8 ms·

Australia Newspapers Redact Front Pages in Media-Freedom Protest

190 points by soroushjp 7y ago

beilabs 7y ago
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? You're in private mode. Subscribe to continue reading in private mode.
- notzuck 7y ago
  Few have real values. They wrote this article because it will get clicks.
- a3n 7y ago
  We who are not bean counters, we developers, journalists and truck drivers [raises hand], probably don't fully perceive the profit imperative in our larger organizations, even when we think we do. It's not that one hand doesn't know what the other's doing, it's that they're the body, and we're the tool.
seansta 7y ago
We need to fire the lot of them in Canberra and start again. Aussie pollies going backwards in the ethics..
- crispinb 7y ago
  Yet when offered opportunities for change, Aussies nearly always reject it. We have a skittish & ignorant population which is extremely easy to scare with lies. The old truism that populations get the representation they deserve seems particularly apposite of our nation.
  - jakecopp 7y ago
    The ignorance and belief everything will turn out alright in Australia is astounding. That 1964 book [1] really did seem to nail a lot: "Australia is a lucky country run mainly by second rate people who share its luck. It lives on other people's ideas, and, although its ordinary people are adaptable, most of its leaders (in all fields) so lack curiosity about the events that surround them that they are often taken by surprise." [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lucky_Country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lucky_Country
    - crispinb 7y ago
      Quite - one of the most misunderstood book titles in history! "She'll be right" makes for some attractively (if superficially) easygoing characters, but it's a useless stance to take towards national governance. Unfortunately it's about the only style of thought running through the current mob's empty heads ...
- jen729w 7y ago
  Let’s try to make this more constructive than the Herald Sun letters page, shall we? For instance, I read a profile of Jacqui Lambie [0] in The Saturday Paper [1] the other week. I’m a Green-voting Fitzroy-dwelling hipster, literally, but I found it gave me a real appreciation of someone who I would have dismissed out of hand the week before [3]. Being a politician is probably a thankless task. I’ve no doubt it’s difficult. They really don’t get paid that much. I wouldn’t want to do it. If you’re generally cynical of politicians as a people, I can’t recommend Ben Rhodes’ book The World as It Is [4] enough. It might not make you any less cynical — spoiler: politics is a shit-fight — but it might give you a little more appreciation for the fact that the people doing this job are just that. They’re mostly just regular people, who thought they could do good. (Rhodes was Obama’s adviser: if anyone has similar recommendations for Australian politics, I’d love to hear them.) [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacqui_Lambie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacqui_Lambie. [1]: https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/politics/2019/09/21/the-lambie-interview-inside-her-power-play/15689880008791 https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/politics/2019/09/21... [3]: Actually, a few weeks prior, Jacqui sat beside us in the Qantas lounge at Devonport. We moved — mostly because of the annoying kids clambering all over the furniture and the toxic hellstew that is Sky News blaring from the TV, but we joked that we didn’t want to sit next to her. Now I wish I’d said hello. [4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_as_It_Is_(book) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_as_It_Is_(book)
  - Intermernet 7y ago
    Jacqui Lambie has matured so much as a politician. I used to see her as someone flailing around in an inexpert way, but now I actually respect her. I rarely agree with her stance on many things, but she seems to have developed consistency in her messaging, and doesn't toe party lines. She gets respect from me due to being a lot more genuine than most other Australian politicians. I wish we could have more politicians like her, but spread across the political spectrum.
    - dwd 7y ago
      This was an interesting article on her from the weekend: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/oct/20/from-wrecking-ball-to-kingmaker-why-all-eyes-are-on-jacqui-lambie https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/oct/20/from-... She's get my respect as she genuinely seems to want to make a difference, not just make a career out of being a politician.
- nl 7y ago
  "Burn it all down" is a terrible, terrible idea put forward by people too lazy to think about fixing specific problems. How about specific suggestions instead of just "start from scratch" with no real reason to think it will improve things and plenty of reasons to think it could be worse.
headsoup 7y ago
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.
- robkop 7y ago
