Columbia Global Freedom of Expression seeks to contribute to the development of an integrated and progressive jurisprudence and understanding on freedom of expression and information around the world.  It maintains an extensive database of international case law. This is its newsletter dealing with recent developments  in the field.

Last week, Dr. Hawley Johnson, Associate Director at CGFoE, visited Ain Shams University (ASU) in Cairo, Egypt, where she participated in the conference The Interplay of Media and Law in the Digital Era: Challenges, Opportunities, and Transformations and served as one of the judges for the Middle East round of the Oxford Price Moot Court Competition in Media Law (Price Moot) for 2024/2025.

In her opening remarks, Dr. Johnson highlighted that 2025 marks a decade of collaboration between Global Freedom of Expression and Price Moot, as well as the third year of partnership between CGFoE and Ahmed Khalifa, ASU Professor of Law. Speaking about the collaboration, Professor Khalifa emphasized the importance of the hands-on experience that his students are gaining alongside colleagues at CGFoE.

This Middle East (MENA) qualifying round of Price Moot welcomed 12 student teams from Egypt, Lebanon, Tunisia, Iran, Iraq, and Jordan, and more than thirty judges from India, Mexico, Britain, Egypt, Lebanon, Tunisia, Palestine, and Bahrain. The ASU team, trained by Reem El Shazly, graduate student at ASU and Legal Researcher at CGFoE, won first place and will be one of five teams heading to the international round at Oxford in April. In addition, as a prize, the best competitors from the MENA rounds will get a chance to attend a CGFoE seminar later this year.

Back in the US, the Tump-Musk tandem continues to undermine the rule of law. “It’s an anticonstitutional lawbreaking spree,” writes Michael Waldman, President and CEO of the Brennan Center for Justice. Over 45 lawsuits are pending against the US President and his subordinates, including those that challenge the end to birthright citizenship, federal spending cuts, and the targeting of transgender people. One question pierces through all the analysis: Will the US constitutional system withstand the assault? Jamal Greene, Professor of Constitutional Law at Columbia, discusses that at KQED.

In some cases, the law does catch up swiftly. On February 8, a federal judge blocked the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), led by billionaire Elon Musk, from accessing the Department of the Treasury’s payment systems. The order responded to the complaint filed by 19 state attorneys last Friday, arguing DOGE had breached the Privacy Act of 1974, among other laws.

“This is the largest and most consequential breach of personal information in US history,” John Davisson, Director of Litigation at Electronic Privacy Information Center, said of the DOGE storming into federal agencies. CGFoE has been working on the DOGE order analysis, but in light of the oral arguments scheduled for February 14 and new documents filed, we will be featuring the case – with all the updates – in the next newsletter.

This week’s decisions concern Hungary and South Africa. In Csikós v. Hungary, the ECtHR ruled that Hungary failed to provide adequate procedural safeguards to protect a journalist from secret surveillance. In Els v. eMedia Investments (Pty) Ltd, a High Court held that prior restraints of publications demand careful consideration and the privacy rights of businesses engaged with the public are limited. In Pringle v. Mailula, the Supreme Court of Appeal reinstated a harassment protection order against a parent who had used a racial slur against his child’s school principal.

Last week, Dr. Hawley Johnson, Associate Director at CGFoE, served as one of the judges for the Middle East round of the Oxford Price Moot Court Competition in Media Law, held at Ain Shams University in Cairo, Egypt. Photo credit: Ain Shams University

European Court of Human Rights
Csikós v. Hungary
Decision Date: November 28, 2024
The First Section of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) ruled that Hungary violated articles 8 and 10 (Privacy and Freedom of Expression) of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) by failing to provide adequate procedural safeguards to protect a journalist from secret surveillance. The case involved Klaudia Csikós, a journalist whose phone conversations were allegedly intercepted by Hungarian authorities as part of a criminal investigation aimed at identifying her sources. The Court found that the measures lacked the necessary judicial oversight and procedural safeguards to prevent the unlawful disclosure of journalistic sources. It emphasized the crucial role of protecting journalistic sources to maintain freedom of expression and press freedom. The Court concluded that Hungary’s legal framework did not meet the Convention’s standards to ensure respect for privacy and freedom of expression. Consequently, Hungary was ordered to compensate the applicant for non-pecuniary damages and legal costs.

South Africa 
Els v. eMedia Investments (Pty) Ltd
Decision Date: November 19, 2024
A High Court in South Africa refused an application to interdict the broadcasting of footage obtained by a media company doorstepping a businessman accused of financial misconduct. The businessman argued that he had been ambushed by an investigative journalism television program when he attended what he thought was a business meeting, and that the footage they obtained of him refusing to speak to them was an infringement of his privacy. The Court characterized the case as one of prior restraint of publication and found that the strict conditions for such an action were not met. It stressed that the footage was obtained in public and that the allegations of misconduct were in the public interest, and that when balancing the rights to freedom of expression and privacy in cases of prior restraint, these rights are not weighed evenly because of the extreme impact a prior restraint has on press freedom.

