Free Press Unlimited has published a response to an article that appeared Wednesday on De Correspondent. In that piece, we reconstruct how the Dutch development aid organization – which fights for global freedom of the press – censored the staff of its South Sudanese radio station, Radio Tamazuj. This occurred after the radio station published articles that were critical of one of Free Press Unlimited’s major donors.
In its public response, Free Press Unlimited (FPU) questions the article and our methods.
What does FPU say in its response?
- FPU states that our article is based on claims made by “a disgruntled former employee.”
We investigated every claim in this article using the journalistic principle that a single source is no source – which means that all the article’s claims are supported by multiple, independent sources. Aside from the fact that this is evident in the article itself – in which many of our sources are directly quoted – we also expressly told Free Press Unlimited this when we asked for its response pre-publication. Yet the organization stands by its accusation. FPU does not address the direct quotes.
- FPU states that the claims “are demonstrably untrue, and could have been refuted immediately if De Correspondent had contacted us directly for a response to these claims.”
We did contact Free Press Unlimited directly. We sent the full article to FPU for comment on Monday at 4:00pm. Along with the article, we sent four concrete questions for FPU to answer – and five for supervisory board chair Joop Daalmeijer – and gave them the opportunity to point out factual inaccuracies to us before we published. And FPU did, in fact, respond within the 24-hour deadline we posed.
FPU notes that it felt 24 hours wasn’t enough time. We disagree. In journalism, 24 hours is a common standard. It’s unclear how FPU could have used additional time to prove that the article is inaccurate. And so far, FPU has not demonstrated that the claims in the article are “demonstrably” untrue.
FPU lists four factual inaccuracies in its response, each of which we carefully reviewed before publication.
- Point 1 presents Free Press Unlimited’s view of its disagreement with the station’s editor in chief regarding the series of articles about Internews. We included this viewpoint in our article. FPU says it has not committed censorship, but email exchanges and meeting notes show that it did indeed pressure the station’s staff to change the course of their reporting. One such piece of evidence is this email from FPU director Leon Willems to the station’s staff: “[W]e urge you to stop publishing additional stories along the same line which are disputed. That includes new stories that harm persons and organizations who have been the subject of these already published stories.” Meeting notes and email exchanges make it clear that the primary motivation driving this request was Internews’s decision to cut off FPU’s funding. Free Press Unlimited does not address this.
- In point 2, FPU presents an alternative explanation for why the station’s website passwords were changed. First and foremost, it’s important to note that in its reaction, FPU confirms that it took over and changed the station’s website passwords, so that the editor in chief and other editors no longer had access. FPU says it was forced to take this measure because it doubted the editor in chief’s professionality. We also included this explanation in our article. Our sources do not confirm this version of events. We asked FPU to provide facts that support its claims, but so far we haven’t received any.
- We incorporated FPU’s response in the third and fourth points into the article before publication. We do not say that Free Press Unlimited “would only strive for the independence of Radio Tamazuj on paper,” nor that the editors were “aimless and demotivated.” These two points are thus irrelevant.
In its response on its website and on Twitter and Facebook, Free Press Unlimited also speaks of “dozens of factual inaccuracies” it claims to have found in our article. FPU has not told us what they are. It goes without saying that we are always open to correcting factual errors, which we also told FPU on Monday.
For completeness’ sake, we would like to list the claims that Free Press Unlimited does not address in its response.
Free Press Unlimited does not deny:
… that Radio Tamazuj’s staff was approached by FPU regarding the poor timing of its pieces on Internews, in connection with the funding that had been cut off.
… that FPU’s director asked the station’s staff not to publish any more items on Internews.
… that FPU’s chair, Joop Daalmeijer, said to the station’s editor in chief, “try not to bite the hand of the person who is feeding you” and “try not to offend a donor.” (In its response, FPU calls the first phrase “an unfortunate choice of words.”)
… that Free Press Unlimited took over the station’s website passwords, so that the editor in chief and other editors could no longer access the website.
… that Free Press Unlimited did not keep its promise to have an independent panel review Radio Tamazuj’s contested articles.