  The 6 points the media is pushing for includes this [1], See 4. 1. The right to contest search warrants: Applications for search warrants to be made to a high-level judge, with the relevant media outlet to be notified and given the opportunity to challenge the warrant. 2. Protections for whistleblowers: Expanded safeguards for government whistleblowing, including an expanded public interest test. The outlets want to see a culture of secrecy replaced with a culture of disclosure. 3. Restrictions on secrecy: New rules governing what information governments can deem secret, with obligations to regularly audit the material being kept from the public. 4. Freedom of information reform: A suite of changes to FOI law to reduce and restrict the significant delays, obstacles, cost and exemptions that allow government agencies to prevent disclosure. 5. Journalist exemptions: Exemptions to protect journalists from prosecution under a number of national security laws. Media outlets can currently mount legal defences against charges under these laws but want this strengthened to exemptions for public-interest journalism. 6. Defamation law reform: Overhaul of defamation law to adapt to the digital era, address inconsistency across states territories, and ensure it is operating as intended. [1]: https://www.smh.com.au/national/a-culture-of-secrecy-what-is-the-right-to-know-campaign-about-20191018-p5323v.html https://www.smh.com.au/national/a-culture-of-secrecy-what-is...
vermilingua 7y ago
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.
- TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
  Context: News Corp Australia owns approximately 142 daily, Sunday, weekly, bi-weekly and tri-weekly newspapers, of which three are free commuter titles and 102 are suburban publications (including 16 in which News Corp Australia has a 50% interest). News Corp Australia publishes a nationally distributed newspaper in Australia, a metropolitan newspaper in each of the Australian cities of Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide, Perth (Sundays only), Hobart and Darwin and groups of suburban newspapers in the suburbs of Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Brisbane and Perth. The company publishes a further thirty magazine titles across Australia.[2] According to the Finkelstein Review of Media and Media Regulation, in 2011 the group accounted for 23% of the newspaper titles in Australia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/News_Corp_Australia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/News_Corp_Australia
  - dmurray 7y ago
    The biggest player controlling 23% of the market honestly sounds reasonable. It's worrying if someone controls 80% of the media. Any idea what Murdoch's market share is by readership, rather than by total number of titles?
    - makomk 7y ago
      According to that, "News Corp Australia has nearly three-quarters of daily metropolitan newspaper circulation and so maintains great influence in Australia."
    - daemin 7y ago
      He also controls Foxtel, pretty much the only Pay TV operator in Australia. Also by now I don't know if Australia has any cross media ownership rules anymore, so we could own a lot more.
LIV2 7y ago
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
- robkop 7y ago
  I can understand the frustration with the Australian media (by all right they brought this on themselves) but that doesn't make this a topic that requires any less care because of it. These are fundamental liberties for a functioning democracy and they are finally facing some pushback in the general media. IMO this should be embraced and supported by anyone who's been watching this unfold for the last two decades. This is probably the best chance of public opinion swaying to favour civil liberties and I can't imagine it's worth blowing because of what the media has previously done.
  - LIV2 7y ago
    I'd be happy to support them if they were campaigning for all Australians to have the same rights to freedom from government spying etc but they're not. Making journalists a protected class is not the answer, it just means they'll continue to push the agenda down our throats.
    - TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
      How does this approach help?
      - LIV2 7y ago
        If they get their special treatment they will stop talking about it. If they don't get what they want they'll keep bringing it up and it'll hopefully become an election issue leading to freedoms for everyone
      - roenxi 7y ago
        If the media can be made to understand they will get more support if they campaign for broader protections then maybe everyone can be better off. I don't support making journalists a protected class. That is just going to open the door to more abuse and make it harder to push back on the fundamental problems with the prevailing thought - people should be generally free to tell the truth about what is happening, without harassment by government. If the media wants something different, I don't want what they want and hopefully they don't get it. This isn't an issue where people should compromise away the core principles.
rkagerer 7y ago
For a copy of this article unredacted by paywalls: http://archive.is/biXCu http://archive.is/biXCu Here are some photos of the papers: https://twitter.com/i/events/1186056563900858369 https://twitter.com/i/events/1186056563900858369
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
chance_state 7y ago
Thank God for the first amendment. 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. I'm thankful to live in a country with a codified freedom of the press.
- jeffdavis 7y ago
