Nothing gets the media going like issues affecting itself.
Back in October, media companies across Australia united to argue for your #RightToKnow, a concerted and organised campaign to push back on the many (and worsening) encroachments on freedom of the press in this country.
For weeks, all the major publishers in Australia ran several stories about the many ways in which journalists are stymied and intimidated our of doing their jobs.
In congratulating the media on its belated acknowledgement of Australia’s increasing police-state mentality, Crikey’s Bernard Keane offered a word of advice: if you want to push back against this trend, you should stop co-operating with it.
He was specifically referring to the tendencies of the big papers to print, without question, leaks from friendly government ministers, but today gave us another example of conduct a media company might want to avoid if they are serious about press freedom.
Victoria Cross recipient Ben Roberts-Smith is currently suing the Nine papers for defamation, over allegations they reported concerning his time as a soldier.
The parties are currently fighting over whether journos Nick McKenzie and Chris Masters should be forced to produce, among other things, the names of sources they relied upon in preparing their stories.
Roberts-Smith is also general manager of Seven West Media Queensland. Seven West Media joined the Right to Know campaign, with The West Australian running the same blacked-out front page as everyone else.
We wonder how this brave press freedom stance co-exists with an executive using the legal system to try to access journalists’ sources.
I have remarked on the large and increasing disposition to mental and moral cowardice that has become
a characteristic of Australian society. For about the last 40 years the country has altered from
a live and let live mentality to a congregation of “dobbers” (providing anonymity os assured) and
knee-jerkers in respect of Falou-like observations.
Even the Judiciary indulges itself in pontificating and moralising on events in a manner not too
dissimilar to that of a budding 19th century curate. Once upon a time there was a simple rule :
‘don’t say anything about anyone that you would NOT say to their face’. If that, oh my brothers,
was the current standard there would not be the social community and work-place mendacity that
there is.
The media is more a pox bubo on the groin of our democracy.
The only ‘right’ that too much of it seems interested in is using their elite positions to pursue their own agendas (including trying to convince us to vote their way) : while most of the other “responsible” part is too tardy in calling their recalcitrant cohort out for their selfish ways -> abdicating their role in “holding to account”.
‘We’ exist to their amusement.
Wow. It’s almost like seven west, despite a plummeting share price and a professed new focus on profitability, has an unqualified gm in qld who has been credibily accused of war crimes and bashing his lover in the face…
He’s also been accused of punching his subordinates in the face. Imagine his poor employees in qld…
So yeah, seven west is an unprofessional media company and their hypocrisy in this case is unsurprsing.