The Case of “Saturday Afternoon”: The Importance of Freedom of Expression and Reporting in a Country with an Expanding Internet User Base
Before shooting his movie, the filmmaker, Mostofa Sarwar Farooki, submitted the script for approval by the country’s Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. He had received permission to cast prominent Indian and Palestinian actors, in addition to Bangladeshi artists.
But even as the film, “Saturday Afternoon” — a single-shot feature loosely based on the 2016 terrorist attack at a bakery in Dhaka, the capital, that left 24 dead — has been screened to applause and awards at festivals abroad, Bangladesh’s government has refused to permit its release at home.
For three years, the country’s film censor board has been denying Mr. Farooki’s appeals — an indication, analysts and activists say, of how the government of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina is shrinking the space for free speech, sometimes in arbitrary ways.
Mr. Farooki said that the film’s rejection didn’t have a specific reason. They said the film might cause unrest or tarnish the image of the country.
Twitter is also a critical platform for grassroots journalists to share their reporting on issues that impact the welfare of people in their communities — especially since so many now work on a shoestring as advertising dollars have moved from local journalism to online platforms. The fact that reporters can be kicked from the platform if they cause displeasure to Musk is a threat to us all.
David Kaye, a professor of law at the University of California, Irvine, is a former UN special rapporteur on the right to freedom of opinion and expression.
Jason Pielemeier, executive director of the Global Network Initiative, says Musk’s goal to build Twitter’s user base to more than a billion people could also affect his willingness to battle it out with foreign governments to keep content on the platform.
Although they may not represent a huge share of Twitter’s revenue stream right now, countries like Turkey, Indonesia, Nigeria, and Pakistan, which have very large, increasingly online populations, are all attractive markets as the company looks to grow its revenue and increase its user base, according to Pielemeier. But all of those countries have had arguments with Twitter specifically or with social media companies more broadly, he says. The Nigerian government ordered all internet service providers to block the platform after it deleted a tweet from the country’s president. The government lifted the ban only after Twitter agreed to open an office in the country and pay local taxes.
Access Now’s policy director for Asia Pacific worries that the lawsuit could not be continued under Musk’s leadership. (In his August countersuit against Twitter, Musk cited the lawsuit in India as a threat to the company’s presence in its third largest market.) He says it would be a great victory for the Indian government. It also shows that the global tech industry doesn’t want to do more.
An associate professor at the Lawrence Herbert School of Communication at Hofstra University has written about women and social media. Her book “This Feed Is on Fire: Why Social Media Is Toxic for Women and Girls — And How We Can Reclaim It” will be published by Alcove Press in 2024. The opinions expressed in this commentary are her own. Read more opinion on CNN.
In tweets, Musk accused the journalists of violating the platform’s policy against doxing — or posting private information online — by sharing his “exact real-time” location. But none of the banished reporters — including CNN’s Donie O’Sullivan and The Washington Post’s Drew Harwell — appeared to have done so. CNN did not get comment from Musk or the social networking site.
The recent moves make clear that Musk tends to run this company the way dictators do their states, by making decisions that serve his own interests and getting rid of people who stand in his way. Tech workers and journalists who have been out of work in the past few weeks need to come together to create non-profit social networks.
Reliable information should be found in a healthy town square. Before Musk took over, researchers at Tufts University found that hate and misinformation were more frequent on the micro-blogging website.
The suspensions came a day after the company announced that it was giving up its trust and safety council, a group of outside experts that advised the company on issues like human rights.
Ayyub: The India’s Digital Threats, the Indian Mass Media, and the State of the Digital World – a Dialogue with Mr. Modi
Journalists should only worry about reporting the stories and not becoming the story themselves. We have become the stories in the new India that we live in.
Even though she might be in a position to be retaliated against for speaking out against the government, she continues to speak out. In a conversation with Morning Edition’s A Martinez, Ayyub talked about what it is like to be the recipient of digital threats, India’s mainstream media, and how journalists can fight back.
In the largest democracy of 1.3 billion people, there’s nothing like press freedom, she said. “Most of the mainstream media is literally repeating the government’s lies and the ones who are independent, who are critical, are paying a price.”
Ayyub was charged by India’s Enforcement Directorate for violating the anti-money-laundering law. The agency alleges that Ayyub has used more than $324,000 (Rs 2.69 crore) publicly raised funds for herself. Ayyub denied any wrongdoing.
In 2018, a fake pornographic video clip featuring Ayyub’s face was circulated on WhatsApp. The video caused widespread public outcry. Last January, Ayyub received over 26,000 responses to a tweet criticizing Saudi Arabia’s role in the war in Yemen, many of which contained death and rape threats.
Over the past decade, I’ve faced a variety of harassment, including my image morphing into a porn video, and being charged with money-laundering, which I will be facing once I arrive in India. The accusation against me is that I’m a practicing Muslim and that my reportage has been prejudiced because of that. There are multiple cases against me for my tweets, for my appearances on news channels. Everything that I say oftentimes gets converted into a case, so […] I head into an uncertain future.”
“At this point of time, I worry about every single person, especially independent journalists in India, who are putting everything at risk to fight that battle. Journalists should only worry about reporting the stories and not becoming the story themselves. We have become the stories in the new India that we live in.”
Mr. Modi became the prime minister of India in the fall of 2014. Until today, […] he has not had a single press conference. He doesn’t do joint press meets when he is in a country. He doesn’t take questions from the media internationally because he knows there are a lot of questions that will be important regarding the attack on Muslims in India. He has not answered any questions except for a Bollywood celebrity who is gonna ask him ” how do you like to eat your mangoes?” Do you like to slice or peel them?