Amelia Cheatham

Because media is a public good, numerous actors maintain overlapping and competing interestssts in press freedom and safety. These include journalists, their aggressors, institutions charged with protecting them and the citizens they serve.

Reporter-audience social media engagement aside, journalists—champions of vulnerable populations and challengers of corrupt officials—are fairly anonymous to readers. Their primary visibility as small-font overshadowed by their workbylines atop more consequential stories may facilitate public unawareness of of media-directed attacks. Violence that does breach the collective consciousness often only involves Western reporters; while ISIS’ 2014 executions of Americans James Foley and Steven Sotloff rightfully galvanized societal attention, simultaneous terrorization of Middle Eastern media workers did not. Most journalists killed in 2017 covered war, politics, human rights, corruption or crime, and about 78% have been male. Yet, as Kim Wall’s death demonstrates, women and reporters covering other beats are not immune from harm.

Aggressors’ diverse identities, motivations and locales facilitate this issue’s intractability, as confronting one adversarial group may not impact others espousing separate ideals. Political organizations, military figures, criminal networks, unknown parties, governments and local residents are all suspected in reporter deaths this year. The violence isn’t even regionally constrained, as slayings have occurred in Iraq, Syria, Mexico, Yemen, Russia, Afghanistan, South Sudan, Somalia and the PhilippineThe violence has been globally distributed, with slayings in Iraq, Syria, Mexico, Yemen, Somalia, Russia, Afghanistan, South Sudan and the Philippines. South Africa might be added to this list; in June, “SABC 8” journalist Suna Venter died, apparently of a stress-related heart condition, after enduring death threats, break-ins and being shot in the face.

As in Venter’s case, governments charged with protecting journalists as citizens—if not the press as an institution—may facilitate their harm. This transfers responsibility to international institutions with sometimes similarly questionable commitments to press freedoms. For example, the United Nations’ Economic Social Council drew criticism for deferring the Committee to Protect Journalists’ consultative status application seven times in four years. Still, the UN General Assembly declared May 3 “World Press Freedom Day” in 1993, and global governance structures have adopted declarations, conventions and resolutions protecting reporters.

For instance, Article 19 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights states, “everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.” Article 79 of Geneva Convention Additional Protocol I extended civilian status to reporters covering international armed conflicts, allowing the International Criminal Court to prosecute their attackers. Finally, Article 4(A) of the Third Geneva Convention requires adversaries treat captured war correspondents as prisoners of war.

While they affirm the press’ institutional legitimacy, these frameworks are differentially valuable in theory and practice. Affording journalists civilian protections may imply their increased safety during conflict. However, non-combatants often suffer egregious abuses, and international law constrains the ICC’s ability to realize justice with war criminal convictions. Evidently, aggressors may disregard journalists’ civilian-like status. For example, ISIS released propaganda footage of Foley’s and Sotloff’s beheadings, reducing them to diplomacy pawns and denying their rights as private individuals.

Legal and cultural diversity also constrain press protections’ efficacies. Variable community values and principles of freedom may impact groups’ respect for and adherence to the UDHR and Geneva Conventions. As true global government doesn’t exist, responsibilities of enforcing internationally-defined journalistic protections fall upon individual countries. Yet, they largely ignored a 2014 UN Human Rights Council resolution calling for action against widespread impunity. Government aggressors have particularly negligible incentives to protect reporters.

In April, Mexican newspaper Norte shuttered its newsroom, a casualty of the country’s press-oriented brutality. Such media outlet closures create a human rights conundrum, simultaneously saving journalists’ lives and hindering citizens’ rights to be educated on current events. Furthermore, Western news services departing violent developing countries reinforces the Global North’s historical dominance of discourse.

Cognizant of the dangers, journalists like Caruana Galizia risk their human rights in defense of society’s, making sacrifices effectively spurned by ignorant audiences. Are we doing enough to protect these seemingly-disposable public servants? Death tolls suggest not. But what—considering tremendous situational variability—can we do? My posts will seek solutions, probing the journalism-human rights intersection and considering how factors like competing actor interests and disparately-defined press freedoms impact reporter-directed violence. By complicating these relationships, I hope to elucidate approaches that dodge intractability and publicize threats to journalists, moving them—at least temporarily—from the byline to the headline.

