The Guardian’s Gill Phillips in Prishtina

Join K2.0 for a Volume UP talk on Oct. 10, and a training session on Oct. 11. 

K2.0 continues its Volume UP program in October by bringing The Guardian’s director of editorial legal services, Gil Phillips, to Prishtina.

She will be delivering a public talk about the practical and legal challenges facing journalists working online on Wednesday, October 10 at Klubi M at 18:00. The next day, Thursday Oct. 11, Phillips will lead a training session alongside media lawyer Flutura Kusari on the ‘Protection of journalistic sources & safety of journalists.’ The training will run from 09:30 to 16:00 and will be held in the Klubi M.

As the director of editorial legal services at Guardian News & Media (GNM), Gill Phillips advises on a range of content-related legal matters including defamation, privacy, data protection, contempt of court and reporting restrictions. She has also advised GNM on phone-hacking, Wikileaks, the Leveson Inquiry, the NSA leaks from Edward Snowden, the HSBC files, and most recently the Panama and Paradise Papers.

Her Volume UP talk will focus on online media, which is taking over as a main source of news, especially with the drift of some print media to online-only publications, and investors focusing on news portals rather than broadcast media. However, the majority of media outlets and professional journalists are failing to address the ways in which an online presence also affects their legal standings.

The online space today raises some difficult questions about freedom of speech: Who is a journalist? Who is deserving of the protections — as well as the responsibilities — enshrined in the US First Amendment and Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights?

Legally and ethically speaking, there should be no significant difference between electronic communication and other forms of communication. Nonetheless, because the boundaries of free expression are broader in scope and harder to define on the internet, applying and enforcing those laws online is much more complicated.

For the training session, attention will switch to the safety of journalists and the protection of sources, a crucial topic in Kosovo. In 2017, 38 journalists were attacked or threatened, a fate that has already befallen another 13 in 2018.

The training session will cover the legal protection offered to journalistic sources and journalistic materials (notebooks, laptops, camera etc.), if journalists can be forced to reveal confidential sources, and what journalists should or shouldn’t do when they’re contacted by state authorities.

Due to a limited number of places (up to 20) for the training session, we kindly ask you to send an email to [email protected] with the subject “Volume UP” to register (for free) as a participant. The deadline for registration is 12:00 on Monday, Oct. 8.

As the training places are limited and will be given to the first 20 persons who register via email, please, make sure you join us if you register for this unique opportunity!

*Translation in English/Albanian will be provided.K

Volume UP is a K2.0 public talks program focused on exploring journalism models and communication approaches that change our perceptions of reality and collectivity in our daily life, beyond the everyday 24/7 news cycle.

This Volume UP talk is supported by the Council of Europe Office in Prishtina.