Name: Mia Sullivan
Social Justice Group: Freedom of the Press
Date of Fieldwork: November 30, 2018
Name of Organization: ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union)
Person (people) with whom I met and their job titles: Farah Brelvi, Lawyer for the ALCU
Type of Fieldwork: Interview
What I did:
We skyped Farah Brelvi, a lawyer for the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) and asked questions about her job and personal opinions about the current status of Freedom of the Press in the United States. Farah Brelvi has worked for both the ACLU and the CJA (The Center for Justice Accountability) providing legal representation for journalists in the United States.
What I learned:
I learned that the concept of “Freedom of the Press” is a lot more complicated than I originally thought it was. No two countries around the world agree on the issue of press freedom. Each country has its own standards. Some countries like the United States and Great Britain believe that there should be limits on what the press can publish which means that technically they do not have absolute freedom of the press. Countries ruled by autocrats and dictators control state-owned media outlets like in North Korea and Eritrea. And other countries think that the media should be allowed to publish anything that they want no matter the consequences. In both Norway and Sweden, the media is allowed to publish and report on all news without the government stepping in or restricting them.
Another thing that I learned was that the United Nations cannot enforce the freedom of the press. For example, in 2012 the Syrian government killed an American journalist named Marie Colvin. She worked for the Sunday Times and was live broadcasting around the world from a media center in Syria. She wanted people to know about how the Syrian government was oppressing their people and limiting their human rights. Thousands of people around the world were watching and could hear bombs falling in the background during Colvin’s reporting. The Syrian government tracked her through her broadcasting signal and bombed the media center killing Marie Colvin and everyone else in the building. They claimed that she was spreading “fake news” and that everything that she had said was false. Their excuse for bombing the building was that in their country nothing is worse than spreading lies. No one was ever blamed or punished for her death.
What I learned about Social Justice “work” and/or Civil and Human rights “work” from this fieldwork:
Through this fieldwork, I learned how frustrating it can be to try and bring a dictatorship to justice. After Marie Colvin was killed, Farah Brelvi sued the Syrian government in international court claiming that they were directly responsible for her death. The Syrian government insisted that they were justified in stopping Colvin from reporting because they claimed she was spreading lies. Despite the abundant evidence from Colvin’s reporting and the live broadcast of her death, Farah Brelvi and the ACLU were unsuccessful in their lawsuit. The Syrian government was found not guilty.
