>> interested in american history? watch american history television on c-span3 every weekend, 48 hours of people and events that helped document the american story. >> joel simon come executive director of the committee to protect journalists, and author of "the new censorship" talks with a target a journalist by

governments around the world including the u.s. government. during this event mr. simon is in conversation with kathleen carroll, executive editor of "the associated press." >> good evening, everyone. thanks for being here tonight. i'm thinking of academic affairs at the columbia journalism school. we are very pleased to have the kathleen carroll and joel simon any conversation on "the new censorship." journalism is an increasingly dangerous profession. no one knows this more than our guests tonight. joel simon is director of the committee to protect journalists, nor physician founded in 1981 my group of u.s. correspondence who realized they couldn't ignore the dangers

their colleagues around the world were facing. cpj's work defends the right of journals to report the news without fear of reprisal. were ever in the world in the wd journalist arafat, imprisoned, killed, kidnapped, threatened, censored or harassed, cpj takes action. when the journalists can speak for themselves, cpj speaks up on their behalf. i know this because you for coming to new york i was a journalist. cbg was the group we would run to whenever we were in trouble. cpj has played a key role in raising awareness about killings of journalist in my country and elsewhere around the world. joel is uniquely positioned to talk about how the landscape of threat has changed in the past few years. his new book, copies are available on the table in the back of the room, called "the new censorship" published by

"columbia journalism review" with the columbia university press. it documents the changes that have taken place in the global media landscape. it's must reading for those of you who want to work as journalists overseas or for those of you want to learn more about how, despite technological changes in the informational revolution, journalism is getting even more dangerous profession. the school is proud to be hosting this event tonight. our school has a long tradition of press freedom work. many of us teach and do research and press freedom worldwide. several of our faculty, including myself, and victor who just walked in, sit on cpj's board of trustees. more importantly, 40% of our students come from overseas. many of them from the places that joel talks about in this book. jolt will be joined tonight by kathleen carroll who's also a member of the cpj board as

executive editor and senior vice president of "the associated press." kathleen is a top news executive of the world's largest independent news agency. she oversees some 2300 journalists working in more than 100 countries. so she has a very keen awareness of the problems we will be talking about tonight. please join me in welcoming joel simon and kathleen carroll. [applause] >> thank you, sheila. jolt and wanted to start out by talking about about this tide list new book? >> i'd love to come kathleen. thank you so much and thank you, sheila. thank you to the journalism school for hosting this discussion. so "the new censorship" explores fundamental contradictions of our modern global existence. y. in an age defined by information of the people who

bring us the news dying in record numbers? y. at a time when technology was supposed to make censorship impossible is it actually on the rise? let's start off with some raw numbers. according to cpj data, these last two years have been the most deadly and dangerous for journalists in history. a record number of journalists have been killed, a record number or imprison. freedom of expression is on the wane according to data compiled the independent advocacy groups. what i credited his address these issues not in abstract theoretical terms but based on my own experience as executive director of the committee to protect journalists. so the book opens with the cpj mission that we undertook to pakistan. this mission happened to coincide with the may 2, 2011, raid that killed osama bin

laden. been on the scene in pakistan gave me a renewed appreciation for the unique role that local journalists play in forming their own societies but also as global public and particularly in times of crisis. and that also clarified for me personally the imperative that i go to support local journalists on the frontline in news. so i began my own career as a journalist covering mexico and central america. and i'm actually old enough to recall writing my very first story on a manual typewriter, and by dictation. i made my living as a freelancer often telling the exact same story to multiple publications. this is a kind of journalism like so many others that has been completely disrupted by the internet. in the first chapter i described the transition as i've seen it when i was in mexico, there were a few dozen international

reporters and we sort of served as information gatekeepers interpreting mexico for the world. we did a decent job, but most of us were working on more or less the same story for different markets and audiences. just a sort of fast forward, by the time the 2003 iraq war rolled around, this kind of reporting was obsolete since news consumers, people who were following developments, could easily curate their own is by using search. if you want to fast forward again to the 2010 arab uprisings, active duration has been released by social media which not only democratized newsgathering come in some ways it made more efficient and more participatory. journalism has not been transformed by these technologies. frankly, it's been upended. there's obviously a tremendous