  That's very important, but we in the U.S. still need to be vigilent. There is a cycle where thing X is scary and everyone gets worked up about it, and the politicians are given a free pass to sidestep the Bill of Rights. Thing X might be drugs, or might be guns, and the laws might have those things in their title. But the laws are never really about thing X, they are about trampling the Bill of Rights. Aside: the biggest myth is that the gun debate is about the Second Amendment. The proposed (and sometimes enacte) laws violate some combination of the 1st, 2nd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 9th, and 10th Amendments.
- tus88 7y ago
  > Thank God for the first amendment. Trust me, the last thing the Australian media wants is the first amendment. They want freedom of the press.
  - SuperNinjaCat 7y ago
    This was my line of thinking when everyone was deathly silent during the data retention "debate". Only one article by a local newspaper junior emerged discussing the pro's and con's, which framed it in a really silly way (such as the only con being "well...hackers might get to it"). Also, that junior got promoted to a Senior Tech Editor role in a big national paper, and did strange things like posting their own local file share directory within their articles which involved a few pictures here and there, (I mean no personal offense to the individual, I just remember following it closely at the time with a slight feeling of horror). The general mood in the media at the time the ball got rolling for these sorts of laws was that they were some sort of protected species who shouldn't be subject to them...just the general population. Some looked as though they were advertising their perceived sense of self importance and potential value to the governments of the time. Sorry if this sounded a bit snarky, I didn't mean it to be, it's just that we should have been talking about this much much earlier than today, yet no-one wanted to until now.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
dbuder 7y ago
The Australian media has really struggled in the era of the internet. Just go to smh.com.au or news.com.au and look at all the reality tv and other junk pushed to the front. Make sure you use an adblocker though, they are out of control with malware etc
stephen_g 7y ago
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. 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.
- LilBytes 7y ago
  Just to add to the chorus of noise, I hate how very, very fucking right you are on every point. The big news organisations here in Australia have grown to despise the very beast they helped created.
- giancarlostoro 7y ago
  Lately on HN I have made a number of comments about censorship: today it sounds great cause it shuts out those you hate. Tomorrow its used against your very voice. Do not disarm yourself entirely and give the government total power. Laws that are too strong in an attempt to stop criminals wind up punishing law abiding citizens. These comments have been in regards to Twitter, Discord, Google, Facebook and so on all trying to define fake news or ban people with certain political affiliations. The saddest thing is that mainstream media pushes unverified sources on the race to being first. Nobody punishes them for being incompetent. If theres eyeballs for ads who cares? There is a reason in America we have a constitution and a bill of rights. It could very well be argued our bill of rights was written in blood. The blood of those who fought against totalitarian type of governments who forbade: freedom of speech and religious beliefs, freedom to protect oneself and their families against bad people and rogue governments. Those two foundational things shouldnt be compromised under the guise of a safer country. It will not end well. History says so. Sadly there are some in America who are quickly forgetting these things and are foolishly ready to give the kings to the kingdom away. Without free speech we will perish and follow in the steps of bad forms of government. Without the right to defend ourselves legally, we give the government all power over us. Just ask Russia and Venezuela how those democratic elections are going for them.
contingencies 7y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_Australia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_Austral...
alfiedotwtf 7y ago
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. 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. 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. 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. The Australian IT industry needs a lobby group, and it needs it now.
- marcus_holmes 7y ago
  Not only that, but it weakens Australia's ability to pressure the SE Asian countries that are getting more authoritarian. Telling Cambodia that it needs a free press and needs to stop spying on its people is now basically impossible for any Australian diplomat.
jacques_chester 7y ago
I'm partly surprised by the cynicism. Yes, the media are flawed, but that doesn't mean they aren't essential. I would rather have flawed free media than none at all.
heraclius 7y ago
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.
BLKNSLVR 7y ago
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). 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. 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. Crikey and Media Watch are of great value in exposing the hypocrisy of the majority of Australia's mainstream media.

