Why your newspaper today has blacked-out stories on the cover
Media companies from all over Australia are uniting in a surprising front to fight for press freedoms and the public’s right to know what’s happening in Australia.
The Right To Know coalition of more than a dozen of the nation’s top media companies and industry organisations are campaigning for change to six critical areas of law that allow a veil of secrecy over matters that are important to all Australians.
Some of the media companies taking a stand for press freedom are NewsCorp, ABC and The Guardian. This is due to incidents of the government raiding journalists at News Corp and the ABC.
NewsCorp journalist Annika Smethurst, who now faces possible criminal charges, reported on the government considering using new powers to spy on everyday Australians. There was also an unrelated raid at the ABC headquarters after a report detailed incidents of Australian special forces troops killing men and children in Afghanistan.
New research from NewsCorp has detailed that 87 per cent of Australians value a free and transparent democracy where the public is kept informed, but only 37 per cent believe that this is happening in Australia today.
It doesn’t help that the government withholds information related to aged care abuse as well as also withholding information and the terms of land sales to foreign companies. These are issues that Australians believe they have a right to know about.
“It’s unprecedented to see the front page of every single newspaper pointing out the same issue we are challenged with having to deal with, but this is serious. It’s serious for all Australians, not just for media, but it’s our job to actually serve our communities,” News Corp Australasia executive chairman Michael Miller said.
“When you see every media organisation lining up together to make this point, we need to see some action.”
Nine Entertainment’s CEO Hugh Marks has pointed out that the issue is not just about raids on media organisations.
“This is much bigger than the media. It’s about defending the basic right of every Australian to be properly informed about the important decisions the government is making in their name,” he said.
ABC’s Managing Director David Anderson agrees.
“Australia is at risk of becoming the world’s most secretive democracy,” he said.
“We’ve seen the public’s right to know slowly erode over the past two decades, with the introduction of laws that make it more difficult for people to speak up when they see wrongdoing and for journalists to report these stories.”
The six Australia’s Right To Know reforms being sought are:
- the right to contest any kind of search warrant on journalists or news organisations before the warrant is issued;
- law change to ensure public sector whistleblowers are adequately protected;
- a new regime that limits which documents can be marked ‘secret’;
- review of Freedom of Information laws
- that journalists be exempt from national security laws enacted over the past seven years that currently can put them in jail for doing their job; and
- reform to defamation laws.