Status for Ytringsfriheten I Norge – Hovedrapport Fra Prosjektet
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Status for ytringsfriheten i Norge Hovedrapport fra prosjektet Bernard Enjolras, Terje Rasmussen og Kari Steen-Johnsen (red.) Status for ytringsfriheten i Norge Fritt Ord | ISF | FAFO | UiO | TNS | Jon Wessel-Aas Status for ytringsfriheten i Norge – Fritt Ords monitorprosjekt Om prosjektet I prosjektet «Status for ytringsfriheten i Norge – Fritt Ords monitorprosjekt» har vi gjort en gjennomgang av ytringsfrihetens status i Norge anno 2014, med vekt på befolkningens og utvalgte gruppers erfaringer og opplevelser med ytringsfrihet. Forrige gang det ble gjort en helhetlig gjennomgang av status for ytrings- friheten i Norge var med Ytringsfrihetskommisjonens rapport i 1999. Siden da har en rekke hendelser og mer dyptgripende utviklingstrekk påvirket vilkårene for ytringsfrihet i Norge. Prosjektet ledes av Institutt for samfunnsforskning på oppdrag fra Fritt Ord og løper fram til utgangen av 2014. Samarbeidspartnere er Institutt for medier og kommunikasjon (IMK) ved UiO, Fafo, TNS Gallup og jurist Jon Wessel-Aas. For mer informasjon og resultater fra prosjektet, besøk www.statusytringsfrihet.no. Institutt for samfunnsforskning Munthes gate 31 Postboks 2333 Elisenberg 0208 Oslo www.samfunnsforskning.no ISBN trykt versjon: 978-82-7763-452-4 ISBN (pdf): 978-82-7763-453-1 ISSN: 0333-3671 Korrektur og språklig bearbeiding: Synne Sætrang Design og produksjon: Keops, Asker Status for ytringsfriheten i Norge Hovedrapport fra prosjektet Status for ytringsfriheten i Norge – Fritt Ords monitorprosjekt 2 Summary The theme of this report is the status of the freedom of speech in contemporary Norway. Based on a varied set of data, the authors explore attitudes towards and experiences of expression in public among different groups in the population, with a particular focus on the social and cultural preconditions for exercising freedom of speech. The report also analyzes the perspectives of the media industry and journalists on ongoing structural change within the mass media, and it provides an overview of central juridical changes within the domains of the freedom of the press and the freedom of information. The baseline for the report is the White Paper on the Freedom of Speech (NOU 1999:27), which was published in 1999. Since then important societal change processes in Norway, and globally, have impacted on the conditions for the freedom of speech. The report targets three such overall change processes: an increasingly multicultural and multireligious society, the impact of digitaliza- tion on the participation of citizens, on established media structures and on the capacity of states and private actors to surveil and make use of private data, and finally cultural changes within working life. The report is composed by ten independent chapters, in addition to an intro- duction and a conclusion. In Chapter 1 Jon Wessel-Aas describes the legal development in the domain of the freedom of the press, mainly based on the period from 1999 to 2014. On the one hand, the freedom of the press has been strengthened with regard to the right to publish without interference and with regard to the right to protect journalistic sources, Wessel-Aas argues. On the other hand, press freedom risks being undermined by an opposite development when it comes to freedom of information, especially due to rather dramatic expansions of law enforcement and intelligence authorities’ powers to conduct various forms of secret surveil- lance in electronic communications. In Chapter 2 Bernard Enjolras and Kari Steen-Johnsen discuss the social and normative conditions for the freedom of speech in Norway, based on a represen- tative survey of the population. They ask which types of utterances are seen as acceptable on different arenas in Norway, and whether certain groups are more likely to withhold their own opinion, out of fear of offending others or of being exposed to ridicule. Their analysis shows that the Norwegian population tends to balance the value of the freedom of speech against other social values, such as the value of protecting vulnerable groups and of not offending or harming partic- ular groups or religions. There is a high degree of consensus on the balance of values: a majority chooses the middle standpoints. A clear distinction is made between the private and the public spheres, and more is seen as normatively Status for ytringsfriheten i Norge – Fritt Ords monitorprosjekt Summary 3 acceptable in the private sphere than in work life, the mass media and social media. The authors show that social and moral considerations play an important role in shaping processes of self-censorship, or in their words, self-limitation. Depending on the perspective on freedom of speech, such self-limitation