Media freedom essential pillar of national security: NU-Q dean

Media freedom is an essential pillar of national and global security, Northwestern University in Qatar (NU-Q) dean and CEO Dr Everette E Dennis told a European conference on a comprehensive approach to security in Vienna, Austria, recently. Dr Dennis gave the keynote address at the meeting of the Organisation on Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) that took up the role of free media in the context of the politico-military, economic and human dimensions of security. The dean spoke in front of more than 100 European government leaders, security officials, educators and other officials at a palace in Vienna’s historic Hofburg. In a discussion that also touched on the role of media in the blockade of Qatar, the dean said the information war in the Gulf is replete with fabricated news stories and crude attempts to undermine government and the social order. He also referred to the aggressors’ demands to close Al Jazeera, the most pervasive voice in the region and one that champions investigative reporting, and itself a linchpin of media freedom and a source of essential information that governments want to suppress. The dean described the hacking of the Qatar News Agency website and tweets by US President Donald Trump as factors in the blockade of Qatar by four countries as a case where disinformation fomented trouble for regional and international security. He noted that cybercrime laws that have criminalised positive social media messages about Qatar in two of the siege states as “the other side of defamation”, which usually punishes false and negative reports, not those that are simply positive expression of opinion”. The dean decried attacks on the news media by governments that are “rampant and growing and where security arguments are used as a great infringement on human freedom and detrimental to human well-being and security itself. As he put it, the role of media is both to “support and challenge the fundamental assumptions of security in the digital age when a hacked website or the spreading of false information can be just as dangerous and threatening as military intervention was in the past”. While attacks on the news media are sometimes thought limited to the murder and jailing of journalists in repressive regimes, even in the US attacks on the media as “the enemy of the people” or threats to cancel broadcast licenses can have “a chilling effect on freedom and security, which are deeply disturbing”, the dean said. Dean Dennis also proposed an agenda for governments and the media to confront the historic conflict between secrecy and publicity to enhance security by protecting justifiable national security matters while guaranteeing greater transparency and freedom of information. He urged a commitment to media literacy training, new protocols for the release of information, greater advocacy for media freedom and a commitment for media organisations to police their own house to avoid errors and fake news. He also called on social media leaders to enforce ethical standards and curtail the use of unnamed sources and advertising paid by unsavoury interests.