More generally, it is noted: “The 2018 World Press Freedom Index […] reflects growing animosity towards journalists. Hostility towards the media, openly encouraged by political leaders, and the efforts of authoritarian regimes to export their vision of journalism pose a threat to democracies.”

The report points, in particular, to online threats against journalists, many of who are women, and the proposed changes to the Official Secrets Act, as well as repeated attempts to impose state-backed press regulation – and a legal action by the law firm, Appleby, against the Guardian and the BBC, for work on the Paradise Papers. The UK is the only place where such proceedings have started in the wake of the international revelations over tax avoidance. 

The report says: “There was virtually no improvement in the United Kingdom’s disappointing ranking in the Index (40th). Theresa May’s government pursued its heavy-handed approach towards the media, usually in the name of national security, implementing the draconian Investigatory Powers Act —the most extreme surveillance legislation in UK history—with insufficient protection mechanisms for whistleblowers, journalists, and their sources, and Amber Rudd has repeatedly threatening to restrict encryption software and announcing plans for other disturbing measures.”

Last year I reported on how the UK government proposed to change the four Official Secrets Acts, which date back to 1911. They want them scrapped and replaced with a “modernised” Espionage Act and a data disclosure law.

The Conservatives have been accused of “criminalising public interest journalism” as it plans to increase the number of years for the “leaking of state secrets” from 2 years to 14, in the first “overhaul” of the Official Secrets Act for over 100 years.

Under the proposals, which were published in February 2017, officials who leak “sensitive information” about the British economy that damages national security could also be jailed. Currently, official secrets legislation is limited to breaches which jeopardise security, intelligence defence, confidential information and international relations.

The government released the proposals citing the “new reality” of the 21st-century internet and national security dangers as justification for a more “robust” system of prosecution.

The recommendations centre around the Official Secrets Act (1989) which governs how public servants in government and the military must keep government information secret and out of publication.

Journalists and civil liberties groups warned that the threshold for the increased sentence has been lowered and that journalists and whistleblowers acting in the public interest will be effectively gagged. In the government recommendations, the threshold for being prosecuted for revealing state secrets will be changed from “having caused definite damage” to the likelihood of causing damage to national interests. The Law Commission also stated that a defendant should be prevented from making a defence that they believed they were working in the public interest. 

Michelle Stanistreet, general secretary of the National Union of Journalists, said at the time: “The ramifications of these recommendations are huge for journalists and freedom of the press. Journalists face being criminalised for simply doing their job and the public’s right to know will be severely curtailed by these proposals. The union will respond robustly to the Law Commission’s consultation on changes to the Official Secrets Act.

“The National Union of Journalists is also concerned that the Digital Economy Bill, now in Parliament, threatens to undermine journalists sharing information in the public interest.” 

“This union is deeply concerned at yet another attempt by the UK government to curtail the media. The Investigatory Powers Act has put journalists’ sources at risk now that a large number of authorities have the power to intercept reporter’s’ emails, mobile phone and computer records.

“We have plenty of evidence that some police forces routinely used the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act to get their hands on journalists’ records without their knowledge. The NUJ is also concerned that the Digital Economy Bill, now in Parliament, threatens to undermine journalists sharing information in the public interest.”

The consultation on the UK Government’s proposals closed last year. Organisations such as Amnesty have submitted their statements and expressed their opposition. 

Campaigners say the bill would make any investigation of government culpability harder and lower the amount of accountability in the civil service, military and government.

From the consultation document: “Chapter 6 – Freedom of Expression Enshrined in Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, freedom of expression is a fundamental right. We consider whether compliance with Article 10 requires the introduction of a statutory public interest defence for those who make unauthorised disclosure. Our conclusion is that Article 10 does not require the introduction of a statutory public interest defence. Our view accords with that the House of Lord in R v Shayler.” 

From the RSF report in 2017:

“Journalism worthy of the name must be defended against the increase in propaganda and media content that is made to order or sponsored by vested interests.”

“It is unfortunately clear that many of the world’s leaders are developing a form of paranoia about legitimate journalism.” (RSF secretary-general Christophe Deloire).

