fixing australia human rights sustainable earth sustainable shelter terror australis association site archives

Fixing Australia

Australia is broken. Democracy has holes in it, cracks in it, and it needs fixing. Since the 2004 Federal election we know that our government is not going to fix it. I think we need to do that fixing, and this blog is a start of getting some ideas together.

Friday, October 29, 2004

Australia's 2004 Report Card on Press Freedom looks concerning

Some disturbing news about the state of the media in Australia, starting with an item from the Sydney Morning Herald:

Index slams Australia's media freedom

Sydney Morning Herald
October 27, 2004 - 8:24AM


Australia has ranked dismally in a global index on media freedom released by Paris-based watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF).

Australia could only manage 41st position in RSF's third annual index of press freedom, lagging behind some former Eastern bloc nations, including Hungary (28), Czech Republic (19) and Poland (32).

Regional neighbour New Zealand placed a respectable ninth and was one of only three nations outside Europe to rank in the top 20.

But Australia's lowly ranking came as no surprise after it came under fire in the RSF's 2004 annual report released earlier this year.

In particular, the watchdog criticised Australia's policies restricting press access to refugees.

It said in the report that the Australian government "continued to prevent journalists from covering the situation of refugees held in camps on Australian territory or in neighbouring countries".

The report pointed to the January 2002 arrest of ABC TV reporter Natalie Larkins, who was carted off and charged with trespassing on commonwealth property while trying to report on 300 hunger striking refugees at the Woomera Detention Centre in South Australia.

The report also criticised a number of other attempts by several groups to stifle press freedom.

It mentioned a case in which the NRMA launched legal action to try to force Australian Associated Press (AAP) reporter Belinda Tasker and journalists Anne Lampe and Kate Askew from The Sydney Morning Herald to divulge their sources in their coverage of a boardroom battle.

The case has since been dropped by the NSW motoring body.

And it criticised attempts by the federal government to free up cross media ownership laws and make the Australian Broadcasting Authority responsible for maintaining editorial independence.

European nations dominated the top positions in the rankings, with the eight countries sharing top spot: Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Netherlands, Norway, Slovakia and Switzerland.

Countries in east Asia and the Middle East have the least media freedom in the world, with North Korea coming at the bottom of a global index on media freedom in 167th spot.

RSF said that in states such as North Korea, Burma and China, and in Middle Eastern countries such as Saudi Arabia, Iran and Iraq, "an independent media either does not exist or journalists are persecuted and censored on a daily basis".

"Freedom of information and safety of journalists are not guaranteed there," RSF said in a statement.

It said a recent fact-finding mission to North Korea found journalists there were forced to serve the personality cult of dictator Kim Jong-il.

"Dozens of reporters had been 're-educated' for often minor supposed professional 'errors'," RSF said.

Meanwhile, Iraq proved to be the most deadly place for journalists in recent years, with 44 journalists killed since fighting began in March last year and ranked 148th.

The United States came in 22nd on the index, RSF said.

"Violations of the privacy of sources, persistent problems in granting press visas and the arrest of several journalists during anti-Bush demonstrations kept the United States away from the top of the list," the group said.

RSF said Cuba was the worst violator of press freedom in Latin America, coming in 166th. That was just above North Korea.

"All criticism of President Fidel Castro's rule is officially a crime. Twenty-six journalists arrested in March last year along with some 50 dissidents are still in prison," RSF said.

© 2004 AAP

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/10/27/1098667794574.html

Reporters sans Frontieres: Australia: 2004 Annual Report

October 2004
RSF Website


The conservative government tried to get the media into battle order to support Australia's participation in the invasion of Iraq. It was hard for journalists to cover the war in an independent way. This was also the case for Australia's involvement in the anti-terrorist struggle in Asia and the situation of refugees held in camps.

Throughout 2003, the authorities restricted press coverage of asylum-seeking refugees who were held in camps. Access to the camps was strictly regulated and the immigration ministry did everything possible to discourage journalists from investigating this issue. It was virtually impossible for journalists to visit camps set up in neighbouring countries such as Papua New Guinea and Nauru.

An Iraqi refugee died for unexplained reasons in the refugee camp in Nauru on 13 March after being sanctioned by the camp authorities for speaking to a TV crew from the programme "Dateline" on the TV channel SBS. An association of Australian journalists awarded immigration minister Philip Ruddock the "Orwell Award for obstructing press freedom" because of his hostility to the press.