Perhaps most obviously, the First Amendment to the Constitution guarantees a broadly-defined “freedom of the press.” The Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld this right, deciding prior restraint—a form of governmental censorship, which Trump supports—is unconstitutional. Such restriction of the press would inevitably not only violate the media’s constitutionally-defined rights. Indeed, it would also infringe on the American public’s human right to education, affirmed by Article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the 2011 United Nations Declaration on Human Rights Education and Training.

As altering the Constitution requires substantial bipartisan and interstate coordination, it is unlikely the current political establishment could or even would amend it to serve Trump’s anti-media agenda. According to Rep. Adam Schiff, who co-founded the Congressional Caucus for Freedom of the Press with now-Vice President Mike Pence in 2006, protection of journalists is a Republican and Democratic issue. However, other avenues exist through which Trump might restrict the press, thereby threatening its protection and extension of human rights to the public.

Journalists in the U.S. benefit from so-called “shield laws,” which, according to the American Civil Liberties Union, safeguard them “from having to disclose to law enforcement sensitive information about their reporting, including the identity of confidential sources.” However, these protections differ state-by-state and do not exist on the federal level. Evidently, this legislative gap may facilitate symbolic, if not physical, violence against journalists through permitting them to be imprisoned for protecting their informants. Particularly concerning in the era of Trump—who has professed his proclivity for legal action against the press—such a tactic would, again, interfere with the American democratic process and infringe upon constituents’ human rights to education via the press.Despite the U.S.’s pretense of protecting journalists, Reporters Without Borders ranked it 43rd of 180 countries on its 2017 world press freedom index, citing Trump as a reason. Yet, it’s important to note that in 2014—the year before his campaign launched—the U.S. dropped 13 spots to 46th place, in part due to Obama-era recriminations against government whistleblowers. For context, South Africa, where journalist Suna Venter died after enduring government-facilitated human rights violations, was 31st on the 2017 list. Meanwhile, the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker has recorded 34 physical attacks against U.S. reporters in 2017.

While itself not an overt attack on journalists’ well-being, the effect of Trump’s condemnatory, “fake news” messaging—an equally vocal and indignant bloc of Americans—may truly threaten reporters’ safety and, thus, human rights. Indeed, the audience at an Aug. 22 rally in Phoenix responded to Trump’s allegations that reporters are “liars” and “sick people” by hurling insults and rocks at media personnel. According to Cecilia Vega, ABC’s Senior White House Correspondent, “this was incitement, plain and simple…It really feels like a matter of time, frankly, before someone gets hurt.” As Margaret Sullivan wrote in The Washington Post, it was “the most sustained attack any president has ever made on the press.”

On Nov. 25, David Frum echoed these sentiments, condemning a tweet from Trump’s @realDonaldTrump account that alleged, “Outside of the U.S., CNN International is still a major source of (Fake) news, and they represent our Nation to the WORLD very poorly.” Indeed, the journalist and speechwriter contended, “Trump’s words are a direct attack on those international journalists’ freedom & even safety.”

Evidently, Trump’s ability to galvanize the public—to whom reporters can only extend the right of education by risking their own human rights—against the press is a foreboding omen. The value of journalism is arguably inherent, largely independent of audience appreciation. However, if public buy-in to the president’s fake news phenomenon grows, reporters may be forced to assess whether covering the administration remains worth potentially sacrificing their rights and lives.

In addition to waging verbal warfare against the press, Trump has supported individuals perpetrating physical violence against the Fourth Estate, effectively endorsing encroachment on journalists’ human rights. After now-U.S. representative Greg Gianforte received a misdemeanor assault citation for body slamming The Guardian’s Ben Jacobs during his congressional campaign, Trump praised Gianforte’s election as a “great win.” Similarly, despite proclaiming at a 2015 rally that “I would never kill [journalists], but I do hate them,” Trump laughed when Phillippine president Rodrigo Duterte—a man who has previously vowed to assassinate wayward reporters—referred to the press as “spies”. Evidently, through this tacit support of attacks on journalists, Trump has arguably contributed to a culture of violence against the press and rejected reporters’ human rights.

