Safety of Journalists

Claire Hanna Excerpts

Thursday 10th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Claire Hanna (Belfast South) (SDLP) [V]]

As colleagues have said, a free press is integral to democracy and fundamental to ensuring that a society is underpinned by transparency and accountability. At the heart of that is ensuring that journalists are free and safe to do their jobs unhampered and without fear of intimidation or attack.

At home in Northern Ireland, unfortunately, attacks on journalists are not new and have not been confined to the past. This is a society that has always had a sick seam of coercion and intimidation and, unfortunately, that did not disappear with the Good Friday agreement. The last year has seen an alarming rise in the number of violent threats against journalists. Intimidation and threats are exacerbated by a poor legal climate, including overdue libel reform, the vexatious use of injunctions and, indeed, the landmark case against investigative journalists Trevor Birney and Barry McCaffrey over their treatment of the Loughinisland massacre.

An NUJ report from 2020 highlighted some of the attacks that journalists have experienced physically, verbally and online. It is not hyperbole to say that this is among the most dangerous places in the western world to be a journalist, and that has consequences for public debate. These threats come primarily from paramilitaries and the paramilitary-adjacent, who, in 2021, continue to exert undue influence and coercive control, intimidating communities and silencing those journalists who seek to expose them.

In the last year, alongside relentless on and offline intimidation of several journalists, a Sunday World reporter was issued with a credible threat against her newborn baby. A Belfast Telegraph photojournalist was beaten up and called a “Fenian” at loyalist riots this Easter. A member of the “Panorama” team was forced to flee his home after reporting on a notorious crime gang. And, of course, April 2019 saw the murder of journalist Lyra McKee by dissident republicans—the bloody and devastating consequence of bringing guns and disorder on to the streets.

We cannot talk about the safety of journalists and the freedom of the press without addressing the issue of paramilitarism and organised crime in Northern Ireland. It is still a reality of everyday life for many communities and journalists. It is welcome that the Government have stated their commitment to press freedom and that the Foreign Secretary will continue, he says, to hold to account

“those who repress, block & intimidate journalists”.

The question is: will this include Northern Ireland? Will the Government commit to ensuring that journalists are able to do their job in safety? Will they ask why, decades after the Good Friday agreement had ceasefired and paramilitaries had ceased to exist their emblems are allowed to fly on lamp posts across the city I live in? Why are they courted and empowered by public bodies, including this Government, who met loyalist paramilitary representatives to discuss post-Brexit arrangements? A cross-party and cross-civil society group has made it clear that no group can be allowed to undermine the freedom of the press and public interest reporting.