Parliamentary press freedom inquiry: letting the fox guard the henhouse
The parliamentary joint committee on intelligence and security to inquire into press freedom is part of the problem it’s meant to solve, argues Denis Muller in this crossposting from The Conversation.
Fox guarding the henhouse; poacher in charge of the game-keeping. Choose your idiom, but appointing the parliamentary joint committee on intelligence and security to inquire into press freedom is guaranteed to get the opposite result to what is ostensibly intended.
The committee – called PJCIS for short – is part of the problem that the inquiry is meant to solve.
The government has approved a parliamentary inquiry into press freedom – a step the major media organisations have dismissed as unnecessary.
Bianca De Marchi/AAP
Proposing that it lead the quest for a solution shows the inquiry for what it is – a public relations exercise designed to buy time until the hue and cry over last month’s raids by the Australian Federal Police on two media organisations dies down.
Catchy little name …PJCIS.
And I thought it stood for:
Prevaractive
Junket
Collective of
Ineffective
Subordinates