Press Freedoms

Canadian news reports are riddled with accounts of Access to Information requests denied and government reports released with large swaths of content redacted. The Unfulfilled Promise of Press Freedom in Canada offers a vast array of viewpoints that critically analyze the application and interpretation of press freedom under the Charter of Rights. This collection, assiduously put together by editors Lisa Taylor and Cara-Marie O'Hagan, showcases the insights of leading authorities in law, journalism, and academia as well as broadcasters and public servants. The contributors explore the ways in which press freedom has been constrained by outside forces, like governmental interference, threats of libel suits, and financial constraints. These intersectional and multifaceted lines of inquiry provide the reader with a 360-degree assessment of press freedom in Canada while discouraging complacency among Canadian citizens. After all, an informed citizenry is a free citizenry.

Reimagining press freedom in a networked era: not just a journalist's right to speak but also a public's right to hear. In Networked Press Freedom, Mike Ananny offers a new way to think about freedom of the press in a time when media systems are in fundamental flux. Ananny challenges the idea that press freedom comes only from heroic, lone journalists who speak truth to power. Instead, drawing on journalism studies, institutional sociology, political theory, science and technology studies, and an analysis of ten years of journalism discourse about news and technology, he argues that press freedom emerges from social, technological, institutional, and normative forces that vie for power and fight for visions of democratic life. He shows how dominant, historical ideals of professionalized press freedom often mistook journalistic freedom from constraints for the public's freedom to encounter the rich mix of people and ideas that self-governance requires. Ananny's notion of press freedom ensures not only an individual right to speak, but also a public right to hear. Seeing press freedom as essential for democratic self-governance, Ananny explores what publics need, what kind of free press they should demand, and how today's press freedom emerges from intertwined collections of humans and machines. If someone says, “The public needs a free press,” Ananny urges us to ask in response, “What kind of public, what kind of freedom, and what kind of press?” Answering these questions shows what robust, self-governing publics need to demand of technologists and journalists alike.

This book examines why press freedom has not become part of the established international human rights debate, despite its centrality to democratic theory. It argues that an unrestricted press is not just an important economic actor, but also an influential power in the political process, a status that interferes with government interests of sustaining their own power and influence. Despite the popularity of ideational explanations in the field of human rights studies, in the case of promoting press freedom, considerations of power and strategic interests rather than ideas dominate state behavior. The author makes the case that the current place of press freedom in the human rights debate needs to be rethought not only in developing countries, but in liberal democracies as well.

What does press freedom mean in a digital age? Do we have to live with fake news, hate speech and surveillance? Can we deal with these threats without bringing about the end of an open society? In a fast-moving narrative, Heawood moves from the birth of print to the rise of social media. He shows how the core ideas of press freedom emerged out of the upheavals of the seventeenth century, and argues that these ideas have outlived their sell-by date. Heawood draws on his unique experience as a journalist, campaigner and the founder of the UK's first independent press regulator. He describes his own crisis of faith as his commitment to absolute press freedom was rocked – first by phone hacking at the News of the World, and then by the rise of social media. Nonetheless, he argues powerfully against censorship, and instead sets out the five roles that democratic states should play to ensure that people get the best out of the media and mitigate the worst.

For several decades, the city-state of Singapore has been an international anomaly, combining an advanced, open economy with restrictions on civil liberties and press freedom. Freedom from the Pressanalyses the republic's media system, showing how it has been structured - like the rest of the political framework - to provide maximun freedom of manoeuvre for the People's Action Party (PAP) government. Cherian George assessed why the PAP's "freedom from the press" model has lasted longer than many other authoritarian systems. He suggests that one key factor has been the PAP's recognition that market forces could be harnessed as a way to tame journalism. Another counter-intuitive strategy is its self-restraint in the use of force, progressively turning to subtler means of control that are less prone to backfire. The PAP has also remained open to internal reform, even as it tries to insulate itself from political competition. Thus, although increasingly challenged by dissenting views disseminated through the internet, the PAP has so far managed to consolidate its soft-authoritarian, hegemonic form of electoral democracy. Given Singapore's unique place on the world map of press freedom and democracy, this book not only provides a constructive engagement with ongoing debates about the city-state but also makes a significant contribution to the comparative study of journalism and politics.

This book analyzes the constraints on press freedom and the ways in which independent reporting and reporters are at risk in contemporary Asia to provide a barometer of democratic development in the region. Based on in-depth country case studies written by academics and journalists, and some who straddle both professions, from across the region, this book explores the roles of mainstream and online media, and how they are subject to abuse by the state and vested interests. Specific country chapters provide up-to-date information on Bangladesh, Kashmir, Malaysia, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam, as well as on growing populist and nationalist challenges to media freedom in the Philippines, India, Indonesia and Japan. The book includes a theoretical chapter pulling together trends and common constraints facing newsrooms across Asia and a regional overview on the impact of social media. Three chapters on China provide insights into the country’s tightening information environment under President Xi Jinping. Moreover, the legal environment of the media, political and external pressures, economic considerations, audience support and journalists’ standards and ethics are explored. As an international and interdisciplinary study, this book will appeal to undergraduates, graduates and scholars engaged in human rights, media studies, democratization, authoritarianism and Asian Studies, as well as Asia specialists, journalists, legal scholars, historians and political scientists.

Is the business of public officials any of the public’s business? Most Canadians would argue that it is – that we citizens are entitled to enquire and get answers about our government’s actions. Yet, on a practical level, there still exists a struggle between the public’s quest for accountability and the government’s culture of secrecy. Drawing together the unique perspectives of social scientists, journalists, and access to information (ATI) advocates, Brokering Access explores the history of ATI law and supplies multiple examples of its contemporary application at the federal, provincial, and municipal levels. From restrictions to access of airport security data post-9/11 to censorship under the Access to Information Act to the difficulties of obtaining details on streetscape video surveillance, this book reveals the legal and bureaucratic obstacles citizens face when trying to access government information.

Addresses a critical analysis of major media policies in the European Union and Council of Europe at the period of profound changes affecting both media environments and use, as well as the logic of media policy-making and reconfiguration of traditional regulatory models. The analytical problem-related approach seems to better reflect a media policy process as an interrelated part of European integration, formation of European citizenship, and exercise of communication rights within the European communicative space. The question of normative expectations is to be compared in this case with media policy rationales, mechanisms of implementation (transposing rules from EU to national levels), and outcomes.