Pringle v. Mailula
Decision Date: September 19, 2024
The South African Supreme Court of Appeal reinstated a harassment protection order against a parent who had used a racial slur against his child’s school principal. The principal had obtained a protection order from a magistrate’s court, arguing that – along with persistent phone calls – the racial slur made her feel threatened, racially attacked and that her dignity was damaged. The High Court overturned the magistrate’s order, on a technicality related to the introduction of new evidence. The Supreme Court of Appeal accepted that the principal had felt vulnerable and that the racial slur caused emotional trauma.

FEBRUARY 17: Launch of SFLC.in’s Internet Shutdown Report 2024. The Software Freedom Law Center, India (SFLC.in) will launch its Internet Shutdown Report 2024 virtually next week. The report Let The Net Work 2.0 analyzes internet shutdowns in India through their impact on human rights, democracy, and the economy, urging for collective action to protect digital rights. The confirmed speakers are Vrinda Grover, Advocate, Supreme Court of India, and Anuradha Bhasin, Managing Editor of the Kashmir Times and petitioner in Bhasin v. Union of India, which is a landmark case on internet shutdowns. February 17, 2025. 6-7:00 PM IST / 7:30-8:30 AM ET. Online. Register here.

● China: Draft Internet ID Measure Threatens to Tighten Online Censorship; Journalist Zhang Zhan is Dying in Detention. ARTICLE 19 and Chinese Human Rights Defenders (CHRD) published an analysis of China’s draft Management Measure on National Network Identity Authentication Public Service, or Internet ID Measure. The provision would require internet users to undergo authentication with a national ID and face recognition through a designated app. More than 80 apps, including WeChat and RedNote, have been trialing the verification system. ARTICLE 19’ and CHRD’s analysis underscores that by expanding state surveillance and thus further threatening human rights defenders, the provision violates international human rights law. In other alarming news, Reporters Without Borders calls on the Chinese authorities to immediately release journalist Zhang Zhan, the first to break the COVID-19 story from Wuhan. Zhang Zhan recently began a hunger strike, protesting her mistreatment by the authorities.

● West Africa: Sahel States’ Withdrawal from ECOWAS Undermines Accountability, by Ilaria Allegrozzi. Senior Sahel Researcher at Human Rights Watch Ilaria Allegrozzi reports on the official withdrawal of Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). The three, led by military juntas, have been condemned internationally for the atrocities their forces committed. The ECOWAS Community Court of Justice has issued landmark human rights decisions – those concerning Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger among them. “Since [coming] to power by force, these military governments have systematically failed to hold people responsible for egregious human rights abuses […],” a Malian activist in exile told Allegrozzi. “This latest move only confirms their disregard for human rights and the rule of law.”

● Latin America: Lethal Violence Against Journalists Marks First Month of 2025, by Silvia Higuera. In an article for the LatAm Journalism Review, published by the Knight Center at the University of Texas, journalist Silvia Higuera writes about a deadly beginning to 2025 for journalists in Latin America. With at least four murders of reporters recorded this past January only – Alejandro Gallegos León and Calletano de Jesús Guerrero in Mexico, Gastón Medina Sotomayor in Peru, and Óscar Gómez Agudelo in Colombia  – we are once again reminded that the region is one of the most dangerous for the press. “There is a direct relationship between the increase in attacks against journalists and this reconfiguration of [illegal armed groups or gangs], especially linked to drug trafficking,” said Jonathan Bock, Executive Director at Colombia’s Foundation for Freedom of the Press (FLIP). With a “very weak institutional response,” to Bock, silences – the collective effect of censorship – multiply.

This section of the newsletter features teaching materials focused on global freedom of expression which are newly uploaded on Freedom of Expression Without Frontiers

Recommending Hate: How TikTok’s Search Engine Algorithms Reproduce Societal Bias, by Paula-Charlotte Matlach, Allison Castillo, Charlotte Drath, and Eva F Hevesi. As part of a series surveying online-gender-based violence, the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) published a report that examines TikTok’s content moderation in English, French, German, and Hungarian. The results point to algorithmic bias. Using the method of qualitative analysis, the ISD researchers entered racist and misogynistic slurs – twelve in total, three for each language – as prompts in TikTok’s search engine and analyzed the produced outcomes. In two-thirds of the videos examined, the platform’s search function and recommendation algorithms “perpetuated harmful stereotypes,” effectively creating routes that connected “users searching for hateful language with content targeting marginalized groups.”

● Job Opening: Chief of Section, Freedom of Expression and Safety of Journalists, UNESCO. UNESCO’s Communication and Information Sector is hiring the Chief of Section, who will act as a thematic program leader, advancing the Section’s mission – promoting freedom of expression, media development, and media literacy – through concrete strategies and initiatives. Learn more and apply here by March 10.

● Call for Proposals: Media Freedom Hub 2025. With a budget of nearly €3 million, the European Commission invites proposals from public authorities, international organizations, NGOs, and research centers with a focus on supporting exiled Russian and Belarusian media in the EU. The project, which follows the first edition of Media Freedom Hub 2023, aims to foster a pluralistic media environment through a pan-European network of media hubs. The application deadline is March 14.

This newsletter is reproduced with the permission of Global Freedom of Expression.  For an archive of previous newsletters, see here.