
Australia Newspapers Redact Front Pages in Media-Freedom Protest - soroushjp
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-10-20/australia-newspapers-redact-front-pages-in-media-freedom-protest
======
stephen_g
The biggest problem with the whole thing is that they've been completely on-
board with the Government's creeping authoritarianism, as long as they get
some exemptions for journalists. But more recently, they found (just as all
the tech experts, law groups, civil society groups and human rights groups
warned - but mostly ignored in the media's coverage) that these laws can
actually be used against them - and they have. Sources are drying up as the
Government destroys whistleblowers financially (through endless lawsuits) and
now subjects them to harsh jail terms. And the whistleblowers we are talking
about are the the ones that bring Government wrongdoing to light.

The other blatant hypocrisy is Labor jumping on the #righttoknow bandwagon.
They waved through the draconian TOLA act, warrantless metadata retention,
voting for them and all the other over-reaching, flawed legislation despite
huge campaigns by experts and the public, when they had almost the numbers to
block it in the Senate.

~~~
giancarlostoro
Lately on HN I have made a number of comments about censorship: today it
sounds great cause it shuts out those you hate. Tomorrow its used against your
very voice. Do not disarm yourself entirely and give the government total
power. Laws that are too strong in an attempt to stop criminals wind up
punishing law abiding citizens.

These comments have been in regards to Twitter, Discord, Google, Facebook and
so on all trying to define fake news or ban people with certain political
affiliations. The saddest thing is that mainstream media pushes unverified
sources on the race to being first. Nobody punishes them for being
incompetent. If theres eyeballs for ads who cares?

There is a reason in America we have a constitution and a bill of rights. It
could very well be argued our bill of rights was written in blood. The blood
of those who fought against totalitarian type of governments who forbade:
freedom of speech and religious beliefs, freedom to protect oneself and their
families against bad people and rogue governments. Those two foundational
things shouldnt be compromised under the guise of a safer country. It will not
end well. History says so.

Sadly there are some in America who are quickly forgetting these things and
are foolishly ready to give the kings to the kingdom away.

Without free speech we will perish and follow in the steps of bad forms of
government. Without the right to defend ourselves legally, we give the
government all power over us. Just ask Russia and Venezuela how those
democratic elections are going for them.

~~~
ben_w
I’ve had incomplete ideas about this bouncing around my head for a while now.

My current analogy is:

Censorship is the opium of the government.

Pain _feels_ bad, but _is_ good because it tells you when something bad has
happened. Investigative journalism revealing wrongdoing is a type of pain.
Censorship makes the pain go away without solving the real problems.

If you’re doing the political equivalent of surgery, you need the painkiller,
but it is highly addictive — if you don’t stop using it as soon as possible,
you’ll find you can’t stop, and you’ll use it to your own detriment. If your
political situation needs a lot of ”surgery” you should ask yourself serious
questions about that happened.

~~~
pgt
Well put. “Censorship is the opium of the government,” made me snort my coffee
and is highly quotable.

What’s the term for when a small amount of something that hurts is actually
good for you? Hormesis?

~~~
raarts
What doesn't kill you makes you stronger?

------
LIV2
I would probably care more had the Aussie media not spent the last decade
telling us that government backdoors, spying, censorship etc were good things.
The Aussie media are boot lickers and only mad now that the government is
going to treat them like they treat everyone else

~~~
robkop
I can understand the frustration with the Australian media (by all right they
brought this on themselves) but that doesn't make this a topic that requires
any less care because of it.

These are fundamental liberties for a functioning democracy and they are
finally facing some pushback in the general media. IMO this should be embraced
and supported by anyone who's been watching this unfold for the last two
decades. This is probably the best chance of public opinion swaying to favour
civil liberties and I can't imagine it's worth blowing because of what the
media has previously done.

~~~
LIV2
I'd be happy to support them if they were campaigning for all Australians to
have the same rights to freedom from government spying etc but they're not.

Making journalists a protected class is not the answer, it just means they'll
continue to push the agenda down our throats.

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
How does this approach _help_?

~~~
roenxi
If the media can be made to understand they will get more support if they
campaign for broader protections then maybe everyone can be better off.

I don't support making journalists a protected class. That is just going to
open the door to more abuse and make it harder to push back on the fundamental
problems with the prevailing thought - people should be generally free to tell
the truth about what is happening, without harassment by government.

If the media wants something different, I don't want what they want and
hopefully they don't get it. This isn't an issue where people should
compromise away the core principles.

------
vermilingua
Comically ironic that this is coming from Murdoch, who shamelessly uses his
ownership of a massive share of the Australian media to push his own political
agenda. If we really wanted to tackle censorship and manipulation in this
country, we’d start there.

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
Context:

 _News Corp Australia owns approximately 142 daily, Sunday, weekly, bi-weekly
and tri-weekly newspapers, of which three are free commuter titles and 102 are
suburban publications (including 16 in which News Corp Australia has a 50%
interest). News Corp Australia publishes a nationally distributed newspaper in
Australia, a metropolitan newspaper in each of the Australian cities of
Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide, Perth (Sundays only), Hobart and Darwin
and groups of suburban newspapers in the suburbs of Sydney, Melbourne,
Adelaide, Brisbane and Perth. The company publishes a further thirty magazine
titles across Australia.[2] According to the Finkelstein Review of Media and
Media Regulation, in 2011 the group accounted for 23% of the newspaper titles
in Australia._

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/News_Corp_Australia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/News_Corp_Australia)