The concentration of news media ownership in a few hands is still a issue in Australia. The federal government presented a bill on media ownership for the second time in November. It had been rejected on 27 June by opposition parties - which have a majority in the senate - as a threat to press freedom and diversity. The government wanted to ease restrictions on foreign ownership and relax local news quotas for region TV stations. It also wanted to scrap the ban on press groups owning several news media in the same city.

These measures were partly designed to satisfy Australia's two big press magnates: Rupert Murdoch and Kerry Packer. Murdoch, who has acquired US citizenship, already owns two thirds of the dailies in Australia's big cities. Packer controls several TV channels and wanted to buy a big daily newspaper. The level of ownership concentration in Australia continues to be one of the highest in the world.

Harassment and obstruction

The NGO Justice Action appealed to the state of New South Wales' human rights commission in January 2003 against a ban on distribution within the state's prisons of the magazine Framed, which is produced by prison inmates. Detainees said the ban, introduced in December 2002, violated their right to information on key matters, including legal issues, and left them without any means of expression. The head of the state's prison department, Ron Woodham, who had issued the ban, said on 10 February that it was a "state decision" and the commission had no authority to investigate. But the commission rejected his arguments on 30 April and gave him 14 days to respond to the original complaint.

Multicultural affairs minister Gary Hardgrave wrote to Arabic-language community TV stations on 9 January asking them to be balanced in their coverage of the coming war in Iraq and to take account of the communal tension they could cause. Free expression must be exercised with the appropriate responsibility and must not be abused by inciting hate or violence, he said. Lebanese Muslim Association director Keysar Trad accused Hardgrave of censorship and discrimination against community media. Hardgrave responded that the government would not stand for Australian media reflecting foreign propaganda. The New South Wales Anti-Discrimination Board - an independent body - intervened with a report criticising the use of pressure against media according to racial criteria. The board had recently condemned growing media use of stereotypes identifying minorities, especially Muslims, with the emerging terrorist violence in South-East Asia.

As a result of the leaking of senate documents to the daily The Age in June 2002, the senate privileges committee issued a report on 6 February proposing a series of penalties including prison terms for journalists who publish classified information. Copies of the report were sent to newspaper editors and journalists accredited to the senate on 3 March. The Press Council reacted sharply in mid-March. Its president called the proposal "hypocrisy" for punishing the "messenger"and not the person responsible for the leak. The proposal had still not been adopted at the end of the year.

In March, the government and armed forces refused to reveal to the news media the location of the Australian troops deployed to the Middle East on the eve of the invasion of Iraq. Ian Mc Phedran, a journalist with News Limited, deplored the media's inability to contact the troops in the field and said he assumed this would not be the case in the event of war. Press coverage of the operations in Iraq was at first limited.

The authorities insisted that the military operations were subject to defence secrecy and the press had to accept this. But armed forces spokesman Mike Hannan assured journalists they would not be censored.

Parliament finally passed a bill on the functioning of the Australian Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO) in June, after more than a year of debates, although it was criticised by the Press Council and many news media. It provides for a five-year prison sentence for journalists who fail to present themselves to the ASIO in response to a summons or fail to produce their sources. It also establishes penalties for journalists who fail to pass on information they receive about a terrorist act.

The government filed 68 complaints in July against the public radio and television network Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), accusing it of siding against the United States and its allies in the war in Iraq. ABC rejected all the complaints except two, which were investigated by its legal department. Communication minister Richard Alston accused ABC's Washington correspondent John Shoveloan of "anti-Americanism" in his reporting about President Bush and the Pentagon. ABC subsequently recognised that Shoveloan had displayed "sarcasm and irony." In August, ABC was again criticised by the government which threatened it with reprisals if it was found to have incited violence.

Communication minister Richard Alston accused a cable TV channel in August of broadcasting programmes sympathetic to the Lebanon-based, militant Islamic group Hezbollah. He said the cultural links maintained through cable television by Muslim communities around the world were no excuse for inciting violence.

The government on 26 August tried to prevent the public television channel from screening footage showing the different stages in the making of an explosive device identical to the one used by Indonesian terrorists in the Bali bombing. The federal authorities put pressure on the channel's management without going through the Press Council, which is supposed to handle this kind of conflict. Attorney-General Daryl Williams said he was disappointed that the channel ignored the requests of both the federal government and four state governments.

On 14 November, the company operating the satellite TV service TARBS withdrew the Hezbollah-linked channel Al Manar from its selection of pay channels pending the outcome of an enquiry initiated in October by the Australian Broadcasting Authority into allegations that it incited violence and supported terrorism.

http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=10147

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home