“The climate of fear results in a growing aversion to debate and pluralism, a clampdown on the media by ever more authoritarian and oppressive governments, and reporting in the privately owned media that is increasingly shaped by personal interests.

Journalism worthy of the name must be defended against the increase in propaganda and media content that is made to order or sponsored by vested interests. Guaranteeing the public’s right to independent and reliable news and information is essential if humankind’s problems, both local and global, are to be solved.”

Last year I said: The notion of the media as a watchdog, as a guardian of public interest, and as a conduit between governors and the governed was once deeply ingrained. The reality, however, is that the media in democracies are failing to live up to this ideal. They are hobbled by stringent and often repressive laws, monopolistic ownership, and too often, the threat of brute force. State controls are not the only constraints. Balanced and impartial reporting is difficult to sustain in a context of neoliberalism because of competitive media markets that put a premium on the superficial and sensational.

Moreover, the media are manipulated and used as proxies in the battle between political groups, in the process sowing divisiveness rather than consensus, hate speech instead of sober debate, and suspicion rather than social trust. The media significantly contribute to public cynicism and democratic decay.

Nothing has changed. The UK establishment news media are highly centralised and dominated by elites who serve and maintain the status quo and who detest democracy.

Independent media organisations like Politics and Insights, Zelo Street, Novara Media, Evolve Politics, Media Diversified, Media Lens, CommonSpace, The Canary, Bella Caledonia, Real Media, The Dorset Eye, Welfare Weekly, Unity News UK, Scisco Media, Ekklesia, STRIKE! magazine, The Bristol Cable, Now Then, Another Angry Voice, Pride’s Purge, Skwawkbox, the Manchester Mule, and many others are taking the fight to the establishment. As the new independent media, we are free from institutional dependencies, and in particular, from the influence of government and corporate interests. 

We’ve fostered a spirit of cooperation and (often) collaboration between us, which is a refreshing contrast to the mainstream media’s entrenched competitive and market-based values.

We recognise the correlations between the loss of press freedom, authoritarianism and oppression. 

We recognise the mainstream media’s attempt at the stage-management of our democracy for what it is.

Dr. Lawrence Britt examined the fascist regimes of Hitler (Germany), Mussolini (Italy), Franco (Spain), Suharto (Indonesia) and several Latin American regimes. Britt found 14 defining characteristics common to each, which indicate authoritarianism. Among those is a controlled mass media – where the media is directly controlled by the government, or the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation, and/or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship is very common in fascist states and also, in those states where the government lies on the authoritarian-totalitarian spectrum. 

Independent media includes any form of autonomous media project that is free from institutional dependencies. We are not constrained by the interests of society’s major power-brokers.

We collectively reflect a model that is, by and large, democratic, prefigurative, often collaborative and that has a mutually supportive approach to public interest and conscience-based, as opposed to market-based, media.

We are a collection of diligent witnesses writing a collective, qualitative social testimony, gathering quantitative empirical evidence, all of which marks an era of especially historic political upheavals on a global scale.

The Canary says that the independent media platforms “have been ably assisted by an array of skilled and committed [individual] bloggers, independent researchers and writers like Vox Political, Another Angry Voice, Pride’s Purge and Politics and Insights (Kitty S Jones) to name but a few.” (Takes a small bow).  

Much of broadcast and published news coverage is centred on presenting a “consensus” view of the status quo, assuming this to be “neutral”. Those narratives that depart from the assumed consensus are portrayed as alternative and protest, rather than as valid perspectives within a healthy, ongoing democratic conversation. This approach therefore systematically marginalises, discredits, and leads to the pathologising of viable challenges to the neoliberal hegemony. 

The growth of independent media platforms in the UK has happened because of the mainstream media’s dismal failure to reflect public interests, to expose and challenge powerful private interests and to hold the increasingly authoritarian establishment to democratic account, on the whole.

A media so weighted in favour of the Conservative, neoliberal status quo makes progressive, campaigning, public interest and independent journalism an absolute necessity. 

That is why I do what I do.