Pahayag forum on media freedom and responsibility: Ambassador's speech
UK Ambassador to the Philippines Daniel Pruce welcomed participants to the forum to discuss media freedom.
Good afternoon everyone and welcome to our forum on media freedom and responsibility.
Magandang hapon po sa inyong lahat. Mabuhay sa ating forum “Pahayag”.
Natutuwa akong makita kayo dito dahil napakaimportante ng forum ito para sa akin.
As someone who has worked closely with the media throughout my career I feel a strong personal attachment to the issues we are going to discuss today.
Over the past 30 years I have repeatedly admired the professionalism of great journalists producing well researched and insightful reports, often in very difficult circumstances. I have also seen the damage done by reckless and irresponsible reporting. And I have seen vested interests try to prevent journalists from doing their jobs.
Above all I have come to understand the importance of the quote you all have on your notebooks, from the great British Prime Minister, Sir Winston Churchill:
A free press is the unsleeping guardian of every other right that free men prize; it is the most dangerous foe of tyranny.
A free and responsible media is fundamental to an open and democratic society: holding the powerful to account, speaking up for those who have no voice and fighting corruption.
In fact, no society can ever be free if its media is not.
Citizens are not free if the reports they read, watch and listen to have not been written, filmed or recorded freely.
So for each and every one of us: media freedom is our freedom.
Ang kalayaan ng media ay ang ating kalayaan.
Today’s forum is part of the British government’s global campaign in defence of media freedom.
Our aim is to shine a global spotlight on media freedom, and in so doing to raise the cost to those abusing or restricting it.
On 10 and 11 July, the British and Canadian governments will co-host a 2-day international conference in London. The British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt and his Canadian colleague Chrystia Freedland will bring together ministers, business people, civil society, academia and the wider media.
Our aim is to reinforce the global commitment to ensure a free and independent media and to secure a better co-ordinated approach to ensuring the safety of media professionals.
We will work to make existing mechanisms within the UN, and in regional and international fora more effective at holding all of our governments to account and to generating change on the ground.
As part of this, we recently appointed Amal Clooney as a Special Envoy on Media Freedom. She will lead a Panel of Legal Experts to examine initiatives that countries can adopt to safeguard and improve media freedom.
We will also promote delivery against the commitment in the Sustainable Development Goals to ensure public access to information and protection of fundamental freedoms. And, of course, there is the important link to fighting corruption and improving open government.
Of course governments cannot do this alone. For this reason we are also forming a broad and inclusive coalition to join us in shining a spotlight on media freedom across the globe.
Here in the Philippines we are organising a series of activities to raise the profile of media freedom, to highlight issues of responsible journalism and to promote media literacy.
We will be taking this discussion around the country, with events like this in a range of universities and other institutions.
We will reinforce the importance of professional journalism, including by connecting schools of journalism in our two countries so that they can work together in developing the journalists of the future.
In an era of fake news, where anyone can spread a lie to millions at the click of a mouse or the tap of a touchscreen we need proper, professional, rigorous, courageous journalism more than ever.
And I am delighted to announce today that the British Embassy to the Philippines is creating a Special Chevening Scholarship for Media Freedom, under which a Filipino student can spend a year in the UK advancing their studies in support of media freedom.
This is not just about the spoken or written word. Photojournalism is at the heart of our work too. I’m delighted to welcome here this afternoon the greatest British political news photographer of his generation, Stefan Rousseau.
We will be exhibiting some of Stefan’s remarkable photographs this evening alongside some stunning images provided by the Photojournalists’ Centre of the Philippines.
This campaign is not anti-government, it is not anti-business, it is not anti any single individual or political party. It is pro-media freedom.
It will strengthen the global consensus that defends, every day and in every country, the right of journalists to do their jobs free from harassment, threats and intimidation. And it will promote, and celebrate, the highest standards of professional journalism.
The methods of those who seek to restrict media freedom are very diverse. Sometimes blatant: arrest, imprisonment, torture, murder. Quite often they are more subtle, for example through the creation of a permissive environment for verbal attacks on the media, a context where it is OK to denigrate journalists. Or through attempting to use what appears to be due process to camouflage what is in fact harassment.
We all have a responsibility to call out these acts when we see them. We all have a responsibility not to feed a pervasive and corrosive culture by just tolerating it.
Last month I was deeply ashamed to see a British TV camera crew pushed around in London’s Parliament Square as it tried to film a report about Brexit. Whatever your views on an issue roughing up journalists, or worse, is never acceptable.
There is nothing wrong with disagreement. As a former government press officer I know from experience that it is natural for there to be a tension between reporters and those they are reporting on. You could even argue that such a tension is positive, and is part of the healthy debate that characterises our democracies.
But where healthy debate gives way to threats and fear we have crossed a very dangerous line.
So over the next few hours we will have a free and open discussion about these issues. I am grateful to those who have joined us as speakers and panellists. I am grateful to all of you here in our audience.
This afternoon is a free discussion in every sense of the word. So the presentations you are about to hear have not been vetted or censored. People are representing their own points of view. You may not agree with what they say. I may not agree with what they say. But that’s media freedom in action. And that is what we are here to debate, to defend and to celebrate.
So with that let me pass you over to my joint host and dear colleague, His Excellency John Holmes the Ambassador of Canada.
Maraming Salamat.