COMMENT

On a cold winter’s night in July 2016, thousands of people gathered inside and outside Rotten Row magistrate’s court in Harare to await the verdict in the Zimbabwean government’s case against Pastor Evan Mawarire, the leader of the #ThisFlag movement and a staunch opponent of then-president Robert Mugabe. 

When the magistrate eventually threw out the treason charges brought against Mawarire for peacefully rallying people against corruption, a street party broke out. It was an unexpected victory for the rule of law — won, at least in part, through collective nonviolent action by people.

In its most basic form, the rule of law simply means that no one is above the law. Everyone is treated fairly and justly, and the government does not exercise its power arbitrarily. These principles lie at the heart of the ongoing protests against systemic racism and police brutality in the United States following the death of George Floyd. The rule of law is very different from rule by law, which characterises many authoritarian states and, increasingly, some democracies as well.

Many argue, not unreasonably, that building robust institutions is essential to strengthening the rule of law. But what do you do when the institutions which are meant to uphold the rule of law are so hollowed out that they have become the primary tools for its subversion? 

The conventional focus on “building institutions” can leave people feeling disempowered, waiting patiently for the all-important institutions to reform, while they remain on the receiving end of oppression meted out by those very institutions. 

It can also lead to unhelpful interventions by well-meaning external actors, which inadvertently strengthen the authoritarian capabilities of captured institutions rather than the rule of law.

To strengthen the rule of law, we first need to focus on strengthening people, not institutions. This involves the difficult, dangerous and often unglamorous work of grassroots organising that empowers citizens to act through informal channels outside of established institutions. 

Such action includes nonviolent protests — marches, boycotts, strikes and pickets — as well as citizens’ initiatives that directly improve people’s lives, such as worker advice centres and community gardens.

Such efforts are especially necessary in authoritarian states where institutions are fundamentally broken. But even in established democracies, the recent failure of supposedly strong institutions to prevent the rule of law from being undermined has shown that there is no substitute for an active and organised citizenry. 

Such engagement cannot be legislated or decreed, or copied and pasted from another jurisdiction. People must build it collectively from the ground up.

Building people power starts with opening citizens’ minds to a different type of society and a new way of doing things. In apartheid South Africa, for example, the study groups and adult literacy classes in townships during the 1970s helped to lay the groundwork for the mass movement that emerged in the 1980s under the banner of the United Democratic Front (UDF). 

The UDF would go on to play a leading role in the struggle against apartheid, culminating in 1990 with Nelson Mandela’s release from prison and the unbanning of the ANC.

Next, like-minded people need to organise themselves, connect with one another in the real world (not just on social media) and become actively involved in issues directly affecting their lives. These issues might at first be local rather than national, and involve less risky actions. 

Over time,people build mutual trust and gain confidence in themselves and their collective power as a group. Coalitions form and actions become larger in scope and perhaps more confrontational. Before you know it, a social movement emerges that is bigger than any of the individuals or organisations involved and can unlock people’s power to bring about change.

People power can strengthen the rule of law in at least three ways. For starters, it can counteract and even neutralise the top-down pressure placed on courts and police by the authorities — typically, the executive. This can help to ensure that even hollowed-out or compromised institutions discharge their duties in accordance with the rule of law, as in the case involving Mawarire.

Second, a people-power movement can create alternative spaces that prefigure a society in which the rule of law is respected. The movement must operate internally in a just and fair way, and apply the same standards to all its members regardless of rank. And any civil disobedience must have a strategic purpose and be highly disciplined, so that participants understand that such action does not constitute a rejection of the rule of law, but rather a means of establishing it.

Third, people power has repeatedly proved to be an effective tool in defeating even the most brutal dictatorships and achieving a transition to a more democratic system of governance. Far-reaching reforms that strengthen the rule of law can then be implemented in ways that would not have been possible under a corrupted system. 

In November last year, for example, Sudan’s new transitional authority — established after months of nonviolent protests against president Omar al-Bashir’s dictatorship and then against the military regime that ousted him — repealed an oppressive public-order law that had governed how women could behave and dress in public. Although Sudan’s transition is by no means complete, this represented a huge triumph for the rule of law. It would not have been achieved without people power.

Authoritarian leaders understand and fear people power. Soon after Mawarire’s hearing, the Zimbabwean regime erected a fence around Rotten Row magistrate’s court to prevent similar public gatherings there. 

But just as authoritarian regimes adapt and learn from their past mistakes, those of us fighting for a society based on the rule of law also must adjust, innovate and improvise, and accumulate enough power to dismantle the oppressive systems that shackle us. 

Only through the struggle of people can we eventually shift our focus to building strong institutions that protect everyone equally. — © Project Syndicate

Doug Coltart is a lawyer at Mtetwa & Nyambirai Legal Practitioners in Zimbabwe. He writes in his personal capacity

The New York Times opinion editor James Bennet resigned recently after the paper published a controversial opinion essay by U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton that advocated using the military to put down protests.

The essay sparked outrage among the public as well as among younger reporters at the paper. Many of those staffers participated in a social media campaign aimed at the paper’s leadership, asking for factual corrections and an editor’s note explaining what was wrong with the essay.

