Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Download MP3
Iceland is considering legislation aimed at making it a legal safe haven for journalists, publishers, and even companies that host websites. But it’s not clear how much protection the proposed measure would actually provide outside Iceland’s borders. The World’s Gerry Hadden reports from Reykjavik.

• Read about the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative
• BBC country profile

IMMI organizers have brought in Wikileaks found and editor Julian Assange as a consultant. Wikileaks has been sued over a hundred times for leaking highly classified documents from banks, governments and militaries - always protecting its sources.

IMMI spokesman Smari McCarthy says freedom of the press is under threat around the world, even in Western liberal democracies. Iceland, he says, could be a journalistic fortress for protecting sources and whistleblowers who uncover corruption, then share it with reporters.

Last year, Icelandic National Broadcasting (RUV) reporter Gunnar Jonsson was about to go live with a scoop on a major banking scandal. But an injunction landed on his desk, five minutes before airtime. Lawyers for Kaupthing Bank convinced a judge to muzzle RUV. The IMMI proposal would make gag-orders.

Photos: Gerry Hadden

Read the Transcript
This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

MARCO WERMAN:  I’m Marco Werman and this is The World, a co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI and WGBH in Boston.  An Italian Court’s decision yesterday, to hold three Google executives criminally responsible for a controversial video posted online are making waves around the globe.  Iceland is taking particular note.  The small island nation would like to position itself as a safe haven for freedom of expression.  It’s considering legislation aimed at protecting journalists, whistleblowers and website operators from legal action.  The World’s Gerry Hadden reports from Reykjavik.

GERRY HADDEN:  Gunnar Jonsson got his hands on some damning information about the collapse of the country’s banks in 2008.  He’s a reporter for Iceland’s state broadcaster.

GUNNAR JONSSON:  I actually received some documents regarding loans from a major bank here that has gone under and been taken over by the state and it showed that a lot of people were given very irresponsibly high loans with no guarantees relatively shortly before the bank collapsed.

HADDEN: Jonsson found the information on a whistleblower website called Wikileaks.

JONSSON: Which wound up turning into a major news story.  They got an injunction against us which meant that on day two we could no longer do any sort of news update on this story.  Everybody else could, we were the only ones hit by the injunction which sort of just led us to just put the link on the news.  We just said go to Wikileaks and see the whole thing for yourself.

HADDEN: Icelanders were already enraged at their banks for nearly bankrupting the country.  So the injunction set off a political fury.  It sparked what’s called the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative, or IMMI.  IMMI combines some of the world’s most aggressive freedom of speech laws in one legislative proposal.  Laws that protect journalists, their sources, their editors, even the companies that own the servers that host website.  And, organizers say IMMI would prohibit the sort of gag order that shut reporter Gunnar Jonsson up.  IMMI’s spokesman, Smari McCarthy says such injunctions undermine press freedom.

SMARI MCCARTHY:  Not just here, but all over the world.  Like all over the world there’s hundreds of journalists on the run from oppressive regimes simply because they want to tell the truth and their countries won’t let them.

HADDEN: IMMI supporters say if their proposal becomes law in Iceland, international media and publishers could set up offices or servers in the country.  Wikileaks website founder, Julian Assange says they’d be legally protected from what he calls abusive lawsuits.  He’s currently staying in Iceland to help shepherd the press freedom initiative through.

JULIAN ASSANGE:  As editor of Wikileaks I have been involved in fighting off over 100 legal attacks on us for publishing controversial material.

HADDEN: Sitting in a Reykjavik restaurant, Assange says the internet has made all news global and that that’s led to a global proliferation of frivolous attacks on the press, so-called libel tourism, principally in the U.K.

ASSANGE: Where people travel to London Courts in order to sue others from places like the United States.  Even where there was no real intervention by the U.K. jurisdiction so the material was not published from there, the author is not from there and the person suing is not from there.  And those actions really do have a suppressive effect on freedom of speech.

HADDEN: But it’s not clear that an Iceland media law would provide all that much protection beyond its borders.  Eirikur Jonsson is a law professor at the University of Iceland.

EIRIKUR JONSSON:  We can enact any law we want on freedom of expression, but there is a convention between the European states regarding the recognition of judgment in other countries. So we don’t know what will happen if somebody still tried to go to Court in the U.K .and he gets judgment there and he comes here.

HADDEN: And the waters get even murkier beyond Europe’s shores.  Could Iceland’s initiative protect, say, a dissident blogger in Iran who uploads his blogs via a server in Reykjavik?  IMMI spokesman Smari McCarthy says, probably not.

MCCARTHY:  A dissident in Iran would still have the problem of being a dissident in Iran, meaning that he could definitely publish from here and be legally protected as far as the publication goes, but he still lives in a country where that kind of activity is illegal and he might still be imprisoned.  So this probably wouldn’t provide protections in that case.  It’s just outside Iceland’s jurisdiction; we can’t do much.

HADDEN: The proposed legislation has broad political support here in Iceland.  Lawmaker Birgitta Jondotter says IMMI could be influential even if it’s difficult to enforce.

BIRGITTA JONDOTTER:  By creating this package, you can be an inspiration and its encouraging how good feedback we’ve been getting from all over the world for others who want to try to do this as well.  So if only we could set an example that would be good enough for me.

HADDEN: The proposal passed its first Parliamentary committee today.  Supporters say it could become law by the end of the year.  For The World, I’m Gerry Hadden in Reykjavik, Iceland.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.