NEW BODY TO FIGHT LEGAL ASSAULT ON PRESS FREEDOM

Leading journalists and media lawyers will meet in New York today to discuss ways of fighting LEGAL threats to press freedom around the world.

The meeting will form part of the launch in the USA of a new international body to fight oppression of the media wherever it occurs – the London-based Media Legal Defence Initiative (MLDI). While there are many bodies already working in the media freedom field, the MLDI is dedicated to supporting journalists and media organisations facing unjustified court action.

“There is nothing new about clamping down on free expression, but governments today are increasingly making use of the courts to frighten and silence their critics, while powerful private interests are turning to the civil and even criminal law for the same reason. Every day brings news of a reporter somewhere who is arrested or a newspaper sued simply for doing their professional duty,” said the MLDI’s executive director, Gugulethu Moyo.

“In such cases we will pay for defence lawyers and provide other support to face down legal intimidation.”

The discussion panel will be led by Floyd Abrams, one of the most respected advocates of media freedom in the world and a Patron of the new body, who said: “Lamentably, law itself is being misused as a tool to silence the press by those who seek to avoid its scrutiny. The need to confront this legal oppression is great and global. The MLDI has a crucial role to play in assisting the defence of press freedom in the courts.”

The other members of the panel are David McCraw (head of freedom-of-information litigation for the New York Times), Karinna Moskalenko (a leading human rights lawyer in Russia), Mark Stephens (a British lawyer currently campaigning for reform of the UK’s libel laws), Harry Roque (a Philippines law professor and prominent defender of press freedom) and Ndey Tapha Sosseh (president of the Gambian Press Union).