Seemingly out of the blue, Australia’s main media outlets have actually agreed on something other than money and their desire for more money, and have got together to launch a campaign called “Australia’s Right to Know.” The focus of the campaign is the decrease in media freedom in Australia, and the perceived lack of genuine freedom compared with other liberal democracies. Reports: ABC, Oz, news.com.au, SMH. They are being quite forceful, too, describing Australia as a ‘lightweight democracy’ in comparison to other countries.
According to a spokesman for News Ltd, which is leading the campaign,
The media industry is getting together because it is deeply troubled about the state of free speech in Australia and the gradual erosion over many years of the right to free speech and the ability of the media to keep Australians fully informed
To its credit, The Australian has been vocal over the years on the subject of freedom of the press, and particularly issues such as freedom of information - it even fought a (sadly unsuccessful) legal battle against the current Government for access to certain treasury documents under the FOI Act. Fairfax has likewise been very active in highlighting issues such as the restrictions placed on free speech by terrorism legislation.
On the other hand, it would be most interesting to see what the crusaders at News Ltd have to say on the subject of media outlets which consistently report one side of an issue, and which report opinion as ‘news’. Of course, Mr Murdoch’s organisation would be the same one in which all 175 editors of his newspapers across the world supported the Iraq invasion. And that would be the same Mr Murdoch involved in this exchange:
Murdoch was asked if News Corp. had managed to shape the agenda on the war in Iraq. His answer?
“No, I don’t think so. We tried.” Asked by Rose for further comment, he said: “We basically supported the Bush policy in the Middle East…but we have been very critical of his execution.”
So what’s worse? Government censorship, or a self-censoring media collaborating with the government?
For more, here’s an interesting blog about privacy and freedom of information in Australia, and here’s a paper from the Press Council about how FOI could be improved in this country.
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