When Australians open their phones or laptops to confront the firehose of news and information pouring out, it can seem that the problem is too much media freedom, rather than too little.
But in 2019, when the Australian Federal Police raided journalists from two news organisations searching for evidence of the sources of two stories, The New York Times suggested “Australia may well be the world’s most secretive democracy”.
To make its case, the newspaper pointed to a sweeping array of national security laws — 92 passed since 9/11 alone, and more than any other country on earth — including many that criminalise what would otherwise be regarded as legitimate journalism elsewhere.
Some of those laws expose journalists’ data and sources to overbearing investigation, others risk putting legitimate whistleblowers behind bars, and together they severely restrict transparency and accountability across the government.
I, and some colleagues who worked on the campaign to get me out of prison after an Egyptian court convicted me and two others of terrorism, recognised that problem after I was released in 2015. We saw the way Cairo had used loosely framed national security laws to silence uncomfortable journalism.
Of course, journalists are not routinely thrown behind bars in Australia, but the laws here act as a deterrent. We will never know how many stories are not told because of the legislation, but a study by my colleagues at the University of Queensland indisputably shows that it is having a chilling effect on public interest journalism.
That is why we formed the Alliance for Journalists’ Freedom. We realised that there was no independent organisation in Australia that campaigns specifically on the issue.
And if there is a problem in Australia, there is a more severe crisis within our region. China is the world’s most prolific jailer of journalists. Myanmar, Vietnam, India, Laos, Bangladesh and the Philippines, to name a few, all have depressing records of persecuting journalists who try to honour a professional duty to hold governments to account.
Like any organisation with limited resources, we need to pick our battles, so we decided to focus on our own territory before we can credibly support journalism among our neighbours.
Australia is the only liberal Western democracy that does not have a national human rights charter with press freedom written into it. Given the dismal record of failed attempts at getting one, we believe a more realistic solution is a narrowly focused media freedom act that clearly protects the space in which journalists can operate.
We are not advocating for complete freedom for journalists to publish whatever they want — it would be wrong to expose impending security operations or your tax records, for example — but a media freedom act would obligate our parliamentarians to consider the public interest in a free media whenever they are passing new legislation, when security agencies are investigating journalists, or when a court has journalists in the dock.
If journalists deserve rights, they also have certain responsibilities. What separates journalism from everything else online that might look like the real thing but isn’t, is accountability to a recognised code of conduct. The reason we single out press freedom as a special type of freedom of expression is that we understand the need for reliable, accurate, timely and independent reporting on what our governments, organisations and other people in power are up to. That only works if it is done to certain ethical and professional standards.
That is why the other half of our work involves advocating for an improved system of industry self-regulation, built around voluntary membership of a professional association. Such an association would admit anyone who knows and understands the law and their obligations and consistently applies them, and it would allow members to badge their work so readers can recognise and therefore trust content that makes the grade. It might also sanction any member who fails their obligations.
Those two deficiencies — the lack of legislated protection for media freedom and a robust system of industry regulation — mean that important public-interest reporting is being choked off.
This is why Crikey chose to direct to us any unspent money raised in its crowdfunding campaign for its defamation battle against Lachlan Murdoch.
We recognise that Crikey’s supporters wanted to defend an important principle around media freedom, and the right — indeed the need — for journalists to ask uncomfortable questions of the powerful, and to hold them to account. Together, they raised an impressive sum, of which more than half a million dollars has been donated to the Alliance for Journalists’ Freedom.
Although we need to plan carefully for how we will use the unexpected resource to best effect, it will turbocharge our advocacy. It will help us finish drafting a model media freedom act (already well underway), and then hold a series of seminars and roundtables to test the law to make sure it does what it is intended to do.
It will help pay for visits to Canberra to get the political support we need. It will also help us develop a more sophisticated model for a professional association. And it will help us to identify other areas of press restrictions where we believe we can make a difference.
Each of the Alliance for Journalists’ Freedom’s directors is incredibly grateful to the folks at Crikey and the people who donated, ultimately, to us. Thank you. Our commitment to you is to ensure that your investment is well spent.
