Limits on press freedom in Europe

A leading Dutch newspaper editor told journalists from across Europe that his government "is trying to intimidate journalists to keep us quiet". Freedom of the press is under threat every day, he thundered. He accused the Dutch government of erecting barriers to information "thicker than the Berlin Wall".



The occasion was the annual gathering of the Association of European Journalists (AEJ) in Maastricht. And the cause of the angry outburst by Sjuul Paradijs, editor of the Netherlands' best-selling quality newspaper, De Telegraaf, was his paper's confrontation with the government over an article by one of his journalists, Jolande van der Graaf, in March. It cited secret government papers allegedly showing that the Dutch secret service had failed to verify US and British intelligence claims about the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq before the Dutch government pledged its support for military action in 2003.



Sounds familiar? Well, it should.



In July, a Dutch court ruled that the country's secret service had illegally bugged the phones of De Telegraaf's editor and two of its other journalists, trying to find the source of the intelligence leak.



But in a separate hearing, another court found that police acted within the law when they searched the home of Ms van der Graaf, who had refused a demand to hand over classified material in her possession. The result: in the Netherlands the clash between media and government over claims made by politicians about the Iraq war and political pressures on the press is growing fiercer.



The AEJ meeting in late November focused on a variety of cases which seemed to show a shrinking of journalistic freedom and independence across Europe, 20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall.



So, ironically, just as the idea that 'everyone can be a journalist' has taken off on the internet, the established news media are in retreat in the face of government and commercial pressures in the north, south, east and west of our continent.



From Belarus in the east, the deputy head of the journalists' association there, Andrei Aliaksandrau, described how the suppression of a free press was part of the destruction of civil society and of democratic institutions by an autocratic government.



In Belarus, Aliaksandrau said, the government controls all printing presses and has a monopoly on the distribution of newspapers, so spreading dissenting views in print is all but impossible. Recently, strong pressure from western governments and media has led to a slight easing of the restrictions on independent newspaper sales in Belarus. But more pressure would help, he added.



On Europe's western edge, mainstream media in Spain are subject to new means of manipulation and control. Pedro Gonzales from the AEJ's Spanish section said it has now become quite normal for the main political parties to call journalists in for 'press conferences' where, after the prepared statements from politicians, no questions at all are allowed. Sometimes the media are not even asked to attend; they are just given videos with interview clips or other material made by the PR officers of the parties themselves.



And Italy, in the south, recently saw what was perhaps Europe's largest popular protest ever against the muzzling of the press. The rally in October was against prime minister Silvio Berlusconi's personal grip on his nation's media through a network of ownership and influence over the public broadcaster RAI.



Tens of thousands turned out in Rome to oppose Mr Berlusconi's decision to launch potentially crippling lawsuits against critical newspapers, including La Repubblica, which have reported on personal scandals which they say put his integrity in question.



The Italian leader is now again being forced to stand trial on bribery charges. After he was physically assaulted at a political rally in Milan last weekend, Italians may well become more polarised than ever over the extraordinary place he occupies in the nation's life.



There are brighter spots in the landscape, too. In a landmark judgment in Ireland in August, the Supreme Court upheld the right of journalists to keep the identity of their sources secret. The case pitted the The Irish Times against demands made by a special tribunal investigating the activities of the former Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, back in the 1990s.



But here is a remarkable thing: all the main authorities seeking to protect media independence at European level - the Council of Europe, the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), the main journalists' trade union federation, the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), and non-government organisations like Reporters Without Borders and the International Press Institute (IPI) - now share the same analysis and the same concern.



It is that press freedom is being undermined or stifled by the actions of governments and other powerful forces, whether in the name of fighting terrorism, or defending the reputations of the powerful, or the need for media businesses to stay profitable in tough economic times.



In this context, the sense of alarm voiced in much of the comment about the state of the British media can seem exaggerated. Very real problems with the UK's libel or anti-terrorism laws are balanced by the fact of a vibrant, often aggressive and pluralistic media landscape.



This autumn, at the request of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, I wrote Respect for Media Freedom, a detailed survey of the violent attacks on journalists and other damaging assaults on media independence in the organisation's 47 member states, plus Belarus, over the past three years. It shows clearly that freedom of expression is not at all guaranteed, even in our own neighbourhood.



In his keynote at the AEJ meeting, Council of Europe Human Rights Commissioner Thomas Hammarberg said Europeans must pay attention to the dangers evident from the number of leading investigative journalists who have fallen victim to brutal killings. He called on governments to demonstrate more forcefully that they are prepared to protect the freedom of the media.



If not, things can only get worse.