Tell Priti Patel: Stop your attack on journalistic freedom
Journalists who share leaks of official information should not face life imprisonment for doing their job
Vian Bakir is Professor in Political Communication and Journalism at Bangor University, Wales, UK. She is author of Torture, Intelligence and Sousveillance in the War on Terror: Agenda-Building Struggles (2013) and Sousveillance, Media and Strategic Political Communication: Iraq, USA, UK (2010). She is guest editor of International Journal of Press/Politics (2015) Special Issue on News, Agenda-Building and Intelligence Agencies. She is Principal Investigator on Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Seminar Series (2014-16), DATA - PSST! Debating & Assessing Transparency Arrangements: Privacy, Security, Surveillance, Trust; and Bangor University ESRC Impact Acceleration Account (2016-17), Political-Intelligence Elites: Towards Better Public Accountability through a Co-created Benchmark for Civil Society.
To penetrate walls of official secrecy and eddies of highly selective information provision, civil society might use...