Still, Trump may offer an unlikely glimmer of hope for American journalists—like Austin Tice—held hostage overseas. As Frum has recognized, First Amendment protections of the press are invalid outside the U.S., leaving the defense of such reporters’ rights to American government officials. In less than a year, the administration has negotiated the liberation of Aya Hijazi, Caitlan Colemen and Otto Warmbier from groups in Egypt, Pakistan and North Korea, respectively. The parents of journalist Jim Foley, executed by ISIS in 2014, have called for Trump to capitalize on this diplomatic momentum and name someone to the Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs position established under President Obama in 2015. Such action would signal heightened commitment by the Trump administration to defending captured Americans—perhaps including journalists—from hostile acts perpetrated against them.Ultimately, the president-press relationship is perhaps inherently complex, as reporters’ efforts to protect the public’s educational human rights may conflict with and impede governmental objectives. However, Trump’s verbal war against the “fake media” is unprecedented, providing a potential catalyst for physical attacks that deny journalists their safety and human rights. Indeed, it stands in stark contrast with President Obama’s signing of the Daniel Pearl Freedom of the Press Act, which, according to Schiff, “placed press freedom at the center of promoting human rights and democracy” by requiring its inclusion in the State Department’s annual assessment of human rights. Trump’s reversal of Obama-era legislation and emphatic proclamation of a “fake news” narrative offer a foreboding prognosis for journalism and human rights over the next three years, perhaps making public support of the reporters who serve them all the more crucial.

If horrified global responses to the assassinations of journalists like James Foley and Steven Sotloff are any indication, the public recognizes the injustice of violence perpetrated against media workers. Yet, as this post will explore, conversations about and codifications of human rights issues often fail to include this threat. Unrecorded and unratified by the international community as necessitating action, the obvious truth is neglected and reporters are thrust toward danger with little protection.

As defined by UNICEF, the “international human rights framework” consists of seven documents: the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as well as “the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights; the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights; the Convention on the Rights of the Child; the Convention against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment; the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination; and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women.”

While this declaration and these treaties all safeguard the rights of journalists as people, they offer variable additional protection from unique human rights threats reporters face as members of the press. Article 19 of the UNDHR broadly defends the activities of the media, asserting “everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”

Such encouragement of journalistic activities and information accessibility—which are inevitably compromised when reporters are harmed—is echoed in Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, as well as Articles 13 and 17 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Yet, the internationally-accepted “human rights framework” fails to overtly acknowledge press-directed violence as a violation of reporters’ rights.

Exclusion of attacks on journalists from these documents—the last of which was signed in 1989—effectively denies their significance as singular—let alone dual—human rights violations. In the modern era of heightened press-targeting by politicians and terrorist organization propaganda arms, this is increasingly problematic. Even the most comprehensive legislation has an expiration date. The aforementioned documents have begun to reek, their omission of violence against journalists conducive to impunity in Pakistan, Russia and elsewhere.

Of course, reporters are not wholly dependent on the human rights framework, as defined by UNICEF, to proclaim the importance of combatting media-directed violence. Organizations like the Committee to Protect Journalists and the International Press Institute devote themselves to this mission. International bodies like the Council of Europe release recommendations on protecting reporters, the UN observes November 2 as “International Day to End Impunity for Crimes against Journalists” and the Geneva Conventions codify treatment of journalists during war.

On Nov. 2, 2016—International Day to End Impunity for Crimes Against Journalists—a banner featuring Tice’s beaming face and #FreeAustinTice was affixed to the Newseum’s Pennsylvania Avenue façade.  The organization’s then-president and CEO declared, “This banner will stay in front of the Newseum until Austin Tice is released. It will be here if he is not released before Jan. 20, when the next president walks by.”

