Journalists are not the enemy of the state

Police should be helping to uphold the freedom of the press – not using their powers to shut it down

Neil Basu was wrong to threaten journalists who publish leaked information. The Metropolitan Police’s Assistant Commissioner – who said on Friday that those who did so could face criminal charges – was wrong, not just because his comments risk deterring the media from publishing information that is in the public interest, but because the role of the police is to uphold the law. That includes those laws which protect free media. Seeing journalists only as troublemakers to be punished, rather than viewing media freedom as a right to be legally protected, is a threat to the public’s right to know.

The freedom of the press is essential to safeguarding democracy. Just last

week, Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt stood shoulder to shoulder in London with some of the world’s bravest journalists who daily risk life and limb to report the news that those in power would rather suppress. Journalists like Maria Ressa, who faces relentless harassment from the government of the Philippines president, Rodrigo Duerte, or Ghanaian investigative journalist Anas Aremeyaw Anas, who wears a face covering to protect his identity. Their work, Hunt told an audience of diplomats and foreign ministers at his global conference for media freedom, was the lifeblood of free and thriving societies.

Just a day later, one of Britain’s most senior police officers suggested that journalists who publish leaked information risk jail. Basu must realise that when the police seek to punish journalists for publishing embarrassing stories about the state, the results can be deeply alarming.

A recent study by Index on Censorship showed that governments around the world are increasingly using national security laws to target journalists over stories that are in the public interest. In May, for example, journalists working for the French investigative website Disclose were summoned by the country’s intelligence services over articles revealing how French arms sold to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates were being used in Yemen’s civil war. Just last month, Australian police raided the headquarters of the public broadcaster ABC over a series of pieces they ran in 2017 exposing the clandestine operations of Australian special forces in Afghanistan. The police said they were investigating “allegations of publishing classified material”.

While states should of course retain the ability to punish those who genuinely endanger state security – publishing details of government agents, for example – we should push back strongly against the increasing use of national security laws to punish journalists who publish information that reveals corruption or wrongdoing.

Basu’s comments related to national security matters, but his remarks reflect a broader unease among those in power about publishing leaked information, reinforcing an impression that journalism itself is akin to an unsafe or even criminal enterprise, rather than one that helps to promote safety and security. Think of the crucial public interest work done by journalists in exposing the Thalidomide scandal, for example, or creating greater awareness of the rise in pollution.

At the moment in Britain, one area of police overreach that is of great concern is the use of production orders forcing journalists to hand over private information used for stories. Lawyers acting for UK journalists report that such orders are often drawn so widely that they risk exposing sources who provided vital public interest information.

This is totally at odds with a country where civil liberties are supposed to be protected by a police force that upholds the law in an impartial manner. A better understanding among officers about the effect of such misused powers on media freedom – and indeed on freedom of expression more generally – is essential.

Basu subsequently clarified that police did not want to stop the press from publishing stories. But his remarks are symptomatic of a wider culture in the police – and among some legislators – that pits notions of safety and security against journalists’ hard-won freedoms.

It is a securocratic worldview that endangers us all.