excitement about what's happening in many ways, particularly in a place like colombia with our tremendous challenges as well as want to focus on some of those because in some ways the abundance of information that's available online skewers a tremendous gaps in our knowledge about global events because information is suppressed by violence and censorship. one of the leading obstacles to the free flow of information is the rise of what i call a democracy. and these are elected autocrats empowered by pipers support and their success at the polls use their power to dismantle these institutions that can strengthen, particularly the media. so in the book i look at a couple of case studies. i look at present order one in turkey, the late hugo chavez and putin in russia. these are all leaders to use these strategies to mask the repressive policies towards the

beauty and a few things like you tax audits and anti-terror prosecutions integration of parallel media structures financed and supported by the state. these strategies are effective because the leaders are able to position the action is consistent with international norms. this mib is the very essence of the new censorship. journalists also faced a variety of threats from nonstate actors including criminal and terror groups. and, in fact, if you look at the terror dynamics as it is played out in iraq, this meant journalists felt threatened by both militant groups decide to kidnap and kill them, and the u.s. military who's overly aggressive tactics led to the deaths of 16 journalists during the conflict and the unjustified attention to the detention of many reports over long periods

in deplorable conditions. i address in the book specific actions that the media and journalists can take in response to the kidnapping epidemic and perhaps we can discuss that during the question and answer period. i also look at the threat to the internet itself to the the internet is a shared global resource and the primary platform for independent journalism, particularly across borders. the really is that the structures that underpin the internet and allow it to function as it does today are threatened by autocratic governments, notably china, which seeks to build not only a system of domestic control but to reform internet government so that the internet itself better served state interest. so in order to combat these emerging threats to media freedom argue for specific concrete action. that means confronting the deplorable record of into the in the killing of journalists,

which today is around 90%. i profiled to murder journalis journalists, one in russia and one in the philippines were both victims of state violence and explain the international advocacy in both of the cases lead to partial justice. and i highlight the promise and the limitations of such a strategy. the underlying reality is that technological transformation that has empowered average people both as news consumers and as citizen journalists has weakened the institutions that supported and sustained journalism, and this has real consequence. the power of the media and the power of individual journalists over the last half-century has been derived in large measure from their position as information gatekeepers, and this position has been eviscerated. in other words, the power dynamic between journalists and those that govern has been permanently changed.

sort order to ensure media freedom in the future, we need to build a grand coalition of all those who benefit from the free flow of information. it can't just be journalists and media organizations. it was also include international civil societies, businesses and even governmental institutions. the fight must also be broad. not just for media freedom but global freedom of expression which empowers all people and is the enabling divided for independent journalism. we need to expose the democratization so they can claim democratic legitimacy. we need to rally to support an open and free internet and we need to limit government surveillance. we need to combat censorship in state violence and we need to support the government of ethical and quality journalism at the global level. this is a tall order and i'm not suggesting that any of it will be easy. the point of the book really is that we're living through a period of crisis in which both

individuals and the system that deliver news and information to a global audience are threatened as never before. we need to recognize and understand the challenge and also what is at stake, and we need to take concerted action to ensure the promise of the information age in which all people everywhere are empowered by their ability to access essential information, can one day be fully and finally realized. >> joel, has taken a very briskly through the entire book. let's do a little bit on some of these issues. you start up telling some pretty personal stories, and i think many people who are involved in the work of protecting the journalists have a story that's very meaningful to them, someone they knew or some connection. and yet the solutions that you describe can't be built one personal heartbreak at a time. so how do we get people in a

time when people's attention spans are notoriously short, regular, bring back our girls? have we forgotten that likes how do we motivate people to care about this to the degree of with the level of activism that would be required to begin to accomplish some of the things that will make a change? >> i think you have to think broadly about the environment in which journalists operate. and i think if this is perceived as simply an issue that affects professional journalists, we have media organizations. we have professional journalists. we have a whole press freedom community but i still think you kind of reach a point at which you need to broaden the coalition. and i think the way to do that is to frame it as a broader struggle for freedom of expression. and to create this environment

