freedom

Courage of journalists

Journalists in Canada do not face the sorts of threats – sometimes life-endangering ones – that colleagues in many other countries do. But other factors impinge on the right of Canadians to diverse and thorough reporting of contentious issues, says an academic on the subject.

Robert Hackett, professor emeritus of communication at Simon Fraser University, spoke on the civil courage of journalists as part of the annual Raoul Wallenberg Day in Vancouver. The virtual commemoration, sponsored by the Wallenberg-Sugihara Civil Courage Society Jan. 17, featured a number of recorded events, including the screening of two films.

In recent decades, there has been a return to “partisan media,” said Hackett.

“Media, going back a couple of hundred years, were initially partisan media, reflecting the viewpoint of particular factions or parties,” he said. “We see that returning with a vengeance since the 1980s, with Fox News and so on.”

The internet has lowered attention spans and the “growing entertainment orientation” of the news media has changed the way reporting is done. Contradictory forces have upset the journalism sector in recent decades, he said. On the one hand, concentration and monopoly have placed control of “legacy media” – daily news, for instance – in fewer and fewer hands, reflecting a narrowing of perspectives. On the other hand, digital media and journalism startups have led to a fragmentation of public attention.

As the revenue structures of journalism have become strained due to competition for advertising avenues, resources for newsroom staff have declined, with commensurate impacts on the quality of reporting. Journalists who are expected to pump out several stories a day are unable to do the sort of investigative work common a generation or two ago and so rely on media releases. General reporters have replaced beat reporters with deep contacts and extensive background knowledge in an area of expertise. These structural changes have been accompanied by growing cultural skepticism toward expertise and even the definition of truth, said Hackett.

“It’s a different cognitive world,” he said. “We no longer seem to even have a shared reality.”

Some of Hackett’s recent research, in conjunction with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, has focused on fossil fuel industries and their influence on Canada’s press. He sees Canada’s largest print media company, Postmedia, as a booster of fossil fuels.

While Canadian journalists are fortunate not to face some of the life-threatening risks of reporters in many other places, there remain serious challenges to the ideal of a free media.

“There is still a certain degree of legal harassment and risk, especially for freelancers who don’t have a big organization behind them,” said Hackett. “The cost of a lawsuit for defamation, even if it’s a spurious lawsuit, is prohibitive. It’s intimidating. I know for a fact that freelancers have said they aren’t proceeding with stories because of fears of being sued.”

In addition, he added: “We don’t have effective shield or whistleblower laws, by and large, that would allow journalists to protect their sources.”

The online event, marking the 16th annual commemoration of Raoul Wallenberg Day in Vancouver, also featured two documentaries.

A Dark Place was produced by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s Representative on Freedom of the Media. It follows female journalists around the world and the threats they receive online in reaction to their reporting on contentious stories. Threats of rape and murder, as well as other forms of intimidation, are almost ubiquitous. One study said that 60% of female journalists have experienced some form of online harassment or threats, according to the film. A panel discussion featured the film’s director, Javier Luque, and Arzu Geybulla, an Azerbaijani journalist who endured harrowing harassment and accusations of being a “traitor” for coverage of conflicts in the Caucasus.

The other documentary, Mohamed Fahmy: Half Free, by filmmaker David Paperny, follows Egyptian-Canadian journalist Mohamed Fahmy, who was jailed in Egypt for his reporting on the Arab Spring uprising in Cairo. Fahmy’s experience is one of many that journalists face daily in conflict zones and under repressive regimes, risking their freedom and their lives to report on events. Fahmy spent 438 days in an Egyptian prison before being pardoned by the country’s president, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. Fahmy is now an adjunct professor at the University of British Columbia.

Alan Le Fevre, a director of the Wallenberg-Sugihara Civil Courage Society, welcomed participants to the annual event, which highlights the Second World War heroism of Raoul Wallenberg and Chiune Sugihara.

Wallenberg, a Swedish diplomat in Hungary, issued “protective passports” that identified bearers as Swedish subjects awaiting repatriation, thereby preventing their deportation from Hungary to death camps in Poland. Wallenberg disappeared in 1945 after the Soviets invaded Hungary. In 1957, the Soviet Union released a statement dated 1947, saying that Wallenberg had died of natural causes that year. Reports that Wallenberg was seen alive after 1947 have added to confusion and controversy around his fate.

Sugihara was vice-consul of the Imperial Japanese legation in Lithuania. At risk to his career and his life, Sugihara issued thousands of transit visas permitting Jews to travel through the Soviet Union to Japan and across the Pacific. Ostensibly, because a destination was required for a transit visa, the holders were destined for Curaçao. Many of those who escaped ended up on the West Coast of North America and there are several Vancouver families who owe their lives to “Sugihara visas.”

B.C. election reflection

It will take about two weeks to verify and count the mail-in ballots from Saturday’s B.C. provincial election. The province saw a 7,200% increase in voting by mail this year, a result of the pandemic and educational efforts to make people aware of what was perhaps the safest option for casting a ballot.