The banner has stayed.  Nine blocks away, “the next president” is waging war against the “fake media.”  On Feb. 4—the 2,001^st day since Tice last contacted his family—Twitter user @Judith08 noted, “How sad that someone could be missing for over 5 years and I am just now hearing about it.  Why doesn’t this government CARE?”  Seemingly straightforward, Judith’s query highlights a central challenge to promoting journalists’ human rights: catalyzing public and political buy-in.

Indeed, advocating for and safeguarding journalists’ rights to life is a complex undertaking.  While numerous parties—including readers and the government—appear to be stakeholders, the extent to which they have embraced these roles is debatable.  Currently, the burden falls on press interest organizations and reporters themselves.  These groups demonstrate definite aptitude for activism, yet self-advocacy is plagued by challenges.  Ultimately, current societal indifference to the media’s plight is embarrassing.  Readers must not abandon journalists to bear violence’s enormous pressures alone but rather help safeguard those whose work entertains and educates them.

Contrary to Judith’s assumption, Tice’s family says the Trump administration does care about his plight and is “all in, fifth gear.”  Yet, officials’ inability to publicly divulge progress in hostage negotiations may facilitate stagnation of public interest. Government support for embattled journalists is also complicated by growing perceptions of the press as an additional adversary in conflict zones.

Thus, addressing Judith’s concerns and, more importantly, journalist-directed violence falls to a select group of international and local media-interest groups.  The Committee to Protect Journalists, Reporters Sans Frontières  and Article 19 are among the most prominent.  Others advocate freedom of the press and protection of reporters because they deeply understand alternative realities; the James W. Foley Legacy Foundation, Daniel Pearl Foundation and the 2Lives Steven Joel Sotloff Memorial Foundation were all named for murdered journalists.

Meanwhile, media worker collectives confront press-targeting and impunity at the micro level.  This is crucial, as diverse regional and cultural factors complicate efforts to address violence against journalists as a cohesive human rights violation.  Such grassroots activism includes Pakistan’s Editors for Safety, a coalition with the credo that “an attack on one media professional or organization should be considered an attack on the entire Pakistani media.”  Though recent information about the group is scarce, a 2016 article highlights its role in recovering a kidnapped reporter.  Similarly, Mexican media workers have mobilized to establish #AgendaDePeriodistas, an industry-wide initiative fighting press-directed violence.

Advocacy for journalists by journalists has several strengths.  First, the cause’s champions are personally invested in its success.  To them, reporters’ human rights are not abstract interpretations of international humanitarian law but life and death.  Defending them means avenging fallen colleagues, and journalists leverage their access to audiences to publicize their collective plight.

Second, organizations that support media understand media.  Indeed, projects like mapping attacks illustrate the value of advocates’ digital literacy.  Groups like RSF maintain dynamic Twitter feeds, adeptly disseminating accounts of reporter-directed violence to mass audiences.  Yet, whether they reach a choir of already-aware journalists or mobilize new supporters for the cause is unclear.

Evidently, media-led advocacy of colleagues’ human rights has its drawbacks.  First, by reporting their own plight, journalists compromise their objectivity, which the public often perceives as integral to the press.  Thus, while covering media worker murders preserves the industry’s “gold standard” of telling the truth, it may alienate audiences.  Instead, advocacy must rally the public as crucial stakeholders and secondary victims in the dual human rights violation of reporter-directed violence.

Second, frankly stated, journalists cannot trust their own activist coverage of this issue.  Understandably, Mexico’s culture of mass violence against the mass media has prompted industry “self-censorship, under-reporting of organized crime, and the corruption and state complicity that comes with it.”  When press freedoms are constrained—either de jure or de facto—and journalistic attempts to combat strife actually incite it, local reporters’ capacity to effectively self-advocate dwindles.

Indeed, the modern mediascape’s economic tensions fuel reporter-directed violence, facilitate impunity for aggressors and plague human rights campaigns.  As foreign bureau budgets dry up, news organizations increasingly rely on “freelancers.”  While often glamorized, these staples of modern conflict zones are often ill-equipped—experientially, materially and financially—and grossly undercompensated.  In service to society, they may pay the ultimate price; of the 115 journalists killed in Syria since 2011, 44 were freelancers, CPJ says.

