BBC journalism is ‘terrorism’, British government says

This BBC video says about itself:

The refugees heading to Sweden – Newsnight

18 September 2015

Sweden has the highest number of refugees per capita of any European country. Secunder Kermani followed one group of refugees – and the activists helping them – as they traveled from Germany to Sweden.

From daily The Independent in Britain:

Police use terror powers to seize BBC Newsnight journalist’s laptop

Exclusive: Secunder Kermani joined the show early last year and has produced a series of reports on British-born jihadis

Ian Burrell

29 October 2015

Police have used powers under the Terrorism Act to seize the laptop of a young Newsnight journalist in a case that has shocked BBC colleagues and alarmed freedom of speech campaigners, The Independent can disclose.

Officers obtained an order from a judge that was served on the BBC and Secunder Kermani, who joined the flagship BBC2 news show early last year and has produced a series of reports on British-born jihadis.

The development has caused alarm among BBC journalists. The editor of Newsnight, Ian Katz said: “While we would not seek to obstruct any police investigation we are concerned that the use of the Terrorism Act to obtain communication between journalists and sources will make it very difficult for reporters to cover this issue of critical public interest.”

A BBC spokesman said: “Police obtained an order under the Terrorism Act requiring the BBC to hand over communication between a Newsnight journalist and a man in Syria who had publicly identified himself as an IS member. The man had featured in Newsnight reports and was not a confidential source”.

Kermani has built a reputation for making contact with Western-born Isis fighters and interviewing them online about their motivations.

The seizure of his material has alarmed press freedom organisations. Jo Glanville, director [of] campaign group English PEN, said the current “hysteria” around terrorism was greater than in the aftermath of the 9-11 and 7-7 attacks. “If journalists go near something to do with terrorism the police can use the Terrorism Act [2000] to go after their sources.”

The media lawyer Gavin Millar, QC, warned at a conference last month of the “looming problem” of police exploiting the wide-ranging terror legislation to go after journalistic sources at various news organisations. “There’s a chilling effect – I know material has not been published or broadcast because of anxiety to protect sources,” he has said. “We are talking notes, emails, video footage, audio [being seized]. I don’t think we are hearing the accounts of why young people are going [to Syria]. The debate has not been advanced by informed coverage because the media is in fear of the Terrorism Act.”

There are also concerns that police may attempt to use the legislation to go after sources of academic research into Islamic extremism. Kings College London’s International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation has built a huge data base of Western jihadists.

…

Next month at the Court of Appeal, David Miranda, the partner of former Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald, will challenge a ruling that he was lawfully detained at Heathrow airport under the Terrorism Act in 2013, resulting in the seizure of 58,000 highly-classified documents he was carrying for the journalist in encrypted files.

One BBC source said: “It think it makes it very difficult to do proper reporting in this territory when the cops can come in and get orders for material as easily as they can. The police have the authority to seize anything that they think will be of use to them in a terror investigation and that’s quite a wide net.”

Source material: The price of protection

Daily Mail reporter Brendan Mulholland and Reg Foster of the Daily Sketch were jailed for contempt of court – for six months and three months respectively – in 1963, after refusing to disclose their sources in reporting the Vassall spy tribunal.

Sarah Tisdall, a Foreign Office clerk, was jailed in 1983 after anonymously sending The Guardian details of US cruise missile nuclear weapons arriving in Britain.

The newspaper was ordered by the Attorney General to hand over the documents, which were identified as coming from a Foreign Office photocopier, and Ms Tisdall was charged under the Official Secrets Act.

Former Independent journalist Jeremy Warner was fined £20,000 in 1988 after refusing to reveal his sources to Department of Trade and Industry inspectors investigating insider dealing in the City.