~~~
dmurray
The biggest player controlling 23% of the market honestly sounds reasonable.
It's worrying if someone controls 80% of the media.

Any idea what Murdoch's market share is by readership, rather than by total
number of titles?

~~~
daemin
He also controls Foxtel, pretty much the only Pay TV operator in Australia.

Also by now I don't know if Australia has any cross media ownership rules
anymore, so we could own a lot more.

~~~
angry_octet
I think cable is really a zombie now, Netflix and every other streaming
service is destroying them.

And as a consequence of that, I think that the libs were able to do uncle
Rupert a favour and cut away the cross media rules (completely ignoring the
fact that IP streaming of entertainment isn't local news / news), but I could
be wrong.

Just waiting for Netflix or someone to buy the cricket and footy and crush
channel 9 and foxtel.

------
alfiedotwtf
The Australian newspapers are able to do this because a) they care that their
own are being targeted, and b) they have leverage via circulation.

Contrast this to the Australian IT industry that could have banded together
during the initial AABill "discussion" and simultaneously covered their
frontpages with info to their users, protesting the draconian legislation.

Apart from Atlassian, nobody big decided they wanted to be apart of that. And
now we've made our entire industry a "systemic weakness" into our user's
computers and networks.

I still wonder when foreigners will stop buying from Australian companies
because we're essentially a backdoor into any computer system within our
reach. Not even the CCP have the powers now granted to Australian authorities.

The Australian IT industry needs a lobby group, and it needs it now.

~~~
marcus_holmes
Not only that, but it weakens Australia's ability to pressure the SE Asian
countries that are getting more authoritarian.

Telling Cambodia that it needs a free press and needs to stop spying on its
people is now basically impossible for any Australian diplomat.

------
headsoup
While I support this move, it would be great to see the media also try harder
to expose the increasing moves to prevent FOI requests and redact far beyond
the 'national security' justifications.

~~~
robkop
The 6 points the media is pushing for includes this [1], See 4.

1\. The right to contest search warrants: Applications for search warrants to
be made to a high-level judge, with the relevant media outlet to be notified
and given the opportunity to challenge the warrant.

2\. Protections for whistleblowers: Expanded safeguards for government
whistleblowing, including an expanded public interest test. The outlets want
to see a culture of secrecy replaced with a culture of disclosure.

3\. Restrictions on secrecy: New rules governing what information governments
can deem secret, with obligations to regularly audit the material being kept
from the public.

4\. Freedom of information reform: A suite of changes to FOI law to reduce and
restrict the significant delays, obstacles, cost and exemptions that allow
government agencies to prevent disclosure.

5\. Journalist exemptions: Exemptions to protect journalists from prosecution
under a number of national security laws. Media outlets can currently mount
legal defences against charges under these laws but want this strengthened to
exemptions for public-interest journalism.

6\. Defamation law reform: Overhaul of defamation law to adapt to the digital
era, address inconsistency across states territories, and ensure it is
operating as intended.

[1]: [https://www.smh.com.au/national/a-culture-of-secrecy-what-
is...](https://www.smh.com.au/national/a-culture-of-secrecy-what-is-the-right-
to-know-campaign-about-20191018-p5323v.html)

------
chance_state
Thank God for the first amendment.

What always comes to mind is the police busting into the news room of The
Guardian in the UK after the Snowden revelations, demanding that computers be
destoryed. That's something we'd expect out of Iran or China, but it seems
increasingly common in the West.

I'm thankful to live in a country with a codified freedom of the press.

~~~
tus88
> Thank God for the first amendment.

Trust me, the last thing the Australian media wants is the first amendment.

They want _freedom of the press_.

~~~
SuperNinjaCat
This was my line of thinking when everyone was deathly silent during the data
retention "debate". Only one article by a local newspaper junior emerged
discussing the pro's and con's, which framed it in a really silly way (such as
the only con being "well...hackers might get to it"). Also, that junior got
promoted to a Senior Tech Editor role in a big national paper, and did strange
things like posting their own local file share directory within their articles
which involved a few pictures here and there, (I mean no personal offense to
the individual, I just remember following it closely at the time with a slight
feeling of horror).

The general mood in the media at the time the ball got rolling for these sorts
of laws was that they were some sort of protected species who shouldn't be
subject to them...just the general population. Some looked as though they were
advertising their perceived sense of self importance and potential value to
the governments of the time.