190 points by soroushjp 7y ago

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? You're in private mode. Subscribe to continue reading in private mode.

notzuck 7y ago
Few have real values. They wrote this article because it will get clicks.
a3n 7y ago
We who are not bean counters, we developers, journalists and truck drivers [raises hand], probably don't fully perceive the profit imperative in our larger organizations, even when we think we do. It's not that one hand doesn't know what the other's doing, it's that they're the body, and we're the tool.

seansta 7y ago

We need to fire the lot of them in Canberra and start again. Aussie pollies going backwards in the ethics..

crispinb 7y ago
Yet when offered opportunities for change, Aussies nearly always reject it. We have a skittish & ignorant population which is extremely easy to scare with lies. The old truism that populations get the representation they deserve seems particularly apposite of our nation.
- jakecopp 7y ago
  The ignorance and belief everything will turn out alright in Australia is astounding. That 1964 book [1] really did seem to nail a lot: "Australia is a lucky country run mainly by second rate people who share its luck. It lives on other people's ideas, and, although its ordinary people are adaptable, most of its leaders (in all fields) so lack curiosity about the events that surround them that they are often taken by surprise." [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lucky_Country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lucky_Country
  - crispinb 7y ago
    Quite - one of the most misunderstood book titles in history! "She'll be right" makes for some attractively (if superficially) easygoing characters, but it's a useless stance to take towards national governance. Unfortunately it's about the only style of thought running through the current mob's empty heads ...
jen729w 7y ago
Let’s try to make this more constructive than the Herald Sun letters page, shall we? For instance, I read a profile of Jacqui Lambie [0] in The Saturday Paper [1] the other week. I’m a Green-voting Fitzroy-dwelling hipster, literally, but I found it gave me a real appreciation of someone who I would have dismissed out of hand the week before [3]. Being a politician is probably a thankless task. I’ve no doubt it’s difficult. They really don’t get paid that much. I wouldn’t want to do it. If you’re generally cynical of politicians as a people, I can’t recommend Ben Rhodes’ book The World as It Is [4] enough. It might not make you any less cynical — spoiler: politics is a shit-fight — but it might give you a little more appreciation for the fact that the people doing this job are just that. They’re mostly just regular people, who thought they could do good. (Rhodes was Obama’s adviser: if anyone has similar recommendations for Australian politics, I’d love to hear them.) [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacqui_Lambie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacqui_Lambie. [1]: https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/politics/2019/09/21/the-lambie-interview-inside-her-power-play/15689880008791 https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/politics/2019/09/21... [3]: Actually, a few weeks prior, Jacqui sat beside us in the Qantas lounge at Devonport. We moved — mostly because of the annoying kids clambering all over the furniture and the toxic hellstew that is Sky News blaring from the TV, but we joked that we didn’t want to sit next to her. Now I wish I’d said hello. [4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_as_It_Is_(book) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_as_It_Is_(book)
- Intermernet 7y ago
  Jacqui Lambie has matured so much as a politician. I used to see her as someone flailing around in an inexpert way, but now I actually respect her. I rarely agree with her stance on many things, but she seems to have developed consistency in her messaging, and doesn't toe party lines. She gets respect from me due to being a lot more genuine than most other Australian politicians. I wish we could have more politicians like her, but spread across the political spectrum.
  - dwd 7y ago
    This was an interesting article on her from the weekend: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/oct/20/from-wrecking-ball-to-kingmaker-why-all-eyes-are-on-jacqui-lambie https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/oct/20/from-... She's get my respect as she genuinely seems to want to make a difference, not just make a career out of being a politician.
nl 7y ago
"Burn it all down" is a terrible, terrible idea put forward by people too lazy to think about fixing specific problems. How about specific suggestions instead of just "start from scratch" with no real reason to think it will improve things and plenty of reasons to think it could be worse.

headsoup 7y ago

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.