Eventually, the staff uprising forced Bennet’s departure.

Cotton’s column was published on the opinion pages – not the news pages. But that’s a distinction often lost on the public, whose criticisms during the recent incident were often directed at the paper as a whole, including its news coverage. All of which raises a longstanding question: What’s the difference between the news and opinion side of a news organization?

It is a tenet of American journalism that reporters working for the news sections of newspapers remain entirely independent of the opinion sections. But the divide between news and opinion is not as clear to many readers as journalists believe that it is.

And because American news consumers have become accustomed to the ideal of objectivity in news, the idea that opinions bleed into the news report potentially leads readers to suspect that reporters have a political agenda, which damages their credibility, and that of their news organizations.

How news and opinion grew apart

Long before newspapers became institutions for collecting and distributing news, they were instruments for the personal expression of individuals – their owners. There was little thought given to whether or not opinion and fact were intermingled.

Benjamin Franklin ran the Pennsylvania Gazette from 1729 to 1748 as a vehicle for his own political and scientific ideas and even just his day-to-day observations. The Gazette of the United States, first published in 1789, was the most prominent Federalist paper of its time and was funded in part by Alexander Hamilton, whose letters and essays it published anonymously.

In the early 19th century, newspapers were often nakedly partisan, since many of them were funded by political parties.

Over the course of the 19th century, though, newspapers began to seek a popular audience. As they grew in circulation, some began to emphasize their independence from faction.

Coupled with the rise of journalism schools and press organizations, this independence enshrined “fact” and “truth” as what scholar Barbie Zelizer calls “God-terms” of journalism by the early 20th century.

Newspaper owners never wanted to give up their influence on public opinion, however. As news became the main product of the newspaper, publishers established editorial pages, where they could continue to endorse their favorite politicians or push for pet causes.

These pages are typically run by editorial boards, which are staffs of writers, often with individual areas of expertise (economics or foreign policy or, in smaller papers, state politics), who draft editorial essays. They are then voted on by the board, which usually includes the publisher. They’re then published, usually with no author attribution, as the official opinions of the newspaper. There are variations on this process: Often the editorial board will decide on topics and the paper’s opinion before these writers get to work on their drafts.

James Bennet, The New York Times opinion editor who resigned, acknowledged in an article on the paper’s website that was published in January 2020, months before the Cotton essay, that “the role of the editorial board can be confusing, particularly to readers who don’t know The Times well.”

Through most the 20th century, newspapers reassured their readers and their reporters that there was a “wall” between the news and opinion sides of their operations.

Publishers relied on this idea of separation to insist that their news reporting was fair and independent, and they believed that readers understood that separation.

This is a particularly American way of operating. Readers in other countries usually expect their newspapers to have a point of view, representing a particular party or ideology.

The creation of the op-ed page

One way that newspapers found to allow a greater range of opinion in its pages was to create an op-ed page, which publishes opinions by individuals, not those of the editorial board. As journalism historian Michael Socolow recounts, John Oakes, the editorial page editor of The New York Times in 1970, created the first op-ed page because, he felt, “a newspaper most effectively fulfills its social and civic responsibilities by challenging authority, acting independently, and inviting dissent.”

“Op-ed” is short for “opposite the editorial page,” not “opinion and editorial” or opinions that are opposite from those of the editorial page. Literally, the name comes from the fact that it was located across from – opposite – the editorial page in the print newspaper.

The op-ed page of a print newspaper typically includes the newspaper’s opinion columnists. These are employees of the paper who write regularly. The paper also usually publishes a selection of opinion pieces from outside writers. Newspapers around the country emulated the Times after the op-ed page debuted.

Online opinions, changing norms and blurred lines

With the expansion of opinion pages online, the Times was publishing 120 opinion pieces a week at the time of James Bennet’s resignation.

While the move online allows The New York Times op-ed page to vastly increase its output, it also creates a problem: Opinion stories no longer look clearly different from news stories.

With many readers coming to news sites from social media links, they may not pay attention to the subtle clues that mark a story published by the opinion staff.

Add to this the fact that even readers who go to a paper’s homepage are met with news and opinion stories displayed graphically at the same level, connoting the same level of importance. And reporters share analysis and opinion on Twitter, further confusing readers.

The news sections of the paper also increasingly run stories that contain a level of news analysis that casual readers might not be able to distinguish from what The New York Times designates as opinion.

In 1970, when the op-ed page debuted in The New York Times, daily newspaper circulation was equivalent to 98% of U.S. households. By 2010, that number had dropped below 40% and has continued to dip since then.

Even if readers in 1970 could clearly differentiate between news and opinion, they likely do not have the same level of critical engagement when news exists online and in almost unmanageable volume.

If news organisations such as The New York Times continue to maintain that a robust opinion section, separate from their news reports, serves to further the public conversation, then those institutions will need to do a better job of explaining to news consumers where – or if – the “wall” between news and opinion exists.

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Kevin M. Lerner, Assistant Professor of Journalism, Marist College

This article is republished under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.