Freedom of the Press

[Aussie]

Anyone who has followed my Posts will know that I have been a long term critic of this so called 'freedom.' I hope this 'News of the World' incident precipitates a massive collapse in confidence with the Media so much so that it may lead to a point where we can say that the Media has forfeited whatever right it had to 'freedom.'

One of the cornerstones claimed by the Press and fundamental they would argue to this 'freedom' is what they have always claimed as their right to keep secret their sources. No bloody wonder when we now know precisely what they are using these days as a 'source.' The very first thing I would legislate is that a Journalist may be compelled to reveal their source under very severe sanction if they refuse.

Fuck the Media and it's erstwhile sanctimonious piety, now in tatters and heading down the sewer, as it ought. Journalists are modern day muggers of the private space of ordinary citizens lawfully going about their most private affairs.

Fuck the Media in the ear.

This 'freedom' they had was well earned in days long gone by honest brokers who wrote, printed and distributed their own newspapers in a more decent World where integrity had a meaning, where the story was important and had public interest, as opposed to these mongrel times where Moguls like Murdoch far remote from what appears in the Media care only for self interest, and profit. Their minions understand (or at least until recently, they did) they are bullet proofed by the sheer power of their Boss and their ability to plead preservation of source whenever challenged.

Bloody hell.....the arseholes are using unlawful means to garner information which they then publish. The poor victim can hardly sue because what has been printed is really true, and probably so personal to the victim, they would rather the matter just 'go away.' The Media chortle....'great work boys and girls, great story, filled the required number of column inches, who gives a fuck about the lives we just intruded upon.' I give you the way the Media destroyed Nixon using that idiot lying St. Kilda girl as the most recent Australian example.

We must have a statutory right to privacy, and we must have a Media which is accountable to society, not a media which interferes with the very fabric of our social soul.

[donniedarko]

As a public servant I can honestly say that I don't think all the data that govts collect about individuals is protected all that well.

There may be legislation or similar that are meant to protect confidential information but there really is no policing of the every-day transactions of data within govt at all.

[boxy]

"I give you the way the Media destroyed Nixon using that idiot lying St. Kilda girl as the most recent Australian example."

What's that got to do with it?

Or are you going past forcing them to dob in their whistleblowers, and outlawing them printing stuff that people actually say as well?

[Aussie]

Or are you going past forcing them to dob in their whistleblowers, and outlawing them printing stuff that people actually say as well?

Can you clarify that in terms of what my opening post was addressing?

[donniedarko]

The rights of freedom of media and the national privacy principles/right to privacy do not see eye to eye.

[boxy]

You post a piece, complainging about the media using illegal hacking/surveilance, and then give an example of them reporting what a lying schoolgirl said in the open. Doesn't seem like a good example at all...

And anyway... what they did is already illegal.

[Aussie]

You post a piece, complainging about the media using illegal hacking/surveilance, and then give an example of them reporting what a lying schoolgirl said in the open. Doesn't seem like a good example at all...

And anyway... what they did is already illegal.

Ah....I get it.

Bah.....the fuckers went hard and long, publishing photos of that bloke doing what he was lawfully entitled to do....and at the same time, smeared him with mud......which stuck. Cost him his career.

I don't want to get bogged down with the Nixon/St. Kilda girl media scrum, boxy, so maybe it was a bad example.

[boxy]

There are times when personal information is indeed in the public interest. When a public figure (esp. pollies) puts out a false impression, or act against their stated principles, the public have a right to know... the press don't have the right to illegally get such information, but they do have a right to do what would otherwise be seen as an invasion of privacy.

[mellie]

Wakey wakey...

Gillard and Brown are shootin’ the messenger

The push by Bob Brown and Julia Gillard for a parliamentary inquiry into the media is so cynical, manipulative and transparently biased that if we really were as evil as they believe we’d congratulate them both for joining the dark side.