robkop 7y ago
The 6 points the media is pushing for includes this [1], See 4. 1. The right to contest search warrants: Applications for search warrants to be made to a high-level judge, with the relevant media outlet to be notified and given the opportunity to challenge the warrant. 2. Protections for whistleblowers: Expanded safeguards for government whistleblowing, including an expanded public interest test. The outlets want to see a culture of secrecy replaced with a culture of disclosure. 3. Restrictions on secrecy: New rules governing what information governments can deem secret, with obligations to regularly audit the material being kept from the public. 4. Freedom of information reform: A suite of changes to FOI law to reduce and restrict the significant delays, obstacles, cost and exemptions that allow government agencies to prevent disclosure. 5. Journalist exemptions: Exemptions to protect journalists from prosecution under a number of national security laws. Media outlets can currently mount legal defences against charges under these laws but want this strengthened to exemptions for public-interest journalism. 6. Defamation law reform: Overhaul of defamation law to adapt to the digital era, address inconsistency across states territories, and ensure it is operating as intended. [1]: https://www.smh.com.au/national/a-culture-of-secrecy-what-is-the-right-to-know-campaign-about-20191018-p5323v.html https://www.smh.com.au/national/a-culture-of-secrecy-what-is...

vermilingua 7y ago

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.

TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
Context: News Corp Australia owns approximately 142 daily, Sunday, weekly, bi-weekly and tri-weekly newspapers, of which three are free commuter titles and 102 are suburban publications (including 16 in which News Corp Australia has a 50% interest). News Corp Australia publishes a nationally distributed newspaper in Australia, a metropolitan newspaper in each of the Australian cities of Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide, Perth (Sundays only), Hobart and Darwin and groups of suburban newspapers in the suburbs of Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Brisbane and Perth. The company publishes a further thirty magazine titles across Australia.[2] According to the Finkelstein Review of Media and Media Regulation, in 2011 the group accounted for 23% of the newspaper titles in Australia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/News_Corp_Australia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/News_Corp_Australia
- dmurray 7y ago
  The biggest player controlling 23% of the market honestly sounds reasonable. It's worrying if someone controls 80% of the media. Any idea what Murdoch's market share is by readership, rather than by total number of titles?
  - makomk 7y ago
    According to that, "News Corp Australia has nearly three-quarters of daily metropolitan newspaper circulation and so maintains great influence in Australia."
  - daemin 7y ago
    He also controls Foxtel, pretty much the only Pay TV operator in Australia. Also by now I don't know if Australia has any cross media ownership rules anymore, so we could own a lot more.

LIV2 7y ago

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

robkop 7y ago
I can understand the frustration with the Australian media (by all right they brought this on themselves) but that doesn't make this a topic that requires any less care because of it. These are fundamental liberties for a functioning democracy and they are finally facing some pushback in the general media. IMO this should be embraced and supported by anyone who's been watching this unfold for the last two decades. This is probably the best chance of public opinion swaying to favour civil liberties and I can't imagine it's worth blowing because of what the media has previously done.
- LIV2 7y ago
  I'd be happy to support them if they were campaigning for all Australians to have the same rights to freedom from government spying etc but they're not. Making journalists a protected class is not the answer, it just means they'll continue to push the agenda down our throats.
  - TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
    How does this approach help?
    - LIV2 7y ago
      If they get their special treatment they will stop talking about it. If they don't get what they want they'll keep bringing it up and it'll hopefully become an election issue leading to freedoms for everyone
    - roenxi 7y ago
      If the media can be made to understand they will get more support if they campaign for broader protections then maybe everyone can be better off. I don't support making journalists a protected class. That is just going to open the door to more abuse and make it harder to push back on the fundamental problems with the prevailing thought - people should be generally free to tell the truth about what is happening, without harassment by government. If the media wants something different, I don't want what they want and hopefully they don't get it. This isn't an issue where people should compromise away the core principles.

rkagerer 7y ago

For a copy of this article unredacted by paywalls: http://archive.is/biXCu http://archive.is/biXCu Here are some photos of the papers: https://twitter.com/i/events/1186056563900858369 https://twitter.com/i/events/1186056563900858369

