The lawyer Amal Clooney has joined the foreign secretary, Jeremy Hunt, in criticising Donald Trump’s attacks on the media, saying the US president has emboldened individuals who wish to persecute journalists.
“The country of James Madison has a leader today who vilifies the media, making honest journalists all over the world more vulnerable to abuse,” said Clooney, referencing the former president who helped ensure freedom of speech is enshrined in the US constitution.
Hunt, who appeared alongside Clooney at a media freedom conference in central London, also criticised Trump for calling journalists the “enemy of the people”.
“I wouldn’t use the language President Trump used and I wouldn’t agree with it,” he said. “We have to remember that what we say can have an impact in other countries where we can’t take press freedom for granted.”
The pair were speaking at the Global Conference for Media Freedom, an event organised by the Foreign Office in coordination with the Canadian government.
Hunt, who is likely to be in his final weeks as foreign secretary regardless of the outcome of the Tory leadership contest, said he hoped the event would become annual and announced £600,000 a year of extra funding to provide support and training to journalists around the world. “Media freedom is not a western value but a universal value. It frees a society from the abuse of power,” he said.
However, the event also showed some of the contradictions inherent in the government calling for press freedom while maintaining close relations with governments such as that of Saudi Arabia, which was implicated in the brutal murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
“We have to be honest that we have lots of priorities,” admitted Hunt. “It is our job to create jobs for people and protect security. The way you achieve results will be different with different countries. In some countries it is right to call things out publicly, in others through private contacts. The crucial thing is you do something, not nothing.”
He said a free press led to better government and defended the right of the Mail on Sunday to publish the leaked diplomatic cables that led to the departure of US ambassador Kim Darroch: “I deplore those leaks. I defend to the hilt the right of the press to publish them if they receive them.”
Clooney, who earlier this year was appointed by Hunt as the British government’s envoy on media freedom, also said the UK itself was far from perfect, highlighting the recent arrest of two Northern Irish journalists who were investigating police collusion with murderers.
She also said that governments needed to exert proper diplomatic pressure on other countries that persecuted journalists and not just pay lip service to press freedom. “Signing pledges and making speeches is not enough. States must ensure that when a journalist is attacked then that crime is investigated and held to account.
“Last year when Jamal Khashoggi, Washington Post columnist, was tortured to death and dismembered by Saudi Arabian officials in Istanbul, world leaders responded with little more than a collective shrug.”
In a sign of the changing media environment, the conference was held in a building in London’s docklands that used to house the Daily Mail’s printing presses but has since been converted to a clubbing and event space.
Kremlin-funded outlets RT and Sputnik were banned from the event by the Foreign Office, although representatives of the anti-Islam Canadian outlet Rebel Media were in attendance, repeatedly painting messages of support for their employee Tommy Robinson – real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon – who faces jail after being found in contempt of court over his reporting on a trial, on an “interactive mural” celebrating press freedom.