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.<p>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.
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
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.
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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>The Australian IT industry needs a lobby group, and it needs it now.
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.
Thank God for the first amendment.<p>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.<p>I'm thankful to live in a country with a codified freedom of the press.
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).<p>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.<p>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.<p>Crikey and Media Watch are of great value in exposing the hypocrisy of the majority of Australia's mainstream media.
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.
I'm partly surprised by the cynicism. Yes, the media are flawed, but that doesn't mean they aren't essential.<p>I would rather have flawed free media than none at all.
For a copy of this article unredacted by paywalls: <a href="http://archive.is/biXCu" rel="nofollow">http://archive.is/biXCu</a><p>Here are some photos of the papers: <a href="https://twitter.com/i/events/1186056563900858369" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/i/events/1186056563900858369</a>
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?<p><pre><code> You're in private mode.
Subscribe to continue reading in private mode.</code></pre>