Bearing hallmarks of the 2019 Australia Federal Police raid on the ABC over its ‘Afghan Files’, Finnish journalists are on trial for treason after reporting on Finland’s national security, writes Dr Binoy Kampmark.
Our research team – spanning economics, journalism and media – used rankings on press freedom from the US-based Freedom House and data on economic growth to examine 97 countries from 1972 to 2014
2) By the very business model MSM Private media has adopted to operate on.
Since the turn of the century the the ABC has been a target of constant LNP attack to be diminished as it was seen to be in direct competion with the profit goals and business model adopted by private media like News Corp and now Ch9. News public information,government and corporate accountability were less and less the domain of the media and the ABC was increasingly showing that reality up rather than competing with it. The domain of private media had become a public relations agency and it’s mode of operation an excercise for profit. It’s target client was oviously where the money was concentrated and that was just 1% of private enterprise and its allied associations and political crusaders. Those political parties that supported the mega- industries with the money their associations and donors. In contrast with the ABC the difference was not just striking but magnified and amplified and had to be muted at all costs and with the coming of Tony Abbott it has and continues to be. Now the attacks will begin to be turned on the digital and independant media sources that don’t really have the focused power of distribution and coverage. Furthe the model is no longer just national but global as exemplified by Murdoch media in the English speaking world.(ODT)
Acts of legislation enacted over the last six years of LNP-dominated Governments have eroded press freedom, with its collected effects ranging from cloak-and-dagger secrecy to threats of prison to journalists and whistle-blowers.
Bad blood between media chiefs and the Morrison government deepened on Friday after Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton rejected demands to drop police action against three high-profile journalists and implied the reporters committed a crime by receiving top-secret documents.
“I think it is up to the police to investigate, to do it independently and make a decision about whether or not they prosecute,” he told Nine’s Today program.
UN
“We are seeing a lot of backsliding around the world in democratic societies around basic protections, and a lot of it has been digital interference [with press freedoms],” he said, citing newly intrusive laws in France and Britain.
“Australia is following that line. But I think it’s also gone a lot further.”
“We are in a golden age of surveillance: all these digital tools of convenience [we use] have given governments enormous technological power to get access to everything we do and everything we say,” he said.
“There is this deeply unfortunate confluence of post-9/11 and the rise of the digital age that made it close to impossible to protect the privacy of [journalistic] work.
“People could care less about journalists. But they should care about the possibility in the future to have adequate and accurate information about what their governments are doing.”
Following confirmation that the U.S. Department of Justice does have a sealed complaint against Wikileaks publisher Julian Assange—seemingly based on his work exposing the classified secrets of high-level U.S. government institutions and officials—NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden on Friday afternoon spoke out against any arrest or prosecution of the journalist, saying that one “cannot support the prosecution of a publisher for publishing without narrowing the basic rights every newspaper relies on.” Snowden’s comments echoed those of other defenders of press freedoms, but carries special weight as someone, like Assange, who has sacrificed his freedom in the name of exposing the secrets of the world’s powerful.
“No U.S. president in recent memory has shown greater contempt for the press than Trump in his first months in office,” reads Freedom House’s 2017 report. “He has repeatedly ridiculed reporters. … Such comments suggest a hostility toward the fundamental principles and purposes of press freedom, especially the news media’s role in holding governments to account for their words and actions—as opposed to the government holding the media to account.”
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