Both leaders are seeking to establish a connection in the public’s mind between the obscene and illegal practices exposed in the UK and perfectly conventional and legitimate journalism and commentary in Australia with which they just happen to disagree.

It is extraordinary both how blatantly they have hijacked the issue and how seamlessly the more naïve and ideological sections of the community have followed them to this at best offensive and at worst dangerous illogicality.

The UK phone tapping scandal is about a British newspaper or newspapers engaging in illegal activity against ordinary citizens, most disgracefully, in some cases, the victims of crime.

This is now being used as justification by the Prime Minister and Senator Brown for a parliamentary inquiry into the local media. But why?

Do they have any evidence of phone tapping here? No.

Do they have any evidence of illegal activity here? No.

Do they even accuse reporters of behaving in a dishonest fashion or employing dishonest practices to obtain information here? No.

Yet still Brown wants an inquiry into media practices and ethics here.

That, it appears, is Australian journalists’ reward for not engaging in dirty and unscrupulous practices and generally being fairly decent types: A McCarthy-esque fishing expedition based on not a shred of evidence. Not even an allegation.

This absurd logic is the equivalent of police officers walking up to random people in the street and forcing them to prove they are not criminals.

And how will it work? Will rumpled press gallery scribes be dragged from their beds to testify which politicians they were drinking with the night before? Who said what? What was on or off the record? Will they have to give up sources? Expose whistleblowers? Will they, as Senator Joe encouraged so enthusiastically in the 50s, have to name names?

And of course media ownership will be scrutinised. And why is that again?

Were the dodgy practices engaged at News of the World caused by concentration of media ownership? Er, no.

In fact the running theory as to why such dirty tricks were employed is that competition in the UK newspaper market is so fierce and so cutthroat that papers would resort to anything to get the edge on their rivals – even those in the same stable.

So no, it’s not that there’s any indication of dodgy behaviour or that media ownership has caused dodgy behaviour, so what is it? Why are we having this inquiry again?

Well gosh, no one can really say. But there might be a teeny-weeny clue in the fact that Brown describes the Murdoch press as “hate media” and that Gillard this week told the press gallery: “Don’t write crap.”

Now it’s one thing for a politician to point to a news report or editorial or opinion piece and say “that is crap” and tell the world why, but it’s a tad chilling when a Prime Minister instructs reporters not to “write crap” in the middle of a debate about a new regulatory framework to govern the media. Who’s going to enforce that edict? The Ministry of Truth?

At least Gillard’s statement confirms what is shriekingly obvious: that this inquiry has nothing to do with the illegal or unethical behaviour of journalists and is all about an unpopular Government trying to stem criticism from a free press.

That alone should be enough to make citizens recoil from this absurd proposition and in a perfect world this piece would end there, but let’s indulge the Brown-Gillard position even further.

Perhaps this “free” press is in fact malevolent and evil? Unfair and unbalanced? Surely News Ltd is just a right-wing juggernaut determined to annihilate progressive Governments the world over? Surely News Ltd is a climate change-denying behemoth hellbent on destroying the emissions trading scheme?

What historical revisionism.

The Australian and The Daily Telegraph both openly endorsed Labor at the 2007 election, at which Kevin Rudd campaigned overwhelmingly on a platform of action against climate change.

Not only that, News Ltd itself is a 100 per cent carbon neutral company, having already reduced or offset all its emissions in just three years.

In fact, as is well known to all in politics and the media, the halcyon days of the Labor Government ended because Rudd abandoned the emissions trading scheme at the urging of Gillard and others.

After Rudd plummeted in the polls for taking this woeful advice, the same people who advised him then knifed him in an unprecedented palace coup that was shocking to and deeply unpopular with the public and remains so to this day.

Following the assassination, Gillard then embarked upon what Labor powerbroker Graham Richardson – possibly the nation’s top political strategist – called “the worst campaign in history”.

