Media

Each Friday this summer, we suggest foreign-policy-themed movies worth watching. This week: films that feature journalists.

The chief executives of some of the world’s most dominant technology companies will appear before the House Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee on July 27. Congress should press them to operate in ways that adhere to principles of neutrality and non-discrimination that have served the interests of consumers and citizens around the world.

Yesterday (U.S. time), editor Maria Ressa, one of the most prominent journalists in the Philippines, and indeed in the world—she was selected as one of Time’s people of the year in 2018 and featured on its cover—was found guilty by a Philippine court on charges of cyber libel. The charges related to a story about the former chief justice of the Philippines’ top court. Reynaldo Santos Jr., who wrote the story, also was found guilty of cyber libel. Though the two were released on bail, they face up to six years in jail on the charges. The charges are extremely controversial. The story Santos Jr. wrote actually was published before the Philippines even had a cyber-libel law, and Santos Jr. and editor Ressa were charged after Rappler, their publication, updated the article online to fix a typo after the law came in effect. The cyber-libel law is also easily used to try to silence independent journalists. And Ressa faces a load of other charges too, which seem designed to silence her and Rappler. The Guardian notes: Ressa also faces another libel prosecution, two criminal cases alleging illegal foreign ownership in her companies, and investigations into her old tax returns. The various allegations made against Ressa could lead to about 100 years in prison. After a career at CNN, Ressa, a dual citizen of the Philippines and the United States, now runs Rappler, one of the toughest, most groundbreaking, and independent reporting outlets in the Philippines, a country with a tradition of a vibrant press—and also of brutal crackdowns on journalists. Reporters Without Borders regularly ranks the Philippines as one of the most dangerous places in Asia to work as a journalist, and in 2009 the country witnessed what the Committee to Project Journalists has called the worst single massacre of journalists in history, when 34 journalists (and 58 people total) were slain in Maguindanao province. Journalists throughout the country are regularly threatened by local politicians and businesspeople, and often attacked. Even given this history, since Rodrigo Duterte’s election as president in 2016, the situation for the press has worsened. Under Duterte, the Philippine government has worked to suffocate the free press more than under any Philippine president since dictator Ferdinand Marcos. For years Duterte has been targeting Rappler, which has aggressively reported on the massive number of extrajudicial killings and other abuses in Duterte’s drug “war.” And for years he has singled out journalists for verbal abuse, and suggested that journalists could be assassinated.  But overall, this effort against the press seems to have been ramped up in recent months, as the coronavirus pandemic has allowed Duterte—like many other illiberal leaders—to amass greater powers and crack down on all sorts of opposition. The legislature, controlled by Duterte allies, has passed an anti-terror law so broad it could be used to potentially detain a vast array of people without charges, including journalists. Last month, the Duterte administration effectively shut down ABS-CBN, one of the most important broadcast networks in the country, and one that also had reported independently about the president. Now, a guilty verdict against Maria Ressa, probably the most famous journalist in the Philippines and someone with a high-profile international legal team and extensive networks of allies around the world, must surely suggest to lower-profile journalists, and anyone in civil society in the Philippines, that no one in the country is safe. Ressa’s case also illustrates the rapidly deteriorating climate for press freedom across Southeast Asia, where governments are backsliding from democracy, and cracking down on reporters in numerous ways—trends that have increased since the outbreak of COVID-19. In Myanmar, the National League for Democracy-led government has aggressively tried to curtail independent journalism, while autocratic governments like Vietnam have aggressively pursued writers and bloggers, and Cambodia’s government has destroyed most of the country’s independent press. Overall, in the past two years, Reporters Without Borders has reported declines in press freedom in many Asian states, including the Philippines, Myanmar, and Singapore. Since the COVID-19 outbreak, as The Economist reports, Indonesia and Malaysia, two of the freer countries in Southeast Asia, have been arresting people for supposedly spreading false stories about COVID-19, and the Malaysian government is investigating a reporter for the South China Morning Post for reporting on COVID-19.    Now, an emboldened Duterte, empowered by the COVID-19 emergency, is likely to take further steps to crush press freedom in the Philippines.

