Journalism Is Not A Crime

Des Freedman writes:

“Journalism is the lifeblood of democracy” proclaimed prime minister Keir Starmer in a comment piece for the Guardian at the end of October. “Just because journalists are brave does not mean they should ever suffer intimidation”, he wrote.

Yet 11 days before his article was published, officers from the counter-terrorism unit of the Metropolitan Police raided the home of Asa Winstanley, a well-known pro-Palestinian journalist with the Electronic Intifada, and seized his devices under provisions of the UK’s Terrorism Act.

Winstanley was presented with a letter indicating that the raid was part of ‘Operation Incessantness’, a counter-terror initiative about which little is known.

This is not the first use of anti-terror laws to try to silence pro-Palestinian voices in recent months.

It follows the detention at Heathrow Airport of Richard Medhurst and the arrest of Sarah Wilkinson in August 2024, both of whom are independent journalists prominently associated with reporting Israel’s war on Palestinians.

The attacks on journalists are part of a wider pattern of harassment of pro-Palestine activists.

This includes the arrest on 1 November of the Jewish academic Haim Bresheeth for alleged support of a ‘proscribed organisation’ after making a speech outside the London residence of the Israeli ambassador to the UK.

Bresheeth noted the achievements of the Israeli government: “Murder, mayhem, genocide, racism, destruction, this is what they’re good at”.

Meanwhile, Richard Barnard, co-founder of direct action group Palestine Action, is set to stand trial in April on charges of criminal damage and supporting a proscribed organisation.

A further 16 members of Palestine Action are currently detained, only five of whom have been sentenced with the others held on remand.

Media blackout In response to these outrageous infringements of journalists’ ability to do their jobs, Declassified UK noted back in September that “they are part of a sinister development that has serious implications for civil liberties and freedom of speech, yet it has been ignored by the mainstream media”.

This continues to be the case. Not a single national news outlet in the UK has reported on the policing of British pro-Palestinian journalists. Not one of them has thought to investigate what ‘Operation Incessantness’ might mean for press freedom.

Not one of them has reflected on the precedent set by the use of anti-terror laws for reporting on Gaza.

Mainstream news outlets, however, are perfectly prepared to report on police raids where they happen outside the UK. The Guardian, for example, has published many articles on arrests of journalists overseas, for example in Russia, China, Somalia and India while the BBC has reported on harassment of journalists in Cambodia, Venezuela and Iran.

One recent exception to this was widespread coverage in November 2023 of a High Court decision criticising the Metropolitan Police for carrying out a counter-terrorism raid on a freelance journalist in July of that year.

The judgment found that the anonymous reporter, who was covering issues of national security, including allegations concerning “failures to crack down on Chinese influence and issues of defence procurement”, had had their human rights breached.

In this particular case, national newspapers were prepared to back ‘one of their own’. This was evidenced by the support provided to the journalist, according to their solicitor, by not only the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) and Free Speech Union but also the Sun, Associated Newspapers, Telegraph Media Group and Jewish Chronicle.

No such backing has been forthcoming from news organisations for pro-Palestinian journalists who have faced similar police action.

The press’ interest in the use of the Terrorism Act is far more likely to focus on the conviction of pro-Palestine protesters displaying allegedly pro-Hamas symbols on a march (despite the judge’s finding that there was no evidence of support for Hamas) than it is to call out unwarranted state harassment of independent journalists.

Standing up to the state Instead, it has been left to activists, trade unions and journalism NGOs to publicise the raids and arrests of pro-Palestinian journalists.

The NUJ has condemned “the rising use of counter-terrorism legislation against journalists as an intimidatory measure harmful to public interest journalism and press freedom”. And the Committee for the Protection of Journalists reacted to the raid on Asa Winstanley by demanding that all his devices be immediately returned to him.

“Instead of endangering the confidentiality of journalistic sources, authorities should implement safeguards to prevent the unlawful investigation of journalists and ensure they can do their work without interference”, it wrote.

Meanwhile, there is silence from a journalism establishment whose motto, as a Daily Mail comment piece once put it, is that “free expression is the cornerstone of a free society”. It seems that free expression is reserved for some journalists but certainly not all of them.

While it is obviously true that the media in the UK do not face the same level of restrictions and violence meted out to journalists in authoritarian countries, harassment by the state – both formal and informal – poses a genuine threat to journalists challenging the status quo, particularly on foreign policy issues.

This is, after all, a country that jailed Julian Assange for more than five years for the crime of being a journalist who didn’t play by the rules. This is a country that runs a ‘voluntary’ system of press censorship on military issues through the Defence and Security Media Advisory Committee (DSMA) that most editors are all too happy to comply with.

This is a country with a news media either owned by billionaires and tech moguls or run by a public service broadcaster with extensive links to the government of the day.

This is a country where police routinely spy on ‘troublemaker journalists’ as we saw with the revelations that the Police Service of Northern Ireland engaged in covert surveillance and cover-up for over ten years before being found out only thanks to dogged work by rank and file journalists.

So when Keir Starmer proclaims that “there is no direct threat to press freedoms in our country”, take this with more than a pinch of salt. As we have seen, the ‘indirect’ threats of the DSMA and the concentrated nature of media ownership are significant enough.

There is little room for complacency when it comes to the actions that the state is prepared to take to muzzle the journalists who it perceives as posing a ‘direct threat’ to a foreign policy that has facilitated Israel’s assault on Gaza and the wider conflagration in the Middle East.

Yet the state’s job does not look like it will get any easier. A letter published in the Independent from 230 members of the media industry, including over 101 anonymous BBC staff members, complaining about biased media coverage of Israel suggests that the opposition to the genocide is growing and includes a significant number of journalists.

The pro-Palestine movement can be threatened but it does not seem that it will be quashed any time soon.