in which independent journalism can function at a global level. i think that we actually have an advantage because we live in a world in which people participate in the process of gathering, accessing information, and often of gathering information and disseminating it. so the journalism which was once a professional activity is now something that is accessible and meaningful to so many people around the world because they participated themselves in this process, and they feel very strongly and personally about their ability to access information. and they feel personally violated by censorship. so that's the kind of perspective with which we have to approach this. >> interested to tease that out just a little bit more. i think what you said about people's feelings of a personal connection and if they see it as a right that they have that has

been taken away, they do feel strong about it but we both know there plenty of countries in the world and hundreds of millions of people who don't have that, who live in a world where there's some kind of censorship. institutional, government or otherwise, and as long as many ththertheir life they don't seeo miss it quite so much. how are you persuasive in those circumstances? >> i think that honestly it's for difficult. i mean, i think that's the kind of bargain that's difficult to overcome and that's what makes the to marketers -- democracy are so effective. as long as things are going well, as long as incomes are rising and there's a certain amount of stability and personal liberties are respected and there's a certain amount of personal freedom, then it's a hard to get people riled up. these things come to the floor when there's a crisis.

the governments themselves realize that because during a crisis, during periods in which there's volatility, that's when the ability to act as information, take into the information really matters to people. if you use turkey as an example, turkey was sort cruising along significant economic growth, stability, erdogan deliver this to the turkish people but it was sort of encroachment on liberties as well. this sort of exploded in these protests that took place a little more a year ago which sort of spontaneously develop over what appeared to be a minor issue. the development of this part in central istanbul. people were fighting for information. they wanted to understand what was happening and the government was fighting as well. you can see these dynamics led all sorts of situations come in

brazil where there was street protests and events at the world cup. in ukraine were obviously we have just ahmadiyya, a revolution. so i think that that is the dynamic and governments understand this. and as long as they can deliver increases economic growth and increases for the standard of living and a certain amount of economic stability, and, frankly, they feel this pressure. >> talk about some of the countries where you have, that are not in crisis right now but if you have seen some change from some improvement. may not be perfect yet but it is definitely an improvement. >> well, i mean, i think the improvements you see into being, unless you're dealing with a violent period that subsides dramatically, but most of the time these improvements are incremental. i like to cite columbia as an example. when i started at cpj, which was

well over a decade ago, colombia was the focus. iran the latin america program and colombia was a country that was living through a period of tremendous violence, a civil war that had sort of morphed with a major drug crisis, and the levels of violence were absolutely extraordinary. much of the violence affected a journalist. we saw a large number of journalists killed. we saw a state whose institutions were essentially unable to function. what's happened in colombia is as the levels of violence had subsided, the issues of press freedom, freedom of expression and impunity had sort of come to the fore and we've seen some significant stones -- steps in terms of reducing levels of violence against journalists better in terms of creating a more open environment for

reporting outside of the capital, without. so colombia is a place we can point to some positive trends. >> then let's take the anti-half of the class. you have a pretty good description of how hugo chavez transform the media in venezuela and how his example has been replicated in many places on the continent. could you talk more about that? could you explain that speak? again, he is one of my leading examples of this trend five -- democratator approach to tame the media. what's really amazing about chavez is, obviously what, by the time he died of cancer, he was perceived as somebody who's in a knockout drag out fight with the trendy but when he was elected in 1999, it's funny to

murphy came here and he rang the bell at the new york stock exchange. a throughout the first pitch at shea stadium. he met with sandy berger. he was kind of on a little tour of the united states and was playing all nice. what he did was he basically used his popularity and his success at the polls and the mobilization he was able to achieve of venezuelan society to take over institutions one by one with the support and approval of the population. so the irony is that each election in venezuela made the country less democratic. and initially he didn't really know how to deal with the media since it wasn't under the direct control of the government. obviously it's an independent institution and is very much opposed to him.

