Truly, it seems only yesterday, when on May 5 this year I ventured out to a Sydney Writers Festival (SWF) event called A Dangerous Time to Tell the Truth.
Chaired by ABC Four Corners' Sophie McNeill, Mexican reporter Anabel Hernandez, Iraqi-American writer Dunya Mikhail and Turkish journalist Ece Temelkuran were discussing the dire threat to journalists in their countries of origin. If my memory serves me correctly, an underlying assumption of the discussion then was that all were speaking in a country, Australia, where freedom of the press could, more or less, be taken for granted. (Palestine, Syria and Iran aside, of course.)
How ironic is it now, in the light of the recent Australian Federal Police (AFP) raids on News Corps reporter Annika Smethurst and the ABC, that, barely a month on from May 5, this assumption can no longer be legitimately entertained?
What with Australia's abandonment of journalist Julian Assange and the plight of whistleblowers such as Richard Boyle (who blew the whistle on the ATO and faces 6 life sentences if found guilty) and David William McBride (a former legal adviser to Australia's special forces in Afghanistan and named alongside three ABC journalists in the ABC's search warrant),* not to mention PM Morrison's wholly unconvincing assertion that his government had been "operationally at complete arm's length" from the raids, it appears as though the comforting assumption of May 5 at the SWF that Australia has a free press and that msm journalists and public-spirited whistleblowers are safe from harm's way was nothing more than an illusion.
[*See Whistleblower caught the eye of storm, Michael Whitbourn, Sydney Morning Herald, 6/6/19. This, mind you, going back to the ABC's then uncontroversial publication on 11/7/17 of The Afghan Files, when Malcolm Turnbull was still prime minister! Note that Morrison succeeded Turnbull on 24/8/18. You can draw your own conclusion about the timing of these raids. I note too that Sophie McNeill has tweeted on the subject of the raids, referencing The New York Times, thus: "Shame. 'Australia stands out. No other developed democracy holds as tight to its secrets, experts say, and the raids are just the latest example of how far the country's conservative government will go to scare officials and reporters into submission'." (Australia: The world's most secretive democracy)]
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Sadly, Merc, that is why I occasionally post as 'Anonymous', and, even then, use a VPN. Truly frightening.
Post a Comment