Iceland could become a haven of media freedom Sunday, February 28, 2010 By Smari McCarthy There has been no fundamental change in the legal protection of freedom of expression since 1791, when the first amendment to the US constitution was adopted.
Since then, through the industrial revolution, two world wars and the advent of the information age, that remarkable philosophy has been copied by various nations and upheld to various degrees. But it has also been eroded, not only in countries with oppressive regimes, but also by liberal democracies where the legal process is poorly protected or where outdated laws are being abused.
Hundreds of journalists have been forced to flee their home countries to save themselves from oppression. Malaysia Today is now published from Singapore. The Kavkaz Center, a Chechen publication, is published from Sweden. The Turks and Caicos Islands Journal, which last year exposed major corruption in its government, has since been hounded around the world.
In Britain, there are believed to be more than 300 secret gagging orders on the press, so called superinjunctions, which forbid the press from even reporting that they have been injuncted.
In Sweden, all cross-border telecommunications can now be legally monitored by the government, which greatly limits how safely sources can communicate with journalists.
In the European Union, there are plans, explained in newly leaked documents pertaining to ACTA (the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement) which would turn provisions for the indemnity of telecommunications relays and internet hosts - so called ‘mere conduits’ - on their head.
These plans would make any internet service provider liable for content hosted on their computers.
It doesn’t stop there. Increasingly, foreign oligarchs and billionaires are taking libel suits against journalists and others into British courts, as the burden of proof there is on the defendant.
This is also the case in Ireland, where courts have awarded ever larger damages to defamation plaintiffs, who are frequently political or public figures.
The Icelandic Modern Media Initiative was created against this backdrop. It aims to reform greatly protections for freedom of expression in Iceland, especially with regard to journalists and publishers. It will set an example which the International Press Institute has urged other countries to follow.
We looked around various jurisdictions, including Belgium, Sweden and the US, and cherry-picked the strongest protection laws available for sources, journalists, publishers and internet hosts that we could find. These were then assembled into a parliamentary resolution proposal which was entered into parliament last week.
Iceland cannot provide protections outside its jurisdiction, but it can provide protections for journalists and hosts located inside Iceland, or for companies registered in Iceland. It is entirely possible that, if our proposal becomes law, foreign publications will move some of their operations to Iceland to make use of these protections.
Since all publications are moving onto the internet, and paper publications and centralised broadcasting media are slowly but surely becoming extinct, it does not matter any more whether news is published from Sydney, Reykjavik or Dublin. In internet terms, there is rarely more than 200 milliseconds between these places.
But why Iceland?
Somebody once said that you should never waste a crisis.
Iceland has, in the last two years, watched its entire banking sector disappear and its economy pulled into a deep recession.
In trying to understand the causes of the collapse, it has become clear that, not only was it a case of corruption and misapplication of trust, but also a lack of government transparency and a legally-crippled media.
Iceland is in a prime situation - due to the crash - to reconsider where it wants to stand in the coming decades.
Due in part to the nature of the collapse here, it is important for Iceland to take the moral high ground.
Any country could do this and every country should do this. Ireland, much like Iceland, has a lot of reasons to adopt a strong stance on protecting civil liberties. Small nations with relatively limited sway in global politics - especially with the creation of supranational states such as the European Union - are charged with the task of ensuring transparency and demanding truth.
That said, there are many considerations for any country wishing to safeguard freedom of expression.
One issue that would require attention in Ireland is the newlyadopted blasphemy law and the constitutional provisions that require it.
To establish a law forbidding such unclear terms as ‘‘blasphemy, sedition or indecent matter’’ is a dangerous precedent.
As a form of censorship, it paves the way for open-ended interpretations, which in turn can lead to more censorship.
Indeed, the freedom of expression, protected in the Irish Constitution, has traditionally been understood in a restrictive way. This must change.
The right to know, and the right to share what you know, must be understood to be democratic imperatives of the highest importance, lest ignorance and silence be our downfall.
Smari McCarthy is the spokesman for the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative, an alliance of Icelandic legal professionals and politicians
|
Text-Only