and then he developed all these pretty innovative strategies for addressing the problems. first was to take the airwaves himself and this intermediate the media. he would just take over, had these eight are radio shows when we talk about how beautiful venezuelan women were over baseball or whatever he wanted to talk about any witches go on and on. and then he started using government regulation to take over critical to helping station, particularly after the aborted coup attempt in 2000 in which he felt was precipitated by the media. and by the time he died, the media landscape has been completely transformed in venezuela. he came to power with an independent media that was highly critical. by the time he died, the media have been tamed and controlled, managed, and had essentially,

the level of criticism, while that still exists, venezuela is not a country that is a traditional authoritarian country, but it's greatly diminished and it no longer threatens the interests of the government. >> utah coal a bit about how some of the activism -- you talk a little bit about how some of activism around journalists covering what happened to other journals. it was debating at cpj, and some of the cases circa, terry anderson i in the case of the ap in april in a different way. do you feel it's still an effective tool, or is that, to questions about that. is it still an effective tool? or does it get lost in the sort of onslaught of information? and if it is an effective tool, use it penetrating beyond the western journalists who are not covered anywhere -- operating in

their own country? isn't as effective for local journalists and it's hard to get coverage outside their country of this issue? >> i still think that that was the cpj model, and when you talk to the best of cpj, victories here and he will probably remember what enoug a struggle s to convince journalists that an attack on their colleagues was something that they should be covering, was a news story. journalists at the time the this was sort of a self taking advantage of their position to advocate on behalf of their colleagues. and that mindset has changed for a variety of reasons. one is there's the nature of international news coverage and the kinds of stores that journalists do, and the recognition that journalists have a responsibility use the resources and access that they have to defend colleagues around the world who may not have that same kind ofpport.

and i still think it works. it works in different ways, but i think that the fact that an attack on a journalist anywhere in the world will be covered, it will be covered and initially by advocacy groups, like us, but we have the ability to make it into a more general news story. and it may not be just one story that goes out on the water. it may be that story triggers interest on social media which triggers more local coverage and it's more diffuse, but it definitely still has an impact and i see that as i travel around and engage with governments all over the world. >> so advocacy on behalf of of the ideals and the treatments, the ideals of journalism stands

for, is a proxy for the people, is appropriate, but you expressed some discomfort about journalists who are also advocates for other kinds of freedom and the rules are a little more blended. i mean, a little more confused. i'm not a journalist covering something, i might be a journalisjournalist covering itm when i'm off i'm going to go stancu protested in the protest, and that feels appropriate to those folks because they're fighting for freedom that they fill every fundamental but you are a little uncomfortable with some of the. >> i don't know if i'm uncomfortable. in terms of, i actually took that it creates an opportunity to make the argument that appointed out initially can which is that journalists need to defend the broader space. we can't as journalists i do our special rights for journalists. as long as we have those, and

that's all that matters. especially because we live in a time when these roles are fluent. so ultimately the way that a journalist can defend their own rights and own self interests is by forming common cause with people who might have a more, it does mean that to abandon their identity as a journalist. that is very important but they have to understand that people who are expressing themselves, publicly or participate in the process of gathering news and information, even if they're not doing this in a professional capacity, have the same rights. and so i think it's an interesting debate about where does a journalism stop and who's a journalist? i addressed that very directly in the book, but at the end of the i think that's less important than recognizing that's what's most crucial is there's a broad space that defends the rights in which

everybody wants to express themselves freely operate, including journalists. >> do you feel there's any parallel to what some but certainly not all and serving the most news organizations in the deep south of the united states did during the civil rights movement? it was explained pretty well in a book called the race beat, but there were plenty of news organizations that were in favor of segregation and couldn't imagine being an advocate, and others that use their news organizations as a tool for change because they felt the laws were wrong. is that a fair parallel? >> i think people may be familiar with this book by gene roberts called the race beat. it won the pulitzer prize. it's a tremendous account of what it was like to cover the south during the civil rights era. and when i read it, i had a

different reaction, which was i was focused on how similar the experiences of the journalists working in that environment to the ones that i see that journalists doing front-line reporting confront today. journalists were attacked, beaten, perceived as hostile outsiders. and if cpj were around in that era, this would've been critically important work, defending those rights. i think in some ways we feel that in this country we are removed from those struggles, but they were very recent. and so that's what i took away from that book. >> the connection, and that's absolutely right. the only connection i was trying to make was that those journalists who are challenging the system were doing so because they thought they wouldn't see

themselves as advocates but they were using a journalism to expose a fundamental wrong in society. >> and that's right, and i think so that whole continuum has existed for as long as journalism has existed. these roles have always been fluid to a certain extent. but because of the technological environment we live in, the fact that people have access to these means of negation, it's even broader and more complex. but there's always been crusading journalism, always been advocacy journalism. there's always been people who used these kinds of techniques and strategies to not just document what is happening but to promote change of one sort or another. >> so at the end of the book you have this nice long chapter with 10 pretty meaty strategies.

