the European newspapers Le Monde, The Guardian, Süddeutsche Zeitung, El Pais, La Stampa, and Gazeta Wyborcza after the attack stated:

We continue to inform, to inquire, to interview, to comment, to publish – and to draw – about every subject that appears to us legitimate, in a spirit of openness, intellectual enrichment and democratic debate.

(The Guardian, 7 January 2019)

However, the hashtag #Jesuischarlie sparked a debate about the limits of free speech. Do you have a right to say, write, and draw whatever you want? Shortly after the attack, the New York Times published the opinion “I am not Charlie Hebdo”, where columnist David Brooks questioned the right to make satirical drawings based on others religion (Brooks, 2015). These, and other debates, point to how editorial assessments on whether and how to report terrorism may be related to perceived symbolic consequences of the reporting (Larsen, 2018; Mortensen, 2018) and/or to concerns related to potential safety risks to journalists as a result of the reporting. While non-reporting grounded in both symbolic concerns and safety concerns can be regarded as self-censorship, in this book our focus is primarily on the latter type; namely cases in which journalists avoid certain topics, angles or perspectives that may be in the public interest, due to perceived physical or psychological risks that publishing could entail. Such risks could include online or offline harassment, physical violence, threats, and other risks potentially affecting journalists’ professional and personal safety.

A way to further specify our focus is to distinguish between different forms of self-censorship based on who might be directly affected in the case of publishing a story: the journalist and his or her health, economic or social situation; other individuals, like news sources or person who are reported upon; or a group of people, such as the public or the news organization (Jungblut & Hoxha, 2017, p. 229). The chapters in our book primarily focus on the first form – cases in which publishing is perceived to affect the journalists’ health, well-being, economic or social situation; but also to some extent the latter – cases in which reporting could negatively affect news organizations. Thus, although intimidation and self-censorship among sources may pose an equally serious challenge for free speech, this discussion is largely left out of this volume.

Fear can be regarded as a key driver behind self-censorship. This entails that self-censorship “occurs when journalists are not driven by editorial concerns, but by fear” (White, 2014, such as fear of losing their job, fear of risking their lives, or fear for their own mental well-being – and where this pushes them to choose to avoid certain topics and perspectives in their reporting (cf. Yesil, 2014). Thus, while our book is grounded on the notion that all forms of self-censorship have broader consequences in terms of free speech, our point of departure is self-censorship due to perceived risks that journalists face. In sum, our book concerns the safety of journalists and self-censorship, defined as instances in which journalists avoid seeking out information and/or publishing certain topics, angles or perspectives that may be in the public interest, due to perceived physical or psychological risks – from actors internal or external to the newsroom – that publishing could entail.

While censorship is relatively easily identified and measured, self-censorship is more challenging to identify, name and quantify (cf. Çipuri, 2015). Since self-censorship here is conceptualized as a consequence of perceived risks, identification of actual self-censorship is available through journalists’ interpretations and percep...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of contributors
• 1 Introduction: Safety for journalists and self-censorship
• 2 Journalism and self-censorship in the insecure democracies of Central America
• 3 Red lines of journalism: Digital surveillance, safety risks and journalists’ self-censorship in Pakistan
• 4 Chilling or cosy effects?: Zimbabwean journalists’ experiences and the struggle for definition of self-censorship
• 5 Lèse-majestè and journalism in Turkey and Europe
• 6 Online surveillance and the repressive Press Council Bill 2018: A two-pronged approach to media self-censorship in Nigeria
• 7 The “triple effect” silencing female journalists online: A theoretical exploration
• 8 A way to silence journalists?Estonian female journalists’ experiences with harassment and self-censorship
• 9 Risk perception and negotiation of safety among Ugandan female journalists covering political demonstrations
• 10 Fear, trauma and local journalists: Implications for media development and peacebuilding
• 11 Safety and self-censorship: Examining their linkage to social media use among Uganda journalists
• 12 Defending the watchdog: How local NGOs build journalists’ resilience by combating threats to their safety and security
• 13 Conclusion: Researching self-censorship caused by inadequate safety of journalists. Causes, solutions and future research
• Index