will be interpreted differently. One important point however, is that self-limitation may lead to spirals of silence if certain groups systematically limit their expression more than others. Women are particularly prone to such self-limitation. Chapters 3 and 4 are centered on the conditions for the freedom of speech in a multicultural and multireligious society. In Chapter 3 Arnfinn H. Midtbøen and Kari Steen-Johnsen study the experiences of ethnic and religious minorities based on qualitative interviews with 17 active participants in the Norwegian public debate. Based on their study, they conclude that minority status is always of some importance when participating in public debate, in the sense that (almost) all informants have had negative experiences related to their ethnic or religious minority background. Still, the frequency and intensity of such experiences vary strongly with other factors, such as gender, political position, debate theme, and the arena of expression. The analysis also shows that ethnic and religious minori- ties in some instances limit their own expression in view of potential reactions either from the majority or the minority population. Still, a story of change since the 1990s is also visible in the data, in the sense that a plural set of voices have emerged and that more possibilities for minorities to take on different ideological positions exist today. In order to provide a broader picture of the conditions for freedom of speech as experienced by ethnic minorities, the qualitative data are supplemented with a survey of the population of non-western immigrants and descendants. In Chapter 4 Jon Rogstad discusses the boundaries that are drawn between freedom of speech and freedom of religion in Norwegian mass media. Based on 12 qualitative interviews with journalists, editors and cartoonists, and on a survey of members of the Norwegian Journalist Association, he asks to what extent Norwegian mass media experience threats related to publishing news with content that is critical of religion, and how they tackle such situations. He also asks which considerations media make about what is acceptable and wise to publish, and how this has changed over time. Rogstad’s analysis shows that Norwegian media receive a limited amount of threats related to religious criticism, but there are still indications that such threats may have an impact on the angle and presentation of news. He also shows that Norwegian media reflect thoroughly upon the balance between religious criticism and respect for religion, and that they feel that they have learnt how to better handle this balance since the publication of the Mohammed cartoons in 2005. This is not the least a question of language use and formulation, and about taking the experiences the experiences of believers into account. Status for ytringsfriheten i Norge – Fritt Ords monitorprosjekt Summary 4 Chapters 5 and 6 target two professions that play important roles in exer- cising and enabling the freedom of expression in a society: journalists and professional artists. In Chapter 5 Anna Grøndahl Larsen and Karoline Andrea Ihlebæk ask how Norwegian news media conceive of and strategically handle ongoing structural change within the sector, with an emphasis on the impact of digitalization. The chapter is based on qualitative interviews with 15 editors- in-chief and digital strategists in major Norwegian media houses and a survey of Norwegian journalists. The results show that both editors and journalists take an ambiguous attitude towards digitalization and its concomitant change processes. On the one hand digitalization triggers innovation, new ways of researching news stories and communicating with the public, as well as new ways of targeting content. On the other hand, digitalization challenges quality journalism by eroding established business models, and by introducing new, more quantitative measures of quality. The authors underscore that there is a variety of viewpoints among the interviewees, not the least depending on their strategic position. In Chapter 6 Tore Slaatta delves into how fiction writers and visual artists experience the conditions for freedom of speech in Norway. Based on a survey of members of the Norwegian Association of Authors (Norsk Forfatterforening) and the Norwegian Association of Visual Artists (Norske Billedkunstneres forening) the author asks whether these two groups of artists experience their freedom of expression as sufficiently protected, whether they see the conditions for free speech as stable or changing, and which are the particular challenges to exercising free speech as seen from their profession. Overall, the participants in the survey feel that their freedom of expression as artists is well protected legally. But some artists have experienced forms of critical reception