Safety of Journalists

Rob Butler Excerpts

Thursday 10th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Rob Butler (Aylesbury) (Con)]

Politicians and journalists do not always make easy bedfellows, but as MPs we fundamentally respect the right of journalists to report without fear or favour, to comment without the prospect of harassment by the forces of the state. In too many countries, this is still not the case, sometimes with the most horrendous or even fatal consequences, so as a former journalist turned politician I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak in this important debate.

I began my career in the autumn of 1989—a momentous time, as communism was collapsing and the Berlin wall fell. Many years later, I went to eastern Europe and the middle east to train TV news teams. They had spent most of their working lives terrified of upsetting tyrants. One man told me how colleagues would sometimes just disappear from the newsroom from one day to the next, with no explanation given. This particular journalist was even scared of the consequences of putting a comma in the wrong place in his copy.

Sadly, more recent events in parts of both eastern Europe and the middle east suggest that those days have not entirely disappeared. We have heard of 50 journalists being killed around the world last year and of around 274 imprisoned now, of which about 47 are in China, where there is brutal suppression of the truth about the regime’s repression in Xinjiang and Hong Kong. The BBC World Service has a long and depressing list of examples of the persecution of its journalists. Staff at the BBC Persian service are being consistently harassed and intimidated by Iran. This includes death threats to journalists based here in the UK, along with frightening and aggressive targeting of elderly parents, siblings and extended family members in Iran itself.

The regimes putting journalists at risk do it for one reason: they are scared of the truth. We must stand up to them, because along with the physical harm there is the psychological impact—a justifiable and understandable nervousness that can result in self-censorship. Nor can we be complacent here in the UK—reporters here, especially in broadcasting, face malicious abuse online every day. As ITN says, this creates a chilling effect on journalism. The BBC’s Marianna Spring, whose very job is to tackle disinformation, receives frequent threats. Only four years ago, the BBC’s political editor, Laura Kuenssberg, had to be accompanied by bodyguards at the Labour party conference.

None of that is acceptable. Journalists are not fair game, and we must not turn a blind eye. With a Prime Minister who was formerly a journalist himself, it is apposite that the British Parliament today focuses on the safety of journalists, and that we reaffirm our determination to support a free press in every country of the world—including, of course, our own.