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31 August 2007
Journalists Gain Allies in Battle Against “Insult” Laws
Media groups, lawyers helping to protect press freedom
Washington -- Journalists in trouble for allegedly “insulting” their heads of state are getting help from all corners of the world.
Many countries still use “insult laws,” even though international judicial bodies such as the European Court of Human Rights and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights have ruled that these laws are in direct violation of the fundamental right to free speech and a free press.
Karin Karlekar, from the nonpartisan group Freedom House, told USINFO that a number of countries, especially in Latin America and Africa, are eliminating the laws. Violation of insult laws can lead to journalists being thrown into jail or slapped with exorbitant fines.
Karlekar’s organization reports that Indonesia’s Constitutional Court recently declared unconstitutional laws that banned insulting the country’s president and vice president. That decision preceded a July ruling by the Indonesian court overturning two provisions that criminalized defaming the government.
Karlekar, managing editor of her group’s annual survey of media freedom, said the wider ramification of insult laws is that they can lead to “self-censorship” by journalists, who fear “pushing the boundaries” in their reporting of government activities.
This situation is especially prevalent in Middle Eastern countries, she said, where existing insult laws rarely need to be enforced because they already have the “chilling effect” of intimidating journalists into practicing self-censorship in their reporting.
U.S. PROTECTIONS AGAINST INSULT
A number of U.S. states and territories have laws on criminal defamation but they are rarely used, said Karlekar, who answered questions in a May 8 USINFO webchat on the conditions necessary for a free press. (See transcript.)
America’s generation of Founding Fathers once enacted a law against journalistic freedom called the Sedition Act of 1798. That law criminalized publication of what were considered insults against the country’s president and members of Congress. The act, which expired in 1801 without facing a test in court, was denounced by many respected statesmen of the time, including Thomas Jefferson.
Tony Mauro, who serves on the advisory board of the Virginia-based World Press Freedom Committee, wrote in an April 11 article that “some public officials today probably wish they still had that tool to silence critics. But thankfully, the principles of free speech and freedom of the press have prevailed” in America, said Mauro, who is the U.S. Supreme Court correspondent for the Legal Times weekly newspaper.
The U.S. State Department is working to protect journalists from trumped up charges under insult laws that prevent and punish media scrutiny of public records and official actions. The department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor has established a “Human Rights Defenders Fund” to help those promoting independent media and journalists, and other related issues. The department also documents press freedom worldwide in its annual Country Reports on Human Rights. (See related article.)
WORLD PRESS GROUP REPORT
The World Press Freedom Committee published a 306-page report that studied how insult laws were applied, changed or eliminated in 70 countries in 2006. The report, released in April, said insult laws are “incompatible with the principles of democracy and free expression.”
Marilyn Greene, the report’s editor, told USINFO that the issue of insult laws is important “because as long as journalists are afraid to fully scrutinize the actions and policies of their nations' public officials, for fear of arrest or other punishment, the publics in those countries are without access to the news and information they need to make intelligent decisions and choices about their own government.”
Javier Sierra, the World Press Freedom Committee’s projects director, said some of the worst countries in relation to insult laws include Iran, Turkey, Belarus, Zimbabwe and Morocco. He told USINFO that Venezuela does not use its insult laws, but the country has “a new set of very severe criminal defamation laws which they use very often.” (See related article.)
Sierra said the insult laws originated in the Roman Empire “to shield the emperor from public criticism.” The laws now act, he said, as a “Damocles sword dangling over the collective heads of the news media,” forcing journalists “to fulfill their duties to keep the public informed at the risk of being imprisoned and their publications shut down.”
International judicial bodies, Sierra said, support the concept that public officials “should expect more, and not less, scrutiny and criticism from the rest of society.”
Sierra’s group, in cooperation with eight other media advocacy organizations, administers a “Fund Against Censorship” that provides assistance grants to news media and journalists facing criminal prosecution. Grants go primarily to hire lawyers in criminal libel, defamation and other cases that are deemed “politically motivated and intended to silence independent news media.”
TRAINING IN MEDIA LAW
The University of Oxford in England offers training on media law and policy. The university’s Program in Comparative Media Law and Policy is sponsoring in September a “Media Law Moot Court Competition” to encourage interest in international standards of protection of media freedom.
More information about the training is available on the university’s Web site.
The full text of the 2006 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices and more information on the Human Rights Defenders Fund are available on the Department’s Web site.
The full text of the World Press Freedom Committee’s report is available on the organization’s Web site.
