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Number of journalists in jail reaches global high

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Re: Number of journalists in jail reaches global high

#41

Post by NovemberWhiskey »

smackay wrote: post #26
gadders wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm English, and pretty far from Murray politically, but from what I've read in other places as well the Scottish Government, the SNP, and the Scottish judiciary seem very close - probably too close.

The fundamental problem is that there is no separation of powers between the government and the judiciary as you might find in most (all?) modern democracies. The Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service (COPFS) acts as the governments lawyers and the prosecution service. Most of the accusers in the trial of Alex Salmond, for which he was acquitted on all charges, are close associates of the leadership of the Scott…

I'm a bit confused by this statement about separation of powers. The function of a prosecutor is not a judicial function in the context of an adversarial legal system such as the common law.

Re: Number of journalists in jail reaches global high

#42

Post by gampleman »

smackay wrote: post #10

Craig Murray, friend of Julian Assange, was just released from a Scottish prison for the crime of jigsaw identification of some of the accusers in the trial of former First Minister, Alex Salmond despite the fact that many journalists from mainstream media had published information that allowed their readers to identify some of the accusers explicitly. So it's not just a problem of dictatorships in second or third wo…

Sadly looking at the map in the OP, the UK is reported as 0 journalists imprisoned.

Between Julian Assange and Craig Murray that seems low.

Re: Number of journalists in jail reaches global high

#44

Post by pydry »

ajb wrote: post #27
pydry wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's crazy about his case is that he was sentenced to more time than somebody who just outright named an accuser on twitter. Leonna Dorrian should be disbarred. What she did was a blatant abuse of her power.

Yeah that judgement was crazy. It has been spun as being about protecting the identity of victims of sexual offences, but I don't believe that for a moment because the judgement contained a detailed account of how you could find the accusers from Murray's articles . So I personally had no idea who they were when I read his article originally, but it was easy to figure out from the judgement. If what they cared about…

IIRC the argument was that by "identifying" the supposed victims he "could have" prejudiced the trial.

The UK has exceptionally strict laws surrounding interference with an ongoing trial. It's much easier to get somebody on that than it is most crimes if you're motivated.

The judge seems to have been lashing out after failing to convict Alex Salmond and reading the blog posts which lampooned her. They didn't come after him while the trial was in progress.

Tommy Robinson was also convicted on similar charges of attempting to prejudice a trial.

Re: Number of journalists in jail reaches global high

#45

Post by 1cvmask »

sleepysysadmin wrote: post #16
1cvmask wrote: post #3

So we don’t classify jailed and tortured Julian Assange as a journalist even though he broke amongst some of the biggest news stories over the last 20 years. Or that the Trump administration planned on assasinating him. Or that Joe Biden is trying to extradite him on trumped up charges (pun not intended). Or the Black TV reporter Bilal Abdul Kareem from Chicago that Obama tried to kill multiple times: https://www.rol…

>So we don’t classify jailed and tortured Julian Assange as a journalist even though he broke amongst some of the biggest news stories over the last 20 years. I do believe he is considered a journalist but he's in prison for multiple reasons. False and retracted sexual assault allegations in Sweden. Which technically had nothing to do with journalism and far more to do with Sweden's considerable problem with rape in…

Glad you noticed the Chicago reference. There are many more such examples. My favorite doublespeak is the fancy name for killing Obama administration used:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposition_Matrix

Re: Number of journalists in jail reaches global high

#46

Post by chrisseaton »

gampleman wrote: post #42
smackay wrote: post #10

Craig Murray, friend of Julian Assange, was just released from a Scottish prison for the crime of jigsaw identification of some of the accusers in the trial of former First Minister, Alex Salmond despite the fact that many journalists from mainstream media had published information that allowed their readers to identify some of the accusers explicitly. So it's not just a problem of dictatorships in second or third wo…

Sadly looking at the map in the OP, the UK is reported as 0 journalists imprisoned. Between Julian Assange and Craig Murray that seems low.

Usual problem - how do you define a journalist and how do you say whether they've been jailed for being a journalist or not.

Re: Number of journalists in jail reaches global high

#48

Post by koheripbal »

smackay wrote: post #10

Craig Murray, friend of Julian Assange, was just released from a Scottish prison for the crime of jigsaw identification of some of the accusers in the trial of former First Minister, Alex Salmond despite the fact that many journalists from mainstream media had published information that allowed their readers to identify some of the accusers explicitly. So it's not just a problem of dictatorships in second or third wo…

Wait, it's doxxing a witness a bad thing?

This seems like a legitimate crime.

Re: Number of journalists in jail reaches global high

#49

Post by delecti »

chrisseaton wrote: post #46
gampleman wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly looking at the map in the OP, the UK is reported as 0 journalists imprisoned. Between Julian Assange and Craig Murray that seems low.

Usual problem - how do you define a journalist and how do you say whether they've been jailed for being a journalist or not.

How to define a journalist is a tough problem I can't easily solve, but I'd be inclined to say that once you do, any of them being in jail for any reason should count. The risk of overcounting the few journalists who might genuinely commit crimes unrelated to their journalism seems lower than the risk of undercounting journalists who were in reality jailed because of their journalism, but were officially for invented crimes.

Re: Number of journalists in jail reaches global high

#50

Post by koheripbal »

thr0wawayf00 wrote: post #40
pjc50 wrote: post #32

I think it's quite a serious problem that people only want to talk about one or two very specific journalists that fit into the pre-existing culture war, rather than look at this more broadly.

This is very intentional. Attacking specific journalists and broadly claiming that the entire space is corrupt and manipulated is what increases the tolerance for things like this.

There's also an issue with defining "journalist".

Some people being described as "journalists" are really activists who are actively taking part in the movement that's being targeted by the government.

It doesn't excuse imprisoning them, but it muddies the water when it comes to defending them, and bloats the numbers in a way that make the problem more easy to dismiss.

On the other hand - certifying journalists is a non-trivial problem.

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