Media raids raise questions about AFP’s power and weak protection for journalists and whistleblowers
Australia’s web of national security laws give governments and police wide powers to conceal anything they wish to hide, writes Denis Muller, senior research fellow in the Centre for Advancing Journalism at the University of Melbourne in this cross-posting from The Conversation.
In their raids on media organisations, journalists and whistleblowers, the Australian Federal Police have shown themselves to be the tool of a secretive, ruthless and vindictive executive government.
Image by Wes Mountain/The Conversation, CC BY-ND
Secretive because the extensive web of laws passed under the rubric of national security, on top of the secrecy provisions of the Commonwealth Crimes Act, gives the executive wide powers to classify as secret anything it wishes to hide. As the former investigative reporter Ross Coulthart once memorably said, it could include the office Christmas card.
Ruthless because the stories revealed by whistleblowers and reporters targeted by the AFP and other security agencies have offered accounts of cruelty, misconduct, dishonesty and slyness. These include:
Enough with the precious, self entitled belief in journalists “rights”. They have no more rights than a plumber or a taxi driver. They are like anyone else, doing a job (poorly for the most part) yet they have this ridiculous self image of untouchable high priests to whom the law doesn’t apply. It applies, alright. When you knowingly accept stolen national security-classified information and share it publicly, you’ve broken the law. If the said plumber or taxi driver did it, it would be the same. It’s time to drop the holier-than-thou prancing and poncing about, and get real.
Sorry Mike, you knowingly read an article about “national security secrets” and discussed it in public. Prepare to be raided.
ps Mike, some of the “stolen national security-classified information ” you refer to was about Australian forces allegedly committing crimes in Afghanistan – still sound like “national security” to you?
Yeah, fuck democracy!
It’s all journalists fault. What with their obsession with truth and facts and letting people know them. What a shit society it would be if we could see the truth on the news every night.
Sorry Mike? “Obession with truth and facts and letting people know”? Are you serious? Since when did the truth become an” obsession”, something the government is entitled to own? Read history mate, and then make an educated guess about what happens when you let government control the truth.
ps. journalists are EXACTLY like plumbers and taxi drivers – their job is to provide a service – the truth…remember that word?