In recent weeks, the Trump administration has taken increasingly tough measures against Chinese state media outlets operating in the United States. The White House has forced state broadcasters like Xinhua and CGTN to reduce the number of Chinese nationals they have working in the United States, and has designated several state media outlets as operatives of the Chinese government rather than news organizations. There is no doubt that China’s biggest state media outlets, like Xinhua and CGTN, are controlled by Beijing, and also have expanded massively around the globe. The White House’s actions are reasonable. But it is also worth asking whether China’s state media expansion has actually delivered real results for Beijing. China is pouring money into state media outlets to make them appear more professional, and help them have a bigger international impact. As part of China’s expansion of its international state media in the past decade, CGTN, China Radio International, and Xinhua have opened and expanded bureaus in the United States, Africa, Europe, Latin America, and Southeast Asia. Overall, CGTN now says that it is broadcasting to 1.2 billion people globally, in Chinese as well as English and other languages. But the numbers tell us nothing about how many of those people who get the broadcast are actually watching CGTN. The figures for how many people are actually watching CGTN are much lower—far lower than the viewership figures for giants like the BBC and CNN. With a boost in funding for the newswire itself and for advertising its coverage, Xinhua meanwhile roughly doubled its number of overseas bureaus in the 2010s, hiring six thousand to ten thousand new journalists to fill those bureaus. China Radio International (CRI) is growing as well. Sarah Cook of Freedom House has found that CRI was carried on fifty-eight stations in thirty-five countries in 2018, up from thirty-three stations in fourteen countries in 2015. But this expansion has had a limited effect at best at winning over actual viewers, readers and listeners in other states, most of whom still see Chinese outlets as propaganda. Studies done by academics and by contractors for the U.S. Agency for Global Media, and obtained by me through the Freedom of Information Act, show that CRI and CGTN have a negligible audience in most places studied in Africa and Asia. In Ivory Coast, for instance, CRI has tried to reach a broader audience, but a Gallup survey of the country that I obtained shows CRI is listened to by less than 1 percent of Ivorians weekly, the second worst figure of any of the twenty-three radio networks analyzed. By contrast, the BBC reached 13.7 percent of Ivorians weekly, and VOA reached about 5 percent of Ivorians weekly. In Nigeria, both CGTN and CRI performed miserably in another Gallup study done for the U.S. Agency for Global Media. CGTN had 3.7 percent of the total audience reach of international TV networks in the country, about one-quarter the audience of the BBC; CRI was listened to by less than 1 percent of Nigerians tuning into international broadcast. Studies by Herman Wasserman of the University of Cape Town and Dani Madrid-Morales of University of Houston support this Gallup research; their studies also show that China’s state media outlets are far from approaching the reach, in Africa, of channels like the BBC and CNN. These figures are consistent with the still-low audience share of CGTN and CRI in other regions of the world where Beijing has invested in expanding the reach of its state media. A Gallup study of the weekly reach of select television stations in Vietnam found that CGTN was only watched by 0.7 percent of Vietnamese adults, far less than the BBC, CNN, TV5 Monde Asia (a niche francophone international channel broadcasting in Vietnam and other Asian states) and Arirang TV. Two-thirds of Vietnamese who watched the BBC said they trusted that outlet a great deal, but only about 7 percent of Vietnamese who watched CGTN said they trust it a great deal. In Cambodia, another such study found CRI lagged nearly every other international and local radio broadcaster in the country, in terms of weekly listeners. Meanwhile, in the United Kingdom, which has a sizable audience of people fluent in Chinese, a study of CGTN’s penetration found it was being watched by a minimal number of Britons. And throughout Latin America, CGTN’s Spanish language channel, while over the past decade significantly expanding the number of households in which it is available, has not proven widely popular. Indeed, simply because Chinese state media have poured resources into expanding in other regions does not mean Chinese media are received in these places as quality, valuable sources of information. In a survey of young African students, while some respondents remarked on the increased quality of Chinese broadcasting in Africa, or connected to Chinese media telling a different type of story, others clearly associated Chinese media with propaganda and censorship. “Chinese media are really controlled, they don’t have much freedom,” one young Kenyan student told her interviewers in the study. Similarly, another study of Chinese media in Kenya found that, despite all the investment, “the awareness and influence of the Chinese media in Kenya are [still] limited compared to the dominance of Western media.”

