Welcome Speech at the Tasmanian Media Awards
Good evening ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the 2015 Tasmanian Media Awards. First, I wish to acknowledge and pay respect to the Elders, past and present, of the traditional owners and custodians of this land on which we meet, the Muwinina people.
Tonight is all about celebrating the very best in journalism in Tasmania over the past year. Journalism that keeps our communities informed and entertained. Journalism that is in the public interest.
But right now, public interest journalism is under threat. The government’s three tranches of national security laws aim to control information. In the process, the laws seek to criminalise journalism by persecuting and prosecuting whistleblowers who seek to expose illegality, fraud, corruption and threats to public health and safety.
Great public interest journalism demands that journalists work closely with whistleblowers. But the new national security laws threaten journalists and whistleblowers with up to 10 years jail. Under these new laws, the computer networks of journalists and their media employers can now be copied, deleted, altered and tampered with – without your knowledge. Journalists and media organisations can be placed under electronic surveillance without a warrant.
And now we have the government confirming, for the first time, that it will use the new metadata retention scheme to access journalists’ phone calls and emails in order to identify and prosecute our confidential sources.
The amendments introduced at the last minute last month, are no safeguards at all. Not when the entire journalist information warrant issuing process is conducted entirely in secret on threat of a two-year jail term, and certainly not when the so-called “public interest advocates” are appointed by the Prime Minister of the day.
All these assaults on press freedom that are contained in the three tranches of national security laws have nothing to do with combatting terrorism. Journalists are, after all, often the front line victims of terrorism – whether it is the beheading of our colleagues Steven Sotloff, James Foley and Kenji Goto or the massacre at the offices of Charlie Hebdo.
Assaults on press freedom …
In reality, these assaults on press freedom are about pursuing our confidential sources: the whistleblowers trying to expose wrongdoing and illegal behaviour.
And if you are going after whistleblowers, you are going after journalism. Governments are ever keen to muzzle freedom of expression. We have seen that happening here in Tasmania when Attorney-General Dr Vanessa Goodwin sought to change this state’s laws to allow corporations to sue for defamation.
In other words, the government sought to turn back time and break away from Australia’s hard-fought national uniform defamation law regime. It would return us to the ugly spectre of SLAPPs – strategic litigation against public participation – designed to muzzle voices in our community and, in particular, intimidate the journalists who tell their stories.
MEAA, along with many others, wrote to the Attorney-General to express our concerns about this attack on freedom of expression and thankfully the scheme was quickly abandoned by the Tasmanian Government. But it’s a reminder that press freedom has to be constantly championed and fought for.
Right now MEAA is engaged in its 30 Days of Press Freedom campaign, in the lead-up to UNESCO World Press Freedom Day on May 3. We’re holding our annual Press Freedom Australia Dinner on Friday May 1 in Sydney and it would be great if you could join us there for what will be a very special event after such an action-packed year for press freedom.
The evening includes a keynote address by Ross Coulthart, a special message from Peter Greste and our MC for the evening is Sandra Sully. We’ll be releasing MEAA’s annual report on the state of press freedom at the Dinner, and we’ll be raising money for the Media Safety and Solidarity Fund which helps pay for the education of the children of murdered journalists in Nepal, Sri Lanka and the Philippines.
Our own Asia-Pacific region is now the world’s deadliest with 39 journalists killed in 2014. Of these, 35 were directly targeted for their work. These grim statistics account for nearly a third of all journalists killed around the world last year. If can join us in Sydney at this important event for press freedom, please go to the Walkleys web site, for more information.
And if you can’t make it on the night, please do all you can to sell tickets in the Press Freedom Raffle to support the work of the Media Safety and Solidarity Fund. We need your support…
Press freedom means great, important works of journalism must be allowed to flourish, unhindered. Vital news stories must be told. And that’s why tonight’s awards are so important. They are all about recognising the very best journalism produced in Tasmania over the past 12 months. This year we have had a record number of entries, a sure sign that these awards are building every year.
I’d like to congratulate all the finalists in this year’s Tasmanian Media Awards for your commitment to great journalism, and to press freedom. Good luck to you all and please, enjoy the evening!
Carolyn Dunbar is the acting regional director for Tasmania and Victoria with the MEAA. This is an abridged version of her speech.
EARLIER … on Tasmanian Times …
