Tag Archives: Media Law
The Legal Enabling Environment for Independent Media in Iraq
Today, CIMA and the Middle East and North Africa Program of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) hosted a roundtable discussion titled “The Legal Enabling Environment for Independent Media in Iraq.” The event featured Oday Hatim from the Society for Defending Press Freedom in Iraq, a NED grantee, Lisa Kovack from IREX, Asos Hardi from Awene Press and Publishing Company, and Andrea Lemieux from the Institute for War and Peace Reporting. It was moderated by Rahman Aljebouri from the NED.
Kovack discussed the IREX and Centre for Law and Democracy report Freedoms in Iraq: An Increasingly Repressive Legal Net that was published in December 2011. She noted the journalists’ rights law is the only press law in Iraq. It defines a journalist as anyone who practices journalism as a full-time job, excluding part-time journalists. Iraq media are pluralistic but not free. A diverse and dynamic media emerged after the fall of Saddam Hussein, but recent legal developments have constrained Iraqi media, and news outlets are increasingly ethno-sectarian. Free speech in Iraq is supposed to extend to all citizens, not just journalists, but a restrictive Internet law criminalizes criticism of the state. Kovack suggested that having strong, clear laws on the books is a good foundation for freedom of media and expression in Iraq.
Hatim told the group that after 2003, Iraq had unprecedented expansion of media outlets and a decent margin of press freedom, but since 2008 the country has experienced a crackdown on the press. This crackdown included requiring permits to write certain articles. Iraqis thought it was just a transitional phase, but the Journalists Protection Law was passed in August 2011. Hatim claims the law is a combination of five press laws that were invoked under Saddam Hussein to repress media freedom. The law contradicts the Iraqi constitution and several international conventions signed by the Iraqi government. The centralized economy in Iraq supports pro-government newspapers; independent papers are closing down.
Lemieux reiterated Hatim’s points about the press law and spoke about the Internet law that criminalizes “harming the reputation of Iraq,” and the law can hold even Internet service providers liable. She said laws being drafted now with the intention to protect press freedoms will actually restrict them instead.
Hardi spoke about the situation of the press in Kurdish Regional Government (KRG), which issued a press law in 2007 that was different from the federal press law. The KRG press law forbids the jailing of journalists and does not require permission to cover news or publish articles. The Kurdish law says nothing about television, radio, or the Internet, so judges look to the federal law when dealing with those media. The Iraqi government has made some efforts to track activists online via Facebook, blocked some sites, and subjected bloggers and activists to offline harassment, but there is no indication the efforts are very sophisticated. Hardi believes Iraq needs international support, and that the international community should put pressure on Iraqi authorities to change the law. He said the government doesn’t care as much about how it is viewed by its citizens as it does how it is seen by its international partners.
Participants agreed that the international community could do more to pressure the Iraqi government to change the press law, support the training of judges and media lawyers, provide assistance to independent media outlets, and share best practices and experiences in drafting media-related legislation.
For further information on the media environment in Iraq, see CIMA’s report Iraq’s News Media After Saddam: Liberation, Repression, and Future Prospects.
Hungarian Media Law: One Year Later
When a Nobel Prize winner is worried about the state of your democracy, you know you’re in trouble.
A column by Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman appeared in the New York Times over the weekend, pointing out that Hungary is experiencing a backsliding of democracy. Entitled “Depression and Democracy,” the column painted a bleak picture for the global economy, which seems to have instigated a rise in rightwing nationalism across Europe that is contributing to this backsliding.
Charles Gati of Johns Hopkins University goes so far to claim “Hungary is no longer a Western-style democracy. It is an illiberal or managed democracy…” in his own op-ed that appeared in the Times two days after Krugman’s column.
That backsliding on democracy is felt strongly in the media. The draconian media law enacted a year ago has, according to Gati, “reawakened the old self-censorship that helps reporters and editors stay employed and news outlets stay in business.” It was acknowledged by the panelists, however, that measures in the law had not been implemented but it was the threat of some of the sanctions that was stultifying.
Among other measures, the media law:
- created the National Media and Infocommunications Authority, a body that oversees the regulation of all media, including the Internet. Members serve nine year terms and are all from the ruling Fidesz party.
- gave the Media Authority judicial authority and the power to levy fines of up to €727,000 on media outlets that don’t comply with the law.
- banned media companies that have been subject to past complaints from bidding for new licenses.
- removed the protection of journalistic sources.
The environment is such that state media outlets are dominated by the ruling Fidesz party, leading to political interference in the reporting. The most recent case involved Balazs Nagy Navarro, the president of the Council of Public Media Trade Unions and Aranka Szavuly, another union official, both of whom began a hunger strike on December 10 to call for an inquiry into a case of photo manipulation on a public television station.
Yesterday, CIMA and the Open Society Foundations held a discussion on Hungary’s Media Law: One Year Later. In addition to Gati, panelists included Miklós Haraszti of Columbia University and former OSCE representative on freedom of the media; Balazs Weyer of the Foundation for Quality Journalism; and Ellen Hume, an Annenberg fellow in civic media at Central European University in Budapest.
Highlights from the event:
- Gati: The character of the Hungarian regime is an illiberal, managed democracy. It’s not a dictatorship, but there is a demand for efficiency rather than democracy.
- Gati: Viktor Orbán believes that the West is in decline and what he calls a new “Eastern wind” is blowing.
- Haraszti: Not since communism has government told media what is proper to report.
- Haraszti: Guarantees of independence of media have been removed.
- Haraszti: Arbitrary licensing has inflicted self-censorship on Hungarian media.
- Haraszti: The media law outsources media censorship to the owners.
- Weyer: Maybe it’s not widespread self-censorship, but journalists are definitely discouraged.
- Weyer: Hungary needs to create a journalistic society where editors share standards.
- Hume: Journalists are looking over the shoulders in a way they didn’t anticipate after 1989.
- Hume: Three factors are attacking quality of journalism in Hungary: 1. Backsliding against 1990 reforms. 2. Global erosion of media business models due to the growth of the Internet. 3. Fragility of democracy exposed across the globe.
- Hume: Solutions to Hungary’s media law problems: 1. Get an EU directive on press freedom. 2. Enlist the support of the international community.
- Hume: 70 percent of Hungarians get their news from television. Online media is an undeveloped space.
You can watch the whole event here.
Further resources on media in Hungary:
Read more about the law from Mike Harris, Head of Advocacy at the Index on Censorship.
Hungary media law resource page of the Center for Media and Communications Studies at Central European University
Hungarian Media Law: International Mission Condemns Chilling Effect and Calls for Change
Watch a January 2011 interview with Miklós Haraszti.
EFJ Condemns Manipulation of Media in Hungary as TV Report Sparks Hunger Strike by Union Leader