There is no doubt about the overall outcome. The New Democratic Party, under returning Premier John Horgan, won a majority government handily. The NDP increased its vote share in every part of the province and the opposition Liberals, under Andrew Wilkinson, who resigned in the aftermath, had its worst showing in almost three decades. The mail-in ballots will determine the outcome in a small number of close races, but it will not alter the big picture.

Some are complaining that two weeks is a long time for the elections branch to complete the process. However, we do not know the level of complexity involved in validating and counting the vast number of mailed votes. But it seems reasonable to take time to ensure such important work is done properly, rather than quickly.

What we should not lose sight of, regardless of what party we supported, is the small miracle of the election itself. Many or most of our ancestors came from places where free and fair elections followed by a peaceful and orderly transition of power were unfulfilled dreams. Startlingly, in what had been viewed globally as the bedrock model of democracy itself – the United States – we are bracing for one of the most uncertain moments in political history next Tuesday. Polls show that the incumbent president is headed for defeat. But polls were deeply wrong about this candidate four years ago. More importantly, there are concerns about his willingness to leave office if defeated – and even about potential intimidation of voters at the polls and violence in the aftermath of the election.

As Canadians, we should feel fortunate and grateful. As earthlings, we should wish and work for a world where all people are as free as we are to choose those who govern us and to do so with confidence, knowing that we will be physically safe and our elected officials will respect our choices.

Religion and the state

A week is a lifetime in politics, goes an adage. And so it would seem. Just one week ago, we posited that Binyamin Netanyahu’s coalition of the right was likely to form the next government in Israel. Since then, Benny Gantz, head of Israel’s Blue and White party, has been reinvigorated by Netanyahu’s challenges in pulling together a coalition, after original exit polls had the Likud-led coalition at 60 seats out of the 120 in the Knesset. This number has dropped through the actual vote count to 58, and it has changed the outlook.

As it has in the previous two elections, the result will hinge on the decision of Avigdor Liberman and his Yisrael Beitenu party, a right-wing but defiantly secular movement. Liberman has publicly released his demands for support. Among them: he will not support a government led by Netanyahu (or any other individual under indictment) and he wants to increase the number of ultra-Orthodox serving in the military, introduce civil marriage, thereby taking control of this lifecycle event from the exclusive purview of the rabbinate, and hand decision-making about commerce and transportation on Shabbat to local governments. Meanwhile, Gantz is having a rebellion in his own ranks about seeking support from the largely Arab Joint List in parliament. So, the process is largely back to where it’s been for more than a year, with no more certainty of who will form the next government.

Whatever happens, Liberman’s sweeping secularist proposals are nothing to ignore. The ally-turned-nemesis of Netanyahu, Liberman seems to have learned from the masters how to leverage minimal electoral success to enormous political advantage. In the past, it has been the religious parties that conditioned their support for desperate-to-make-a-deal leaders on getting key benefits and concessions for their respective communities. If Liberman succeeds in helping create a Blue and White government that implements some of his plans, it will represent the same tail-wagging-dog effect that religious parties used to assert Orthodox standards across much of Israeli society. Except Liberman will leverage his seven seats to repeal some or much of what those religious parties have achieved.

This Israeli moment brings to mind other rapidly changing political fortunes. Joe Biden, whose campaign was struggling to survive a few weeks ago, is suddenly (again) the undisputed front- runner for the Democratic nomination in the United States. There is another parallel between Israel and the United States that is currently evolving, this one less publicly known. While Liberman strives to diminish the connection between religion and state in his country, U.S. President Donald Trump is moving his country more in the direction of Israel’s religiously influenced society.

As in Canada, many religious organizations in the United States do an enormous amount of good, in many cases filling in gaps where government services can’t or won’t. Republican administrations have tended to expand – contract out, if you will – some social services previously delivered by governments, while the Obama administration, for example, introduced safeguards to prevent those agencies from discriminating against individuals or groups who they might deem outside their theological teachings.

Writing in the New York Times Sunday, Katherine Stewart, author of a book on religious nationalism, warned that Trump is eliminating those Obama-era safeguards and making it easier for publicly funded agencies to discriminate. For example, clients receiving services from a taxpayer-supported Christian organization could be forced to profess allegiance to Jesus in order to access services or an employee could be fired for not living a “biblical lifestyle,” the definition of which the religious organization, presumably, could define at their own whim.

A test case in Missouri seems innocent enough: a church maintains it should get federal funding to build a kids’ playground; that being refused such money represents discrimination against religion. The corollary is clear: if preventing tax money from funding religious organizations (even for something as innocuous as a playground) is discrimination, Stewart warns, “then the taxpayer has no choice but to fund religion.” This would represent an abrogation of one of the most fundamental cornerstones of the U.S. Constitution: the First Amendment, which declares, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof….” The framers of the Constitution were concerned not only that eliminating the barrier between government and religion would corrupt a government intended to serve all citizens but, perhaps equally, that it would corrupt religious institutions themselves. A number of the people on the test case’s side are also leaders among Trump’s evangelical constituency.