>> yes. >> i'm just going to take them off right quick and i'm going to ask you itch when you think is hardest to accomplish and why. i would have a hard time picking which one because they are all difficult to one, expos the democratators. >> i practiced that one. >> increase safety for conflict reporters. break the cycle of impunity. keep the internet open and free. >> correct. >> limited government surveillance. >> right. >> end censorship. >> right. you think this is hard? you're not ambitious enough, kathleen. >> clearly defined incitement to violence. make access to independent information a development goal. support ethical standard and quality media, build a free

expression coalition. >> yes. >> now, so my day job is to try and find verbs. which is the hardest one in there and why is it hard, but what makes you confident that it's going to be a solution to? >> well, i mean, i think what i'm doing is identifying areas that we need to focus on, and every one of those is tremendously difficult. i think we really come in some ways, what excites me is the notion of building, they are sort of link, building the coalition against censorship. i think that's tremendously difficult, but not impossible. one thing to keep in mind is that there are regional human rights agreements, treaties, and

actually the inter-american convention of human rights is the only regional treaty that prohibits prior restraint. so in this hemisphere, prior restraint of censorship is prohibited by international law. but in much of the world that's not the case. there are certain circumstances in which censorship is legally permitted. and i think that people understand intuitively, what censorship is, why it's bad, why it affects them. and our countries come and want to talk about censorship, what i'm talking about is prior restraint. i'm talking about governments using, actually preventing the publication of or dissemination of certain kinds of information. and i think that there is a strategy for creating a new norm in which that kind of conduct by

government would be perceived as outside the normal international framework. so it's a question of using the law, it's a question of using declarations and awareness building and mobilizing people who are threatened by censorship your it's incredibly difficult, but in some ways i think it's exciting. and i also think if you take a long view, it is achievable. >> i have a lot more questions for you, that we have a mic here and i would like to invite anybody who was questioned to come to the mic and ask joel. while you're doing that i'm going to ask you, what any individual in your can do to start to chip away at any of these recommendations. we want to send people out the door with the wind at their back and determination to start attacking some of these issues. what is one thing you think people in this room could do?

>> well, since we're at a journalism school, i think one of the things that i see around the world when i traveled is that a lot of the restrictions that governments imposed on the media, and justified, are based on their critiques of the quality of the media the work of the meet itself. and one thing i do in the book is i kind of reject that idea of mixing those two struggles. they are separate. we have to fight to improve the quality of journalism around the world, but we can't link that to the fight for freedom of expression because we don't want, we don't want to legitimate the notion that if the meaty is an perform at the highest levels, then restrictions are justified. i think one of the most important things as

contributions that people can make, particularly those involved in journalism education, and particularly at a school like columbia that's involved in educating students from all over the world is to create a culture of quality journalism. because i really think that is a critical defense against government encroachment on freedom of expression and the rights of a journalism. >> good. victor, i think there was somebody before you if you don't -- he has been standing patiently but you can be next. can you speak into the mic, please. >> how would this issue of global censorship and, how does that apply to this country? like with the james rising case and the attacks on whistleblowers like snowden. how does it apply to this

country? >> good question. >> i think it absolutely applies, you know, for a number of reasons. one is there's been a significant erosion in this country of press freedom standards, and i think that has clearer global implications because of the standing, frankly, the u.s. media culture has in the world. and the first dynamic and the value with which that is regarded by journalists all over the world. so any deterioration of press freedom standards in this country gives license to governments and leaders around the world to justify their own restrictions by citing the example of the united states. so we are obviously very concerned by the cases you mentioned because of the example they set globally. and then there's the issue of surveillance which we haven't even really touched on, and

