Brief pause here for a gentle “WTF?” at the statements of the NSW Attorney-General, Greg Smith, about shield laws that allow journalists to protect their sources.
The question in the NSW Parliament standing committee on Wednesday was about whether bloggers and other “non-traditional” media should have the same protection as those employed in the mainstream media.
Smith said that there was no public interest in covering bloggers, because they might be “ratbags” or representatives of terrorist organisations.
Said Smith:
“I am protecting bona fide journalist who actually receive money from a publication that is respected in the community and available to the public generally. That is what my shield laws cover.”
Asked whether he thought that new media was not worth the same level of protection as traditional print and electronic, Smith said:
“I think the problem is that there is very little sanction against those people and very little discipline, whereas a journalist can be sacked if he has a job with the Sun-Herald or The Daily Telegraph or something like that and he or she publishes something that is inappropriate or that has to do with the work of criminals. I have seen examples in the past in my experience as a criminal lawyer where journalists have been used by corrupt people to name an informer so as to destroy a prosecution.”
Now, Smith is in NSW, not Victoria, so his reflections on the protection of sources, and the responsibility displayed by tabloid newspaper journalists, could not include recent events, highlighted by the OPI report released yesterday.
But then the discussion moved on to whether your very own Crikey would be covered, and Smith said:
“I am not aware of Crikey publications being of the nature that anybody would bother asking who was the source of that information … I had a subscription to Crikey for a while and I did not continue it because I did not think it was worth continuing. I am sorry, there is some useful stuff in it, but it is largely gossip.”
Which means, of course, that everyone should stop reading now …
For those of you still with me, there is of course a legitimate question, in an era when anyone can publish news and information to the world, of who is and isn’t a journalist.
The NSW approach is different to that taken in the Greens — initiated amendments to the federal Whistleblower Protection Act that protect citizen-journalists, bloggers and independent media organisations as well as news professionals from the mainstream media.
Just who is and isn’t a journalist is yet to be tested in court. One day, surely, it will be and that will be very interesting indeed.
Is bad journalism, such as Andrew Bolt’s recent litigated inaccuracies, still journalism?
Is good blogging journalism?
Interesting questions.
In the meantime, we’ll just carry on gossiping.
I Edward James am what Crikey once identifed as a public trust journalist my contact details often published are POB 3024 Umina 2257 0243419140 I have for years published news and information here on Crikey.com and else where http://bit.ly/EJ_PNewsAds ….Greg Smith and BOF both know who I am. I write we the peoples are not well represented!
I think the best idea I’ve heard about how to define journalists is to simply allow people or organizations to nominate themselves as journalists and news organizations.
Anyone could do it, and it would imply that they join something akin to the Press Council and agree to abide by a code of conduct and the adjudication of complaints by said Press Council equivalent.
Part of the code of conduct would include visible publication of the fact that the author has agreed to the code of conduct and the process by which aggrieved parties can make and escalate a complaint (the usual write-to-the-author/publisher first, if you aren’t satisfied with the response take it to the Press Council equivalent).
While a member of the ‘Press Council’, authors would be covered by the shield laws and other protections afforded to journalists. Obviously if someone doesn’t abide by the code of conduct, the ‘Press Council’ would be able to sanction the author by suspending their membership, and therefore suspend the protections, as a last resort.
Further, this kind of idea might make a handy tie in with the notion that quality public journalism is a public good and therefore deserves some level of public funding. A system of grants available through the ‘Press Council’ might work, or a more automated basic payment rate for articles published. Obviously oversight of such a system is tricky – you’d need to check that the claimed articles are actually new work and meet some criteria for journalism. Level of readership should be largely irrelevant provided there is some audience.
Such a system wouldn’t replace commercial subscriptions or advertising revenue for larger commercial organisations, but would provide a basis for small independent authors/publishers to have a reliable baseline revenue.
Obviously the ‘Press Council’ would then have both carrots and sticks to ‘incentivize’ authors to work within a clear code of conduct with an effective process for appealing and adjudicating on specific works.
Anyone who wanted to publish in paper or online outside of the system would be free to do so, but would not receive funding nor legal protections for journalists.
Greg Smith is my local MP. I have to tell you that despite being legally trained and a QC I would not pay to have someone with so little common sense as him represent me, and I certainly didn’t vote for him. He is a dud local member, but gets pre-selection as of the ‘correct’ faction of the Liberal party, and elected as its a safe seat.
A nice template, Jackol. It supervenes the problems thrown up by ‘traditional’ media, and hones in to the values that will (hopefully) inform the ‘new’ media. Elegant.
Another question what is a “publication that is respected in the community”, as judged by whom? Some politician with their own prejudice, an axe to grind and the power to drive the stone?
Did anyone ask what “an Alan Jones” was?