In its February update, the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) included numerous new words of Nigerian origin. Many of the words relate to food preparation, urban transportation, the shortening of conventional English words, and the incorporation of words from indigenous languages. For example, ‘mama put’ refers to female food vendors, ‘okadas’ are passenger-carrying motorcycles, ‘guber’ refers to gubernatorial, and ‘danfo’ is the Yoruba work for urban minibuses. Demography drives the trajectory of history. It also drives language use. Nigeria’s population is currently about 200 million and is expected to reach 450 million by mid-century. Though English is the only official language, there are some 350 indigenous languages that most Nigerians use most of the time. There are guesses that 10 percent of the population speaks English as their first language, or some 20 million Nigerians. This means that, there are more Nigerian speakers of English as a first language than there are in Ireland, New Zealand, or Scotland, and about the same number as in Australia.  Another estimate is that about half of the population knows at least some English. By that estimate, Nigeria would have more people knowing English, with 100 million, than any other country in the world except the United States and India. In the United States, 239 million speak only English at home, and most of the rest of the population of 320 million know at least some English. In India it is estimated that about 10 percent of the population speaks English, which is about 125 million people.  Celebrated Nigerian authors write or have written in English, including Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. In 2019, the American Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences disqualified Nigeria's Oscar's submission, "Lionheart," because there was too much English in it. The OED’s release notes quotes Adichie as saying, “My English-speaking is rooted in a Nigerian experience and not in a British or American or Australian one. I have taken ownership of English.” Now that Nigerian words are in the OED, we Americans may soon be using them without knowing their origin. 

In the immediate aftermath of the State Security Service’s invasion of an Abuja court room and its re-arrest of Nigerian journalist Omoyele Sowore, the Lagos daily newspaper the Punch announced that it will prefix President Muhammadu Buhari’s name with his military rank, Major General, and will refer to his administration as a “regime,” until “they purge themselves of their insufferable contempt for the rule of law.” In its announcement, Punch draws parallels between Buhari’s government and his “ham-fisted military junta in 1984/85,” when he was military chief of state. For Punch the “regime’s actions and assaults on the courts, disobedience of court orders and arbitrary detention of citizens reflect the true character of the martial culture.” The Punch announcement also attacks the military and the police because they “fail to understand that peaceful agitation and the right to associate are fundamental rights.” In addition to Sowore, Punch refers specifically to the detention of the leader of the Islamic Movement of Nigeria, Ibrahim el-Zakzaky, and his wife, and of former National Security Advisor Sambo Dasuki, all in violation of various court orders. It also refers to various governors that have sought to curtail media freedom and the right to demonstrate. Punch claims to be the largest circulation daily in Nigeria. In addition to the daily, it publishes Saturday Punch, Sunday Punch, Punch Sports Extra, and digital platforms, of which the best known is Punchng.com. During the period of military rule, Punch was known for its democratic and human rights activism. The military closed it three times and imprisoned its editor and deputy editor. It remains to be seen how the Buhari government will respond. The newspaper is based in Lagos, and it and its readership has long been critical of northern Nigerian governance. Its criticism of Buhari is not surprising, but it is worth noting that Zakzaky and Dasuki are both northern Muslims. What is different this time is the parallelism between military rule and Buhari’s civilian administration. Buhari’s supporters are likely to find the Punch stance infuriating. Nigeria’s foreign friends will be hoping that the government takes no move to limit Punch’s freedom of expression. The SSS assault on a court room and the re-arrest of Sowore has already damaged the country’s international reputation. 