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

chance_state 7y ago

Thank God for the first amendment. 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. I'm thankful to live in a country with a codified freedom of the press.

jeffdavis 7y ago
That's very important, but we in the U.S. still need to be vigilent. There is a cycle where thing X is scary and everyone gets worked up about it, and the politicians are given a free pass to sidestep the Bill of Rights. Thing X might be drugs, or might be guns, and the laws might have those things in their title. But the laws are never really about thing X, they are about trampling the Bill of Rights. Aside: the biggest myth is that the gun debate is about the Second Amendment. The proposed (and sometimes enacte) laws violate some combination of the 1st, 2nd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 9th, and 10th Amendments.
tus88 7y ago
> Thank God for the first amendment. Trust me, the last thing the Australian media wants is the first amendment. They want freedom of the press.
- SuperNinjaCat 7y ago
  This was my line of thinking when everyone was deathly silent during the data retention "debate". Only one article by a local newspaper junior emerged discussing the pro's and con's, which framed it in a really silly way (such as the only con being "well...hackers might get to it"). Also, that junior got promoted to a Senior Tech Editor role in a big national paper, and did strange things like posting their own local file share directory within their articles which involved a few pictures here and there, (I mean no personal offense to the individual, I just remember following it closely at the time with a slight feeling of horror). The general mood in the media at the time the ball got rolling for these sorts of laws was that they were some sort of protected species who shouldn't be subject to them...just the general population. Some looked as though they were advertising their perceived sense of self importance and potential value to the governments of the time. Sorry if this sounded a bit snarky, I didn't mean it to be, it's just that we should have been talking about this much much earlier than today, yet no-one wanted to until now.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

dbuder 7y ago

The Australian media has really struggled in the era of the internet. Just go to smh.com.au or news.com.au and look at all the reality tv and other junk pushed to the front. Make sure you use an adblocker though, they are out of control with malware etc

stephen_g 7y ago

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. 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.

LilBytes 7y ago
Just to add to the chorus of noise, I hate how very, very fucking right you are on every point. The big news organisations here in Australia have grown to despise the very beast they helped created.
giancarlostoro 7y ago
Lately on HN I have made a number of comments about censorship: today it sounds great cause it shuts out those you hate. Tomorrow its used against your very voice. Do not disarm yourself entirely and give the government total power. Laws that are too strong in an attempt to stop criminals wind up punishing law abiding citizens. These comments have been in regards to Twitter, Discord, Google, Facebook and so on all trying to define fake news or ban people with certain political affiliations. The saddest thing is that mainstream media pushes unverified sources on the race to being first. Nobody punishes them for being incompetent. If theres eyeballs for ads who cares? There is a reason in America we have a constitution and a bill of rights. It could very well be argued our bill of rights was written in blood. The blood of those who fought against totalitarian type of governments who forbade: freedom of speech and religious beliefs, freedom to protect oneself and their families against bad people and rogue governments. Those two foundational things shouldnt be compromised under the guise of a safer country. It will not end well. History says so. Sadly there are some in America who are quickly forgetting these things and are foolishly ready to give the kings to the kingdom away. Without free speech we will perish and follow in the steps of bad forms of government. Without the right to defend ourselves legally, we give the government all power over us. Just ask Russia and Venezuela how those democratic elections are going for them.

contingencies 7y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_Australia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_Austral...

alfiedotwtf 7y ago

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. 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. 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. 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. The Australian IT industry needs a lobby group, and it needs it now.

marcus_holmes 7y ago
Not only that, but it weakens Australia's ability to pressure the SE Asian countries that are getting more authoritarian. Telling Cambodia that it needs a free press and needs to stop spying on its people is now basically impossible for any Australian diplomat.

jacques_chester 7y ago

I'm partly surprised by the cynicism. Yes, the media are flawed, but that doesn't mean they aren't essential. I would rather have flawed free media than none at all.

heraclius 7y ago

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.

BLKNSLVR 7y ago

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). 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. 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. Crikey and Media Watch are of great value in exposing the hypocrisy of the majority of Australia's mainstream media.