Media Reforms Badly Needed

Media release – Media, Entertainment & Arts Alliance, 3 May 2024

World Press Freedom Day 2024: another year wasted

Another World Press Freedom Day has arrived without any significant reforms by any level of government to improve press freedom in Australia, says the union for Australian media workers.

Despite some positive rhetoric, the Albanese Government is yet to act on a backlog of reforms including to national security laws, freedom of information, whistleblower protection and defamation.

At the same time, journalists ability to do their jobs of informing the public is being undermined by media organisations who have kowtowed to external pressures.

MEAA Media Federal President Karen Percy said that with a federal election likely within the next 12 months, time is running out for the Albanese Government to lock in the reforms it promised when in opposition.

Without government action, Australia is unlikely to improve its standing on global press freedom rankings, where it stood 27th in 2023.

“When whistleblowers are prosecuted for revealing wrongdoing by governments and corporations; when defamation is weaponised to prevent scrutiny; when information that should be publicly available is inaccessible or wrongly marked top secret; and when the basic role of journalism is criminalised on ‘national security grounds’ – then it is the public who loses out,” Percy said.

“MEAA has consistently called for reforms to protect whistleblowers from prosecution, to reduce the barriers that prevent Freedom of Information laws from working effectively, and to review the encroachment of national security concerns into everyday journalism. Evidence from working journalists is that the threat of prosecution or being sued has a chilling effect on journalism that impedes the public’s right to know.

“But despite some positive rhetoric, we are yet to see much in the way of real reform from any level of government in Australia. There is some hope that a review currently underway of national security legislation in relation to the Criminal Code may yield some positive results.”

Percy said it had been disappointing over the past year to see media organisations themselves undermine freedom by failing to live up to appropriate ethical standards and buckling to external pressure when the work of their staff has come under attack.

“Employers have censored, disciplined, and in at least one case, sacked journalists in response to external criticism and intimidation from unaccountable lobbyists, politicians or big business who want to control the narrative on important issues of public interest.

“This has a chilling effect on other journalists that they too may be punished for stepping out of line, forcing them to compromise on their duty to the public to report the truth without fear or favour.”

Percy noted that 2024 will be the sixth World Press Freedom Day that Australian citizen and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has spent in Belmarsh Prison near London.

“Beyond our immediate and urgent concerns for Assange’s health and wellbeing, his extradition and prosecution by the United States would set a disturbing global precedent for the suppression of press freedom and would constitute an assault on the public’s right to know.

“It would mean that any journalist, anywhere in the world, could be charged and extradited for handling any information that the US government classifies as ‘secret’.

“The only real and conceivable path to freedom for Assange is for the US government to discontinue its prosecution.”

On World Press Freedom Day 2024, MEAA also pays its respects to about 100 Palestinian journalists who have lost their lives in the current conflict in Gaza. Dozens more have been wounded or are missing.

Twice as many journalists have been killed in Gaza under the Israeli offensive than were killed worldwide in 2022.

MEAA stands with the International Federation of Journalists in condemning the targeting or deliberate murder of journalists.

Open letter – Co-Convenors of the Bring Julian Assange Home Parliamentary Friendship Group, 3 May 2024

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On World Press Freedom Day, we write as a group of Australian Parliamentarians from across the political spectrum seeking the freedom of Julian Assange.

We write in the hope that Mr Assange, who has endured maximum security imprisonment in the United Kingdom’s Belmarsh Prison for more than five years without conviction on any substantial charge, can go free, can go home, can be reunited with his wife, children, and family.

We were heartened by President Bidens’s recent acknowledgement that the United States is considering Australia’s request to end the prosecution of Julian Assange. We respectfully urge the United States to discontinue the long, expensive, and punishing extradition process that prevents Mr Assange from returning to his family in Australia.

We note that the Australian government has argued that the pursuit and prosecution of Mr Assange should come to an end.

The Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has said, “there is nothing to be served by his ongoing incarceration.”

The Leader of the Opposition Peter Dutton has said, “I think it’s gone on for too long”.

On 14 February 2024, the House of Representatives in the Australian Parliament passed a motion that called for Julian Assange to go free, emphasising “the importance of the UK and the USA bringing the matter to a close so that Mr Assange can return home to his family in Australia.”

In September last year, 61 Australian Parliamentarians signed an open letter that was published in the Washington Post stating, among other things: “We note with gratitude the considerable support in the United States for an end to the legal pursuit of Mr Assange from members of Congress, human rights advocates, academics, and civil society, and from within the US media in defence of free speech and independent journalism.”

While we believe the prosecution of Julian Assange is wrong as a matter of principle, we say in any case that there is no justice, compassion, or reasonable purpose in the further persecution of Mr Assange when one considers the duration and harsh conditions of the detention he has already suffered.