Such statistics force news organizations to weigh protecting their reporters’ lives with informing their readers.  Indeed, several major outlets have stopped accepting freelance work from Syria.  Human rights are, in theory, indivisible; one cannot suppress some rights to promote others.  Yet, practice complicates this concept.  Defense of journalists’ rights to life and full realization of the public’s right to education are arguably inversely-correlated; reporters putting themselves in harm’s way puts papers on readers’ stoops.

Counter intuitively, promoting both sets of rights requires further entangling the two groups.  A fiercely-felt ethos of public service is already at journalism’s core.  Now we must drag press-directed violence into even the periphery of public awareness.  Indeed, readers are obligated to partner with existent advocacy groups to safeguard journalists as fellow humans, exercising an “ethos of press service.”  And, as Judith’s dejection and frustration indicate, they likely care—if they know about it.

Yet, advocacy is not always altruistic and public awareness can be perilous; as outlets learned from Daniel Pearl’s 2002 kidnapping and murder, hostages may have a better shot at escaping alive without a spot on Larry King Live.  Thus, though justice is crucial, it’s equally important to consider how this is best achieved.  In what circumstances can audience involvement beneficially bolster existent advocacy?  And when, like Tice’s whereabouts, are these efforts best hidden from public view?

Second, the Official Secrets Act, enacted during British colonial rule, weaponizes knowledge.  It makes distributing information—journalists’ central mission—criminal.   This impedes media protection of the public’s right to knowledge.  In Myanmar, “80 to 90 percent of government documents were considered confidential or secret under the Official Secrets Act,” according to press advocate U Myint Kyaw.  Regional neighbors Pakistan, India, Singapore and Malaysia—also former British colonies—have similar legislation.  Thus, journalists throughout Asia are susceptible to arrest for what they know.

Third, of course, this situation violates Wa Lone’s and Kyaw Soe Oo’s human rights.  Denied pre-trial bail, they face sentences of up to 14 years.  As if being detained for illuminating ethnic cleansing was not sufficiently egregious, they may sustain further abuse in custody.  A 2016 Reuters investigation found systematic mistreatment, including forced labor and corporal punishment, in Myanmar’s prison camps.

Myanmar ratified the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which guarantees the right to education.  However, it is not party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which protects freedom of expression.  Thus, though the government recognizes the effect of journalism—education—as a human right, it does not recognize the act itself as one.  Knowledge is protected but collecting it is not.  Despite regional human rights abuse, support for these covenants is theoretically high across Southeast Asia.  Still, this has little—if any—practical impact within sovereign Myanmar.

A third non-victim stakeholder group is the journalism community.  Numerous media groups have spoken out in support of Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo.  A statement by 50 Pulitzer Prize winners called the men “brave, principled and professional journalists who were working in the public interest and were jailed simply for doing their jobs.”  Meanwhile, press associations across Asia launched a Change.org petition with over 40,000 signatures.

Unfortunately, an attack on one reporter is an assault on every journalist.  These arrests reinforce the acceptability of media-directed violence in Myanmar, across Southeast Asia and around the world.  By legalizing state press-targeting, unjust Official Secrets Acts fuel a regional culture of impunity for violating journalists’ human rights.  Between 2012 and 2014, the Southeast Asian Press Alliance noted 100 or more instances in which abusers faced no repercussions.

Ultimately, the fates of Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo lie with stakeholders either unable or unwilling to act in their favor.  Human rights law constrains the international political community’s intervening abilities.  This may matter little to Myanmar’s abusive regional neighbors, which may support its actions.  The media is unlikely to earn state respect in negotiations.  Finally, public beneficiaries of this journalism may be similarly terrorized by Myanmar’s government or complicit in its aggression.  Both military and civilians are slaughtering Rohingya and benefit from suppression of media coverage.

As in most cases of press-directed violence, complex contextual factors—including regional attitudes, stakeholder interests and legal loopholes—jeopardize human rights promotion.  Yet, this remains as crucial as ever, particularly given the triple threat of Wa Lone’s and Kyaw Soe Oo’s detainment.