Sorry if this sounded a bit snarky, I didn't mean it to be, it's just that we
should have been talking about this much much earlier than today, yet no-one
wanted to until now.

------
BLKNSLVR
I feel I need to do a shout-out to the publication Crikey and the TV show
Media Watch. They're two Australian pillars of telling hard truths around the
actual situations (as opposed to the narrative that politics or other groups
are attempting to push).

It's all well and good for the papers to be in support of press freedoms, but
they've been all but silent on on-going prosecutions of non-journalist
whistleblowers such as Witness K (and now his lawyer Bernard Collaery is being
brought up on similar charges), and the fact that journalists and Doctors
aren't allowed to visit offshore detention centres.

The same newspapers redacting their front pages are those that fawn over
Australia's anti-science stance on Climate Change and anti-humanitarian
immigration policies. They're pro-authoritarianism except when it comes to
what they consider to be their little patch.

Crikey and Media Watch are of great value in exposing the hypocrisy of the
majority of Australia's mainstream media.

------
heraclius
The PM’s response that he also believes in the rule of law is utterly
facetious. The whole point of the campaign is to demand that media
organisations should be free to report on more matters of concern to the
public. The most logical way to achieve that end would be the entirely usual
procedure of changing the law, which is how every other legislative programme
is achieved. The rule of law could not thus be undermined, for the legal
situation afterwards would expressly allow what the media seek to do.

------
contingencies
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_Austral...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_Australia)

------
jacques_chester
I'm partly surprised by the cynicism. Yes, the media are flawed, but that
doesn't mean they aren't essential.

I would rather have flawed free media than none at all.

------
rkagerer
For a copy of this article unredacted by paywalls:
[http://archive.is/biXCu](http://archive.is/biXCu)

Here are some photos of the papers:
[https://twitter.com/i/events/1186056563900858369](https://twitter.com/i/events/1186056563900858369)

------
beilabs
Find it quite ironic that an article discussing freedom of the press restricts
users from accessing the content while in private mode. Freedom of privacy
perhaps?

    
    
      You're in private mode.
      Subscribe to continue reading in private mode.

~~~
a3n
We who are not bean counters, we developers, journalists and truck drivers
[raises hand], probably don't fully perceive the profit imperative in our
larger organizations, even when we think we do. It's not that one hand doesn't
know what the other's doing, it's that they're the body, and we're the tool.

------
seansta
We need to fire the lot of them in Canberra and start again. Aussie pollies
going backwards in the ethics..

~~~
jen729w
Let’s try to make this more constructive than the Herald Sun letters page,
shall we?

For instance, I read a profile of Jacqui Lambie [0] in The Saturday Paper [1]
the other week. I’m a Green-voting Fitzroy-dwelling hipster, literally, but I
found it gave me a real appreciation of someone who I would have dismissed out
of hand the week before [3].

Being a politician is probably a thankless task. I’ve no doubt it’s difficult.
They really don’t get paid _that_ much. I wouldn’t want to do it.

If you’re generally cynical of politicians as a people, I can’t recommend Ben
Rhodes’ book _The World as It Is_ [4] enough. It might not make you any less
cynical — spoiler: politics is a shit-fight — but it might give you a little
more appreciation for the fact that the people doing this job are just that.
They’re mostly just regular people, who thought they could do good. (Rhodes
was Obama’s adviser: if anyone has similar recommendations for Australian
politics, I’d love to hear them.)

[0]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacqui_Lambie](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacqui_Lambie).

[1]:
[https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/politics/2019/09/21...](https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/politics/2019/09/21/the-
lambie-interview-inside-her-power-play/15689880008791)

[3]: Actually, a few weeks prior, Jacqui sat beside us in the Qantas lounge at
Devonport. We moved — mostly because of the annoying kids clambering all over
the furniture and the toxic hellstew that is Sky News blaring from the TV, but
we joked that we didn’t want to sit next to her. Now I wish I’d said hello.

[4]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_as_It_Is_(book)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_as_It_Is_\(book\))

~~~
Intermernet
Jacqui Lambie has matured so much as a politician. I used to see her as
someone flailing around in an inexpert way, but now I actually respect her. I
rarely agree with her stance on many things, but she seems to have developed
consistency in her messaging, and doesn't toe party lines. She gets respect
from me due to being a lot more genuine than most other Australian
politicians. I wish we could have more politicians like her, but spread across
the political spectrum.

~~~
dwd
This was an interesting article on her from the weekend:

[https://www.theguardian.com/australia-
news/2019/oct/20/from-...](https://www.theguardian.com/australia-
news/2019/oct/20/from-wrecking-ball-to-kingmaker-why-all-eyes-are-on-jacqui-
lambie)

She's get my respect as she genuinely seems to want to make a difference, not
just make a career out of being a politician.