that's one of the key challenges that we face. i think that there's been a lot of justifiable uproar about the nsa surveillance program and its frankly, you know, and i think if you look at in a global context, it's even more terrifying. i was recently at anything and i talked to a former nsa official and i asked him, i said, you know, if a journalist in pakistan is talking to the taliban, what would your response to be? he said, we want that information and that's exactly the kind of thing we would eavesdrop on. if we could get our hands on that we would be thrilled. that journalists had no legal protection. surveillance obviously a facts you as a journalist, awareness has been created to any condition could be monitored, but with some legal protection here. if you're outside of this

country you have none, and that has created a chilling effect. and is also like all technology, the nsa has this tremendous capacity to seep up vast amounts of information that's unique, but it's not going to be unique soon. every country will develop greater capacity, and so i think journalists understand the implications of this, and it will affect them. >> actually company asked my question but i have a different way of putting it. you mentioned the early days of cpj. i remember tony lewis, the late tony lewis and harris and sells very. i think they both took this decision at that point, maybe only one of them, that cpj should not concern itself with what was happening in this country even as you organizations like the aclu to work about that, but that it should focus on what was happening around the world. so i'm just interested in your

talking about that cpj has devolved from that point of view. >> well, i mean, i think that that point of view is probably appropriate at a time when cpj was small and had few resources, and media institutions were strong and everyone understood who was a journalist and who was not a journalist. but with in different times, and cpj as an organization is much larger with greater capacity, so there's really no excuse. a lot of the people who we might defend those cases we might take up might not have, might be nontraditional journalists who don't have the backing of large institutions, but still the rights have to be defended. and i think that we can make the positioned to put what happens in the u.s. into a global context, it can make the argument that this affects only people in this country for people all over the world. and i think that's the unique contribution that cpj makes.

>> thanks, both the. joel can you mentioned the case of an example of a case where there was some progress made in the fight against impunity for journalist. over the last 20 years there's been some degradation of press conditions in russia so i'm just curious how, despite things getting worse for the press in china, they're still has been this progress in that specific case. case. >> ironically there isn't a contradiction because, jobs of the right, russia has become more repressive and more authoritarian. but the structure for control was sort of this tolerance of this mafia state. there were, you could sort of see the a lot of bodies in the street. there was a period in russia certainly when putin first came to power, and prior to that,

with the criminal organizations were operating very openly with government backing and protection. and during that period is when we saw a lot of violence against journalists, and these killings took place with not necessarily formal government support, but certainly government indifference and sometimes active complicity. so in terms of the agassi around that case, for those of you who don't know, she was a crusading journalist who covered the conflict in chechnya, the north caucasus issue, she was murdered in front of her apartment building in moscow in 2007, and this was a killing that shocked of journalists around were because she was such a well-known crusading admired journalist. of those international outcry at a lot of pressure was put on the russian government to do something about this.

and anything about russia is that i think this is the legacy of the kind of spy, the soviet spy stake him is that they are very good investigative but they're actually pretty good at investigating crimes. they don't solve them because there's no political will but then how to investigate them. i think it reached a point where putin made a calculation that the kind of structure of russia where you have these violent criminal organizations that were basically fighting over turf and territory and telling people, that was not what he wanted. he wanted a more traditional authoritarian structure. until solving a couple of these cases was in his interest. in the way i phrased it, in russia justice is just a crude political calculation.

and in this case the calculation was that brings some of the low-level perpetrators to justice served the political interests of the government. >> my question is regarding hungary. it seems like it's the new colombia or whatever, like the things that happened there right now are the things that you mentioned about colombia. so if you can shed some light on the situation and what's the road ahead for hungary? >> i would say colombia is the new turkey and erdogan is the latest member of the democratator club. hungary is an eu member, but the government there, the leadership has basically said, you know, we have our own conception of state interests, and we are going to

emulate russia more than we're going to emulate the eu. and so you are seeing a real crackdown on media and civil society. there was a recent protest as i'm sure you're aware of a new internet tax, but is really interesting. no one was really reacting to all these threats and attacks on journalists, but when they started taxing the internet that got people out in the street, got people agitated. that goes to my point about linking the struggle for media freedom to the broader struggle for freedom of expression. but hungary is absolutely going in the wrong direction. we just sent a mission to hungary led by our cpj board member who was hungarian american and knows the country will. and a report was very chilling. she wrote about it in an op-ed for the times, but this is a

