Campaigns
Free Speech is not For Sale, a joint campaign report by Index on Censorship and English PEN highlighted the problem of so-called libel tourism and the English law of defamation’s chilling effect on free speech. After much debate surrounding the report’s ten key recommendations, the UK Justice Secretary Jack Straw pledged to make English defamation laws fairer.
"A free press can’t operate or be effective unless it can offer readers comment as well as news. What concerns me is that the current arrangements are being used by big corporations to restrict fair comment, not always by journalists but also by academics." He added: "The very high levels of remuneration for defamation lawyers in Britain seem to be incentivising libel tourism."
These campaigns and others in process are illustrative of CEO John Kampfner’s strategy, supported by chair Jonathan Dimbleby, to boost Index’s public advocacy profile in the UK and abroad since 2008. Until then the organisation did not regard itself as “a campaigning organisation in the mould of Article 19 or Amnesty International,” as former news editor Sarah Smith noted in 2001. preferring to use its “understanding of what is newsworthy and politically significant” to maintain pressure on oppressive regimes (such as China, from 1989) through extensive coverage”.
Read more about this topic: Index On Censorship
Famous quotes containing the word campaigns:
“That food has always been, and will continue to be, the basis for one of our greater snobbisms does not explain the fact that the attitude toward the food choice of others is becoming more and more heatedly exclusive until it may well turn into one of those forms of bigotry against which gallant little committees are constantly planning campaigns in the cause of justice and decency.”
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