SLAPP me, I Slap you: Journalists find ways to overcome libel suits

The International Press Institute (IPI) Nigeria recently held a two-day workshop on how Nigerian journalists could avoid SLAPP suits and walk the fine lines of ethics. The workshop was facilitated by MacArthur Foundation. SLAPP is an acronym for Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation.

More commonly called SLAPP suits or intimidation suits, they are deliberate lawsuits usually initiated by public office holders to wear out, intimidate or censor journalists. The intendment is often not to win a case or claim damages for alleged defamation but to weary the journalists in order to silence them and wheel them out of the way. If you factor that the duty of the journalist is to inform, educate, advocate, set agenda, proffer solution by offering alternative views, uncover what someone or institution tries to cover, and much more, you will understand why the journalist is often perceived as a meddlesome interloper (busybody), a rabid critic (no matter how constructive the criticism may be), and an inconvenient public voice and defender.

SLAPP has been used to weigh down journalists. Because the intendment of the plaintiff is not to win the case, as has been proven on many occasions, accusers of journalists often set out to make life unbearable for the journalist and media organisation through prolonged adjournments, deliberately filing suits far away from the journalist’s place of abode or operation, or using technicalities to elongate the life of the suit in the court. This stacks up litigation cost for the journalist and drains such journalist emotionally. The end-point is to weaken the zeal of the journalist to investigate the next story. In some cases, the journalist avoids engaging in adventurous, investigative journalism. Some journalists simply relapse into silence or siddon look (sit and watch) mode, to use a Nigerian parlance. SLAPP simply sedates the journalist, a potent legal tool to constrict free speech and stymie the constitutional powers and privileges of the journalist to hold public actors to account.

In recent years, Nigerian public office holders have deployed SLAPP to harass, intimidate, badger and in some cases torture, illegally detain or jail journalists. It was therefore fitting that IPI Nigeria chose to focus on SLAPP and share experiences among top editors in a country often ranked among nations with hostile environment for free press.

When public office holders lean on the rampart of SLAPP to silence journalists, they aid the festering of fascism and primitive tyranny. The Cybercrime Act, for instance, has been used to gag, and haul Nigerian journalists to jail. The Executive Director of the International Press Institute (IPI) Global, Mr. Frane Maroevic, who delivered a goodwill message, virtually, was unsparing in his condemnation of the use of the Act to intimidate Nigerian journalists. He stated unequivocally that the Act was being used to undermine media freedom and free expression in the country.

Maroevic confronted the bogey thusly: “One of the key threats to journalism today comes from the legal tools deployed by the rich and the powerful in the use of strategic law suits that are intended to silence journalists, media organisations and individuals that seek to uncover the truth, express dissenting opinions and hold those in power accountable.

“Law suits are not just devised; there are attempts to undermine the very foundation of free press by bothering journalists with legal and financial pressures with intentions to deterring them from pursuing important stories.”

IPI has a fundamental duty: To uphold, pursue and promote independent and free press. It has played avant-garde roles in this regard in Vietnam, North Korea, China and other nations where there is deliberate government policy to suppress free speech and haul journalists into the gulag for doing their jobs, which the usually petulant authorities misinterpret as being “nettlesome and pesky.”

The top global abusers of journalists are nations with either flourishing culture of corruption or with rich, overflowing fountain of human rights violations. These are nations where humans are denied their rights to hold contrary opinion. Nigeria ought not to be numbered among such nations. But, somehow, she’s there, in the club of infamy.

The 21st edition of the World Press Freedom Index (WPFI), a report compiled annually by Reporters Without Borders (RSF), and published earlier this year, placed Nigeria at a distant position of 123 out of 180 countries. This means that Nigeria ranks low among nations with healthy press freedom index and high among nations with repressive press freedom mores. Whereas Norway, Ireland and the Nordic nations of Denmark, Sweden and Finland make the top grades, the villains on the Index remain the chief oppressors of free speech namely Vietnam, China and the often-predictable worst culprit, North Korea. In these countries, SLAPP is used to jail journalists. In some cases, journalists are murdered by state agents for simply doing their jobs.

Any patriotic Nigerian would be sad to notice that smaller African nations rank better than Nigeria on this index. Countries like Gambia (46), Ivory Coast (54), Niger Republic (61), Ghana (62), among others have superior tolerance record than Nigeria.

It rankles because media suppression has helped to encourage the flowering of corruption in the country. Year-on-year, Nigeria is rated as one of the most corrupt countries in the world. Such profile is unbefitting for a nation that desires to attract foreign investors. Nigeria was ranked 150 out of 180 countries in the 2022 Corruption Perception Index. African nations like Egypt, South Africa, Mali, Liberia, Ghana, Senegal, Republic of Benin were rated less corrupt than Nigeria.

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In effect, Nigeria has the twin trouble of human rights abuse and corruption. A nation afflicted with these two ailments need not muzzle the media using SLAPP or any other form of official coercion. Nigeria is currently walking on the patchy path to Golgotha. Socio-political storms, economic downturn typified by hyper-inflation, growing queues of the unemployed, shuttered offices, job losses and an exchange rate that beggars belief, all of the magnitude never before seen, have coalesced to create more dynasties and demographic districts of poverty in the country. At such a time, an unhinged, unshackled press is what the people need to probe the undercurrents that created the turbulence and plot a feasible roadmap out of the bind. This is even more so in a democracy.

Maroevic put it most succinctly: “A well informed and empowered media not only serve as a bastion of democracy but also as bridge that connects societies and amplify voices that otherwise will remain unheard. In the light of these responsibilities, the need for an independent and ethical journalism has become paramount.”

Mr Musikilu Mojeed, President IPI Nigeria, himself a serial victim of SLAPP, underscored the need for journalists to show more courage in the discharge of their duties. One journalist who has exhibited derring-do and uncommon chutzpah in the course of duty is Mr. Yusuf Alli, a top Editor at Nation newspapers. In his paper, My Battles with Lawsuits, Alli took the audience through the labyrinthine hallway of SLAPP and how he has successfully overawed the treachery and landmines of libel lawsuits. He warned that SLAPP will not go away but advised every journalist be armed with the tools of defence: Factuality, Evidence and Courage.