What was especially jarring when perusing the Sunday Times was a far more prominent story – on page A4, to be specific – about how Quebec’s secularism law is having a detrimental effect on civil servants, mostly women, from cultural minorities. The law, which precludes people who work in most roles in the public service from showing any external indications of religiosity – a kippa, a headscarf, a crucifix, a turban – is preventing individuals from beginning or advancing in their careers and, in some cases, effectively chasing them out of the province.

These disparate examples from three very different societies indicate the folly both of excessive religious interference in governmental affairs and heavy-handed efforts to have the opposite effect. Somewhere in the middle must be a commonsensical approach to these extremities. Of the three countries in the examples, Israel is perhaps the one where the challenges are most concrete and affect the most people. What, if anything, happens as result of Liberman’s gambit will be a fascinating experiment to watch.

What is freedom?

“Israel in Egypt” by Edward Poynter, 1867. (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

There is a certain inherent ambivalence when we think of the meaning of freedom and its association with the holiday of Pesach. One of the essential features of the liberation story is our freedom from human subjugation: “Yesterday we were slaves to Pharaoh, today we are free men and women.”

This freedom, however, did not come about as a result of a revolution instigated by the Jewish people but, rather, as the biblical story relates, through the redemptive hand of God. As a result, this physical redemption is often connected with a religious duty: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery; you shall have no other gods besides me.” (Exodus 20: 2-3)

What is the nature of this connection? Is it an obligation or an opportunity? Is our commitment to God and the Torah a price we pay for the Exodus, or is it a gift – a gift made possible by our physical freedom, but one that we may choose whether or not to receive? The question we as Jews ought to reflect on this Pesach is whether the freedom from Egypt is limited to liberation from physical servitude, or does it include freedom of conscience and faith.

Historically, Jews did not engage extensively in questions of personal autonomy; at most, they spoke about what Isaiah Berlin referred to as “positive liberty” (Berlin, Two Concepts of Liberty). As opposed to the simple, more intuitive concept of negative liberty – “the freedom from” constraints or compulsion, positive liberty is “the freedom to” – the freedom to be all one ought to be, to do that which is the fullest expression of one’s potential. The notion of positive liberty is clearly present in the rabbinic tradition, in such statements as, “There is no free person but he or she who studies Torah.” (Avot 6:2) Freedom, for Jews, has traditionally meant “the freedom to” – the ability to achieve complete self-realization, through a firm, unwavering commitment to God and His word.

Standing alone, however, positive liberty is an extremely precarious concept. We need look no further than the 20th century, when different fascist leaders established their rule on a promise of positive liberty (the freedom to live in a stable society, the freedom to attain financial prosperity, the freedom to fulfil one’s destiny as a member of the master race), to appreciate the danger it harbours: the creation of oppressive, totalitarian regimes, violently trampling the rights of their citizens in the name of freedom. Without the underlying basis of negative liberty, positive liberty means nothing more than the freedom to do that which others determine you ought, to fulfil what others have decided to be your potential.

This question becomes all the more pointed in the context of the state of Israel. So long as Jews lived in Western liberal democracies, they vicariously inherited the value of negative liberty and functioned within its confines. But an essential question facing the modern state of Israel, the only Jewish democracy, is what concept of liberty does it officially espouse? Is Israel a “free state” that dictates the forms of Judaism that are most appropriate? Or does it guarantee its citizens the right and conditions to determine their own individual Jewish path?

If Pesach is going to be not simply a liberation story of our past but a modern, continuous liberation story “in every generation,” we must recognize that positive liberty is an incomplete liberty, that the freedom from Egypt – indeed, our very existence as a free people in our own country – must be accompanied by a commitment to religious freedom and the diversity it will engender.

The spirit of Pesach requires a national pledge to free Israeli society of all and any vestiges of religious coercion, including the manipulation of public funds in order to constrain spiritual choices. In the spirit of Pesach, we must commit ourselves to speaking only in the language of education, and never in the language of indoctrination and coercion.

One of the great paradoxes of Israeli society is that those who function in the name of positive liberty actively limit the actualization of the spiritual potential of Jews. Consequently, the state of Israel is one of the only places in which non-Orthodox Jews can barely receive a Jewish education. Religious coercion and legislation hasn’t furthered our marriage with God; rather, it has created an ever-increasing rift and divorce.

The freedom of Pesach has multiple dimensions. It is our responsibility to ensure it is understood and employed as a catalyst for progress, as a basis for assimilating the broadest notions of negative liberty within our religious language and values. Just as we reject being enslaved by Pharaoh, so, too, must we reject the subjugation of our minds and souls to any authority. In the end, if God is to be the God of the Jewish people, if Judaism and its values are to shape our lives, it will not be because we owe God for our redemption from Egypt, but because we choose a life with God as free men and women.

Rabbi Dr. Donniel Hartman is president of the Shalom Hartman Institute and author of the 2016 book Putting God Second: How to Save Religion from Itself. Articles by Hartman and other institute scholars can be found at shalomhartman.org.