Dissecting digital media freedom

GUY BERGER: CONVERSE - Apr 16 2009 06:00

Broadcast and print media have been free to report the elections without significant hindrance. By this time in 2014, the time of our next poll, we'll be assessing whether digital media will be as free.

So far, South Africans have enjoyed wide-ranging liberty in cyber-- and cellphone space. A study released earlier this month by Freedom House, puts the country in the "Free" category, just one point behind the UK's ranking.

The focus of the study is freedom for news and political information in new media, and it accepts that there may be legitimate (i.e. transparent, limited and proportional) controls such as on child pornography and cyber-crime. The period reviewed is 2007 and 2008.

Freedom House says its 19 criteria cover the entire "enabling environment" for new media freedom. The criteria are indeed fairly comprehensive -- ranging from whether a government bans software that circumvents internet filters, through to whether there is self-censorship online.

One criticism may be that this new media freedom index does not look at copyright and intellectual property controls. In some cases, these could be restrictive from the point of view of democracy -- for example, if bloggers were to appropriate trademarks for critical satire.

Three broad areas of new media freedom are covered by the Freedom House study: Obstacles to Access (political and economic); Censorship and content control systems that affect new media; Actual violations of free speech in new media.

South Africa scores more or less equally on all three:

Regarding access, the study registers a lessening of regulatory restrictions on access provision. It says that while four million South Africans have desktop internet access, 9,5 million have access via cellphone.

If these figures are accurate, and taking overlap into account, there are probably more than 20% of us with internet access. (On the other hand, many Mxit users probably don't even realise they're online, thanks to being contained in a walled garden). But in general, the South African trend is that new media access is on the up.

Turning to limits on content, Freedom House says there is no restriction in South Africa on new media content about corruption or human rights, and it notes that mobile phones are freely used for political organisation.

The picture painted about new media users' rights is also encouraging. The study finds that there are no reports of intrusion into, or monitoring of, new media.

But, reading between the lines, it seems that the freedom being engaged in this last area is largely due to non-implementation of potentially-offending laws. Parts of the Regulation of Interception of Communications Act (2002), and the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act (2002) still pose dangers.

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Also, over the period covered, the controversial Film and Publications Act was not used to chill political information in the new media environment -- although again this is a law that could do so in future.

What is not recorded in the Freedom House report is suspicion about the extent to which state security agencies are monitoring electronic communications. The surfacing of the McCarthy-Zuma tapes now suggests that this could be widespread.

Also absent from the study is the widespread practice in online newsrooms of censoring hate-speech comments by users, nor the occasional excluding of bloggers from websites owned by media houses. While these steps do not violate anyone's rights to disseminate content through own platforms, the measures might be used to suppress critical voices and limit debate in key public sphere places.

Notwithstanding such qualifications about South Africa's positive dispensation in new media, the country is still streets ahead of many others in the survey. According to Freedom House:

Governments in China, Iran, Tunisia and Cuba filter and block websites through enforcing centralised control of infrastructure.

China also systematically filters SMSes.

Seven of the 15 countries studied study have blocked Web 2.0 sites such as Facebook, YouTube and Blogspot, demonstrating a fear of tools that allow for peer-to-peer information sharing and community building.

China is also reported to have 250 000 paid contributors who push pro-government views in chat forums.

In two cases -- Estonia and Georgia -- new media freedom has been subverted by external forces: hackers possibly associated with the Russian authorities.

Unlike South Africa, the study shows that there have been many prosecutions of bloggers in Tunisia, Iran, Egypt, Malaysia, Russia and China.

However, Freedom House reports that almost every country in the survey still performs better on new media freedom, than on media freedom in general.

Even so, the institution warns that threats to new media freedom are growing and becoming more diverse.

As new media grows in access and reach in South Africa, its freedom status will become central to the quality of our democracy.

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