On December 6, the Department of State Security (DSS) stormed into an Abuja courtroom and illegally detained journalist Omoyele Sowore. The episode is deeply disappointing to American friends of Nigeria who are invested in that country’s democratic trajectory. The DSS flagrantly violated the rule of law and the sanctity of a courtroom by violently manhandling Sowore and causing the judge to flee her own chambers. The episode unfurled in full view of national and international media, dragging Nigeria’s international reputation through the mud. Sowore is a Nigerian citizen, but his wife and children are American citizens. He lives in New Jersey, where he publishes the well-regarded online newspaper “Sahara Reporters.” New Jersey’s two senators have issued blistering statements on his arrest. Senator Bob Menendez characterized Sowore’s seizure as a “blatant miscarriage of Justice…symptomatic of closing political and media space in Nigeria.” He promised to work with the American ambassador in Nigeria to secure Sowore’s release. Sen. Corey Booker, a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, called on Nigeria to “cease its attacks on freedom of expression.” The U.S. State Department tweeted “respect for the rule of law, judicial independence, political and media freedom, and due process are key tenets of #democracy.” Others denouncing the episode have included Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka and Amnesty International.  On Monday in Nigeria, a coalition of civil society organizations issued an ultimatum, promising mass protests if their demands are not met in fourteen days. Among other things, they are asking the government release detained journalists, obey court orders, and stop restricting free speech. The Punch, a daily Nigerian newspaper, published a scathing article detailing the Buhari administrations past abuses against other journalists and public figures. The newspaper promised that, henceforth, in all of its publications, it will refer to Buhari by his military rank, major general, and to his administration as a regime.  Sowore has long been a democratic activist and a thorn in the side of Nigerian governments, and Sahara Reporters regularly reports on the corruption of Nigerian political figures. In 2019, Sowore ran unsuccessfully for the presidency. In the aftermath of those flawed elections, he organized a protest dubbed “Revolution Now,” and called for “Days of Rage.” This seems to be the nominal basis for his arrest, with the government in response accusing him of treason and seeking to overthrow the government, among other fanciful charges.  The Nigerian government’s response thus far has been lame: Garba Shehu, media spokesman for President Muhammadu Buhari, excused DSS by saying that Sowore is a “person of interest” and DSS accordingly acted properly. In fact, this latest episode is the culmination of months of extra-legal government steps against Sowore. The DSS has refused to release him on bail twice, contrary to court orders. Further, there have been numerous attacks on journalists, and there is a bill in the National Assembly that would make “hate speech” a capital offense. In January, for example, security services stormed multiple offices of an influential newspaper after it had reported on military setbacks in the fight against Boko Haram. President Buhari moved quickly to end the occupation, suggesting he had lost control. It is unclear whether Sowore is being held for his political activity, his journalism, or both. In any event, the episode is a public relations disaster for the Buhari administration. Either the administration is, indeed, moving to restrict freedom of the press in Nigeria or the DSS is operating outside the president’s authority. Either is bad for Nigeria. 

The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences has disqualified from competition in the International Feature Film category the Nigerian film “Lionheart” because most of the dialogue is in English. English is the only official language of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. So, “Lionheart” is incontestably a foreign made film in Nigeria’s only official language. What gives? Earlier in 2019, the Academy changed the name of the “Foreign Language Film” category to “International Feature Film” category. But the requirements were kept, including one that requires a submission's dialogue to be predominantly not English. A statement from the Academy said as much in response to criticism for disqualifying “Lionheart,” restating its policy. “The intent of the award remains the same—to recognize accomplishment in films created outside of the United States in languages other than English.” It appears that the Academy is following the letter of the law with respect to their submission requirements. Nigeria’s Oscar selection committee said it will ensure that they are followed by Nigerian filmmakers vying for an Oscar submission, and said it will submit another Nigerian film that meets the requirements. But the requirements deserve attention. As many commentators on social media have made clear, English is Nigeria’s official language, the result of British colonialism. At independence, English was selected to be the official language because it did not belong to any of the country’s hundreds of ethnic groups—most with their own language—and could, therefore, belong to all of them. Dozens of countries other than the United States have as an official language English, and many, like Nigeria, are former colonies.  It looks like the Academy has a communications problem with respect to the change of labels. It has certainly upset many Nigerians, who are proud of their booming film industry. The inability of “Lionheart” to compete is especially galling to Nigerians; it features one of Nollywood’s biggest stars, Genevieve Nnaji. At the very least, the Academy appears to have been insensitive on this issue. 

