Photo credit: Toni Brient via Visualhunt / CC BY-NC-SA
A University of Melbourne academic has voiced concern over growing restrictions to press freedom in Australia.
Dr Andrea Carson, an established journalist, broadcaster and academic expert on media and political sciences, said that post 9/11 national security policies had impacted negatively on the freedoms of journalists.
Dr Carson said that it is important that Australia doesn’t make a trade off between a free press and the national security of the country.
“The legal and regulatory terrain for journalists is more difficult than it has been in the past, and part of that is the post 9/11 environment and how we weigh up this balance between media freedom and security,” Dr Carson said.
“I’m not sure we’ve got the balance right at the moment, I think it’s weighted a little too heavily against journalists doing their job.”
In recent years, new laws in Australia have undermined the freedoms of journalists to publish material that may be in the public interest.
In its 2016 Press Freedom Report, the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA) claimed the new national security laws punish and imprison those that expose the truth.
“New national security laws have focussed not only on fighting terrorism but also silencing voices, punishing truth-tellers, suppressing the public’s right to know and criminalising journalism,” the MEAA said.
Section 35P of the ASIO Act, which could see journalists jailed for up to five years if they disclose information about an ASIO operation, was described by Greg Sheridan of The Australian as “a terrible piece of legislation that fundamentally alters the balance of power between the media and the government.”
RMIT professor of law Dr Mark Williams said that even though no journalists had yet been prosecuted under the new law, laws brought in to protect national security were often detrimental to press freedom.
“If you look at the history of these things, the government has been imposing more and more restrictions in times of emergency, and never really taking them all back again when we return to a period of peace,” Dr Williams said.
The MEAA agrees, labelling new national security laws as attacks targeting journalists and press freedom.
“These attacks undermine democracy and, once started, it is very hard to turn back the tide,” the MEAA said.
In 2016, Reporters Without Borders, the organisation responsible for the World Press Freedom Index, ranked Australia 25th out of 181 countries for press freedom.
Reporters Without Borders cites the restriction of reporting on ASIO operations and refugee detention centres, as well as the collection of journalists’ meta-data as reasons for concern when it comes to a free press in Australia.
“The authorities were more concerned about silencing the “messengers” than addressing the issues of concern to the public,” the organisation said.
Dr Carson said falling levels of press freedom were a worrying trend that the public should be vigilant to.
“The Press Freedom Index shows that in the last 14 years, media freedom has gotten worse in every continent of the world, including in democracies,” Dr Carson said.
“People fought hard to get these freedoms in the first place, that’s what democracy is, and you don’t want to hand them back without a fight.”
SoundCloud – Hear the world’s sounds
Explore the largest community of artists, bands, podcasters and creators of music & audio