country that is an eu member but is rejecting eu values. >> joel, you mentioned earlier that the chinese government actually has used internet to better serve its stronger hold on media. but how would you see the spread of internet and the democratization of the information as the hole in china which actually is helping the, spreading the news? and do you think that in the end would somehow change? >> that's what i write about is the battle in china over the internet optimists and the government addition of the function of the internet in chinese society. so the question is, i think that

the leadership in china definitely embraces connectivity and they definitely understand that this is critical, and -- a critical economic engine and they also feel that this technology can serve what they conceived to be the party's interest in terms of creating connections between the leadership and the population and allowing them to share their concerns with the leadership, et cetera, et cetera. so they have a kind of fairly pragmatic vision of the internet and how we can serve chinese state interests. they're not like cuba or some other country like that, that really wants to shut out the internet. they want to channel it to what they perceive as their state interests. but what they don't want the internet to be for its political organizing. that's what the draw the line,

and they are also very concerned about the fact that the internet is a global system and outside influences can penetrate china and potentially be destabilizing. so that's the way they conceptualize it, and i think what's really formidable is they have come up with a system that's worked pretty well, that helps them achieve their stated goals of coming into, china has more people online than any other country in the world. it's obviously got more people so that gives it a bit of a head start but it's profoundly transformed the society, and yet it's managed the challenges that this connectivity has created. and i think china has a vision of what, you know, china's vision of the unit is that like the national highway system.

yes come it ca connects but once you get into national highway, they want to control of what happens. they want to have their own rules and that's a vision that is very appealing to many other countries around the world, and it's a vision that china has largely succeeded in making real. i think we have to acknowledge that. >> do you think that diminishing economic power of media companies plays a role in this new censorship? and if so, how? >> absolutely. i think that's fundamental. i think that there's a recalibration that's been taking place of the power of the media itself, and the institutional media in particular. i think especially when you talk about the threats against journalists, a lot of these repressive governments or nonstate actors, the thing that kept journalists save working in

these environments was that they're useful. if you wanted to communicate to your own population but certainly internationally, in the only mechanism you have to do that was journalists. the information environment is completely different now and that is no longer the case. it used to be detected that if you're a journalist by some nasty folks, your argument was a, if you don't let me go i'm not going to be the to tell your story. that's kind of laughable now. that's not going to teach at any dicey situation. i was just in turkey and we had a meeting with president carter won, in these meetings -- carter won -- erdogan. they're sort of ritualistic ritc thing with ago press for the chili important to me. you go well then, why give all these issues? he refused to make that statement. he came into that meeting with a

defined posture journalist, all journalists are basically attacking my government, undermining the interests of the state and included "the new york times" and cnn. they are was nobody to hit give any praise for. did nothing positive about journals or press freedom. that was will a shot across the bow. that was really him saying i can achieve the interests i want to achieve. i can achieve much political goal without any support from the media because i've alternative ways of communicating. i've alternative ways to communicate domestically and internationally. so is precisely because the power dynamic has shifted that journalists face greater threat both from government and nonstate actors. >> and that's not confined to turkey. >> not at all. >> that's what's take taking pl, pennsylvania avenue. >> absolutely. it's the same dynamic. the obama administration and the bush administration was very

open about its stability to bypass the media and this intermediate its messages. but the consequences are not violent. but in other societies they are. >> so at the same time when you see this weakening of media institutions can you also see the rise of public protest companies in countries like russia, even english-speaking, iran or whatever, and they are in flowing english-speaking young journalists. how d.c. this fits? >> that's really interesting phenomenon and one that is troubling in many ways. governments are entering kind of the international media scene, and doing it in a way that they

think advance of their particular state interests, and sometimes they have very sophisticated and% of what those interests are. al-jazeera is an example. the government of qatar has invested huge amounts of money, but they see their interests advanced by having a credible independent news organization that has global influence, whereas russia with rt, or iran with press tv, these are government funded english-language international broadcasters, and use these platforms to engage in crude public and -- propaganda. and, frankly, this is a real challenge for those of us who defend journalism and those of us who defend freedom of expression because we are really right up against the line here. we make a point of not making judgments about the quality.