Ademola Bello is a Nigerian journalist and playwright. He received his master’s from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. On September 24, President Muhammadu Buhari of Nigeria delivered a speech at the United Nations General Assembly in New York. In it, he assured the world that his government believes in freedom, tolerance and the rule of law. He said, “The rule of law remains the permanent, the unchanging foundation of the world order.”  But on the same day that President Buhari spoke, his government ignored a court ruling ordering the release on bail of Mr. Omoyele Sowore, the founder of Sahara Reporters, a New York-based online news website that has reportedly extensively on government corruption in Nigeria. In fact, several Nigerian journalists and activists are unlawfully held in detention by the Nigerian government for reporting on widespread corruption and human rights violations.  Justice Taiwo Taiwo, who initially ruled that Nigeria’s Department of State Services (DSS) could detain Mr. Sowore for forty-five days, granted him bail on the condition that he surrender his passport. Mr. Sowore did so on September 25, but DSS did not release him, arguing that, among other things, he was not entitled to bail.  On October 4, a second judge, Ijeoma Ojukwu, presented new bail conditions that were much more stringent, including a demand to find two private landowners in Abuja who controlled land worth roughly $500,000 and who would stand for him as guarantors to meet his bail conditions. The judge also banned him from speaking with the press, not to participate in any rally, and not to leave Nigeria’s capital, Abuja. He has not yet met these new conditions.  Sowore was detained on August 3 by the DSS. He had called for a peaceful protest, tagged “Revolution Now,” to demand, among other things, that the Nigerian government end wholesale corruption, fight poverty, and provide universal education. He was charged with treasonable felony and insulting and harassing the Nigerian president based on comments made in a press interview. Usually based in New York, his trip to Nigeria was his first since revealing Nigeria’s Central Bank lost 500 billion naira (about $1.4 billion) in a failed private investment scheme. Sahara Reporters obtained and published audio recordings made by a whistleblower at the Central Bank of Nigeria. The recordings included Godwin Emefiele, the bank's governor, and other officials discussing how to cover up the loss.   The detention of Sowore comes as press freedoms and free speech continue to be curtailed by President Buhari. The nonprofit Committee to Protect Journalists has documented widespread harassment of journalists in the country, including unlawful detention and assaults.  Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights guarantees "freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.” It is time for the UN and UNESCO to speak up about the Nigerian government’s unlawful imprisonment of journalists and activists like Omoyele Sowore. 

A work by the late Nigerian artist Ben Enwonwu fetched $1.4 million at a Sotheby’s auction in London on October 15. The painting, “Christine,” is a 1971 portrait of the Caribbean-origin American wife of a missionary. After her death, the portrait hung on the wall at her family’s home. Unaware of the origin of the piece, a stepson eventually reached out to Sotheby’s to see if it had any value.  The piece was originally estimated to fetch up to $150,000 (though this and other figures are purposely underestimates). This is not the first time that the Nigerian artist’s work has sold for over a million dollars. In March 2018, “Tutu,” a portrait by Enwonwu of Nigerian princess Adetutu Ademiluyi, fetched $1.7 million at a sale of African contemporary art at Bonham’s in London. Adetutu is a royal of Ife, an ancient Yoruba city, and reportedly lives in Lagos. “Christine” is something a forerunner of “Tutu.” The latter became an icon of national reconciliation in the aftermath of the 1967–70 civil war, in which between one and two million Nigerians died. According to Enwonwu’s son, Oliver, Tutu “epitomized” black emancipation and the Negritude movement. To him, Christine symbolized a certain “national consciousness,” it “brings our peoples together,” and “promotes all things black and all things beautiful.” Ben Enwonwu was a celebrated African sculptor and artist during his career. He got his start working for the British officer in charge of art education in colonial Nigeria. Years later, Queen Elizabeth sat multiple times for him as he crafted a bronze statue of her. He would go on to attend the prestigious Slade School of Fine Art in London and the Ruskin School at Oxford University, and his black consciousness was heavily influence by the racism he encountered while in the United Kingdom.  The high prices that Enwonwu’s work commands reflects the growing interest in and market for African art. The Lagos fashion scene and the bevy of talented Nigerian authors reaches international audiences, while this summer, Netflix acquired the rights to at least three Nigerian films, which join a growing number already available on the U.S.-based streaming service.  

Adjunct Senior Fellow Catherine Powell presided over a CFR roundtable, “Bringing a Gender Lens to Immigration: Domestic Violence–Based Asylum and Family Separation” with Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Immigrants’ Rights Project, and Sandra Park, senior staff attorney with the ACLU’s Women’s Rights Project.