During that time she unequivocally vowed that there would be no carbon tax under any government she led.

After the woeful campaign resulted in a hung parliament, Gillard reneged on her promise in order to win the support of the Greens and enable her to form government.

Since then, that deception and a string of policy failures – most notably asylum seekers (remember the East Timor solution?) and lately live cattle exports (not enough action when it was needed and then too much action when it wasn’t) – have left Labor at record low standing, with barely a quarter of voters supporting the party.

And yet the PM claims – or at least deliberately implies – that her unpopularity is due to an overly critical press.

The argument here, apparently, is that a Government which has driven itself into uncharted depths of antipathy in the public’s view, should still be treated generously by the newspapers, even though their readers and the electorate are overwhelmingly opposed to it. Perhaps that is one of the rules that will be enforced by the media’s new governing body.

The truth – and perhaps it is a sad truth – is that there is no conspiracy. After enormously promising beginnings, this Government has been nothing short of a disaster and the media – the News Ltd media at least – has reflected both the ups and the downs. It is telling that no one was calling for a media inquiry in 2007 and 2008 when Kevin Rudd was riding high but now that the Government’s copping a drubbing it wants to investigate editorial ethics.

And perhaps the biggest irony of all is that one of the reasons Gillard was installed as leader was because she was considered to be such a good communicator and media performer. Now that she’s fallen short, again the media is to blame.

The spectacular implosion and then decline of the ALP Government is many things: tragic, disastrous and – for any genuine Labor supporter – simply heartbreaking. But it is not the media’s fault, it is squarely its own.



Shooting the messenger is as easy as it is lazy and cowardly. If the Government wants better media coverage it shouldn’t be looking towards regulation, it should look towards the harder and braver task of enacting and making the case for policies that connect with both the electorate and Labor’s own values, instead of the panicked and ever-changing grab-bag of ideas nicked from the Coalition (offshore processing) and the Greens (carbon tax).

The PM also needs to get some serious and urgent advice on how to handle both the public and the media so as to avoid PR Titanics ranging from “the real Julia” to this week’s excruciatingly awkward exchange with the “Why did you lie to us?” woman.

Governments can usually get by on good policy or good spin; the best have both, this one has neither. Using the appalling behaviour of UK tabloids as an excuse to pursue a political agenda against the Australian press is just more proof of that.

http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/Gil ... messenger/

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[donniedarko]

There are times when personal information is indeed in the public interest.

What is the 'public interest' though?

When making a determination about whether the release of information is in the public interest, a custodian needs to weigh up the balance of loss of personal privacy (and we can use the term 'personal' to include an entity, such as a hospital or school, and not just a person) against the overall benefit to the public/public interest. When does the right to information outweigh the rights to privacy?

I think this consideration gets blurred, in that the public may well be interested (and sell more copies of the daily rag), but would there really been any benefit to the public? Would the net public utility/interest really be increased by the release of that information?

Consider this: a researcher applies to Medicare (or some other data holder), wanting to do a study on men with AIDS (or kids with sexual health issues, or kids expelled from school, or whatever). The researcher plans to collect data via interviews, and therefore wants to contact the subject.

This is groundbreaking research. It could be argued that the data collected may lead to AIDS prevention which may lead to improved care etc yadda.

Data is released in the public interest (which is the main test of releasing data in the absence of informed consent). Man on death's bed (or child or even child's parent) gets a phone call from a researcher, who says that Medicare or whoever has released data to them, and could they please ask him about how he took precautions against HIV (or could they pls ask the child about their contraceptive use?)

Subject rightly says 'how the fuck did you get my information? I'm fucking dying here and some @#$%@ gave you my name to ask me questions!'. (or insert said expletives from parents etc)

Now, this is vastly different to finding out that Gillard prefers gimps (ooops!!....it's ok - the public needs to know). I am just trying to see if we can blow some fog away from the greyness of 'public interest' vs 'public exposure'.