because if you defend freedom of expression can you defend freedom of expression. you defend the good and the bad, but particularly in russia some of these media organizations are engaging in propaganda and they are pushing right up against the light of what i would consider to be incitement to violence, which is of course outside the freedom of expression framework. >> i have a somewhat related question, more general about your mission and mandate to protect journalists in this disrupted age. what's your definition of a journalist? >> likely i came prepared for that question. because i did it a lot. one of the things that we realize over the course of our existence is having any sort of rigid definition is unproductive to one of the bandages of the work that cpj does is we respond

to real cases so we don't have to answer that question in the abstract. we are really not asking the question who is a journalist. we're asking the question of is this individual a journalist? then you look at it contextually. what kind of work by the doing? what's the nature of the society in which they are working? the framework in which we operate is, if your gathering and disseminating information or engaged in fact base, terry that serves the public, then you're engaged in journalism whether you're, what do you self identify as a journalist or not. we have a very flexible and pragmatic definition of who is a journalist, and we also sometimes defend people who are clearly not journalists. we say that this person is not a journalist, but the actions the government is taking against

this individual create an environment which is hostile to the exercise of journalism and, therefore, we're going to speak out. so if we had to answer that question in a very direct sort of hypothetical way, i think it would be very -- i think would be very difficult but it is possible to do when looking at these as individual cases. >> how do you think cpj's methods, the methods of rigorously researching journalist and advocating on their behalf, how effective are they against this -- democratators who, then, the basis of their legitimacy is, they are against the west. press freedom is a western value and they are generally impervious to the advocacy of human rights, press freedom. freedom.

>> i don't think they are impervious. i think a narrative that they have is, they may be against the west because they have a sort of power critique of the west, but they self identify as democracies, and their legitimacy is derived from the ability to win elections. that's the difference between a traditional dictatorship and sort of the democratators to democratator can win an election. and if they can't win an election, then their power, they become a traditional dictator or they lose power. so the question is what to do with the power that they have? and they in most instances tried to argue that their actions are legitimate because they conform democratic norms. so i think that being able to demonstrate that this is not, in

fact, the case is a very valid and effective strategy, and it's worked pretty well for us in turkey, for example, because the government framework better when these are journalists were arrested and imprisoned was that these are terrorists and were doing with any democratic country does, arresting and prosecuting terrorists. when we were able to demonstrate know, in fact you're not following international norms and this is not legitimate, that put a lot of pressure on the government. >> we have time for one last question spent i feel very honored. just to follow-up a little on she was questioned. in your book and also at freedom house, i think we agree there's an increasing role and threat posed by nonstate actors, whether criminal gangs or insurgent -- insurgent groups or islamist terrorists. following up on the question, how would these additional methods work against groups we are not sort of advocating for a government or even a government which may have some interest in

preserving its legitimacy or responding to criticism from groups like ours? >> they don't really work. when you're threatened by mexican drug cartels or threatened by isis, there's basically nothing, there's nothing we could do that that applies direct political pressure on these groups. i wouldn't say we just throw up our arms and another. i think there's a real value in documenting what's taking place. these are crimes. we have to document the crimes. you never know when the environment will shift and go be an opportunity for justice. the more we learn about what the risks are, the more we can help mitigate those risks. the more we cannot educate journalists about what the challenges are. so there are things that we can do and we are doing, but those kinds of traditional advocacy strategies sadly don't work

against -- they are based on the fact that these actors, whether their states or nonstate actors, care about their international reputation for the most part, or even any domestic context. if they have no concern or no interest, then those strategies simply won't work. >> legs and women the book is "the new censorship: inside the global battle for media freedom" -- ladies and gentlemen, the book is turn 11. copies are in the back and i hope you will mark the chapters that are relevant to you and the things that you can do to affect some change. joel, thank you very much. >> thank you, kathleen. >> thank you, kathleen. thank you, joel. this has been a stimulating conversation. looks out the back. joel will be there so thank you for joining us tonight, and good evening, everyone. >> thank you.

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