Media Freedom - How Some Voices Are Freer Than Others
This week, the UK and Canadian governments, part of the Five Eyes intelligence network, will be hosting a Global Conference on Media Freedom in London, 10th & 11th July 2019.
In a stunning display of hypocrisy, this global media conference is refusing to accredit journalists from RT - an organisation I am affiliated with as a regular political and social commentator. You can read the press release from the Russian Embassy below.
Just as my Muslim ideological forebears a millennia ago created movable typeface and pioneered the first free press for use by the public, I have been a lifelong advocate for a free press. My journeys through journalism have shown time and again, this is hard fought. We have seen journalists killed in Syria, Iraq and Palestine. Colleagues from Al Jazeera were caught up in the West’s coup d’état in Egypt when the democratically elected leader Morsi was overthrown in favour of military leader, Al Sisi - backed and funded by the US Congress. We lobbied and argued for their freedom. Marie Colvin was killed in Homs in Syria, whilst our own British government and politicians lied in Parliament about civilian casualties to support our ally, President Assad, massacring his own people. Just as we did when his father did so. In a twist of fate, my good friend a former Comms Director for the Church of England, was held up in a house in Homs where he was attending an interfaith gathering to find common ground for peace. His boss, the Archbishop of Canterbury, had supported the bombing that fell through the roof of their building that day. Homs of course, being the home town of Assad’s wife. It goes on and on.
Voices are chosen for us and amongst them there is then a vigorous debate. Noam Chomsky is right. It isn’t quite a false debate but it isn’t the real debate. These aren’t the crucial ideas. The ones your souls are yearning to hear.
That the UK has suffered hugely is not in question. To back dehumanisation policies at home and abroad in an era of transparency means you have to embolden hate and extremism. Austerity. As George Monbiot wrote in the Guardian, we have seen the greatest ever flow of wealth from poor-to-rich in the history of the planet. Over the last decade in the UK, the political pendulum has swung radically to the far right driven by the ideals of hate and intolerance; not only affecting our domestic and foreign policy, also driving our media output and control mechanisms. The securitisation of our ideas.
Ideological freedom is vital to the welfare of humanity. We are free so long as we are given an equal opportunity to engage intellectually; to tackle and to seek to defeat the weaker, harmful ideas, those that limit and contain us; that seek to divide people on divisions of race, belief, nationality, ethnicity, sexual orientation... in fact on any lines of apartheid. That some are less equal than others. Such is the way of those following the Roman tradition. Social Darwinism. Elitism. Inequality. Those people I meet and engage with do not wish for this system but wish for something better. Something more.
If it were possible, it would be great to rely on organisations such as Index for Censorship to lobby for change and to promote such ideals. However, with an organisation that has seen such neoconservative luminaries like David Aaronovitch at its helm, what hope can we have. After all, my old friend David has been more than happy to throw shade at me in The Times and a few years ago, even publish defamatory information as part of an Islamophobic smear campaign to marginalise me.
It appears that today, some voices are freer than others. And it is often those purporting to defend media freedoms who are actually the ones gatekeeping, corrupt and marginalising the voices they fear the most. Did they never learn that you can’t kill the human desire to be free, it is the divine spark, and it is sheer futility to attempt to silence voices and ideas? Let them play out. By disenfranchising the best ideas, all you prove to the gallery is that you’re unworthy of the exceptionalism you bestow upon yourselves. All you do is gain a small slice of time, for a smash and grab. Ultimately, you lose any way. #defendmediafreedom
Russian Embassy Press Release: https://t.co/YFRrzuucy9
First published 9 July 2019: Medium