Great Barrier Reef: Sky News and Peter Ridd are deliberately misleading, Independent Australia, By Graham Readfearn | 6 April 2019, According to misinformation from sources such as Sky News and scientist Peter Ridd, the Great Barrier Reef is in perfect health, writes DeSmogBlog’s Graham Readfearn.
AUSTRALIA’S GREAT BARRIER REEF is in some serious trouble, with the latest research in the journal Nature showing the number of new corals has dropped by 89%.
In 2016 and 2017, the Reef was smashed by back-to-back mass bleaching events and heat stress caused by global warming that killed about half the corals.
‘Dead corals don’t make babies,’said James Cook University’s Professor Terry Hughes, the paper’s lead author.
‘We used to think that the Great Barrier Reef was too big to fail — until now,’added colleague Professor Morgan Pratchett.
The paper was just the latest in a steady and, many would agree, depressing parade of findings for the World Heritage icon. And if the scientific papers don’t do it for you, then there are always the pictures.
But the release of the study served as a remarkable contrast to the way the Rupert Murdoch-owned Sky News, furnished with material from climate science denial think tank the Institute of Public Affairs, has been “reporting” on reef science in the past week.
On at least five occasions, the channel has interviewed the IPA’s policy director, Gideon Rozner, who has been updating the channel on the case of Dr Peter Ridd, a marine scientist specialising in sediments who was fired in March 2018 from James Cook University.
According to the various interviews, the Reef is in great shape, the science is probably wrong, and Ridd is a “world renowned” Reef expert in a historic fight for freedom. None of this is true, yet the claims have been allowed to stand unchecked.
The saga of Peter Ridd
Ridd’s saga is a long one, but here’s the short version (and, while we’re here, in the interests of full disclosure, in the time since I first started writing about Ridd’s case, I’ve taken a part-time job at an Australian marine conservation charity as a media adviser).
Ridd does not think that human-caused climate change is a problem and he thinks the Reef is in fabulous health. This has been his public position for at least a decade.
But in 2017, Ridd started to publicly accuse his scientific colleagues, some of who were based at his own university in Townsville, of being untrustworthy. This went against the university’s code of conduct. The university censured him. Ridd refused to back down and made more statements. He published “private” university correspondence on his website. He was further disciplined, so he sued his employer. Then they fired him.
Last week, Ridd’s case was finally heard in court with three days of hearings. A judgment is expected in the coming months.
Jim Green shared a link. Nuclear Fuel Cycle Watch South AustraliaUnpublished letter to The Advertiser … Congratulations to The Advertiser for exposing the terrorist risks associated with Canberra’s plan to establish a national nuclear waste dump in SA. The government’s claim that the dump would pose “no security or safety risk to the community” is contradicted by the plan to station 14 security and safeguards officers at the site.
The nuclear dump would be subject to aircraft strikes and intrusions. It would also be a target for terrorists removing drums to make a radioactive “dirty bomb” ‒ risks that have previously been flagged by nuclear engineers Alan Parkinson and John Large:
”If terrorists can raid a nuclear waste repository or store and steal radioactive material,” Mr Parkinson said, “they can easily spread it by conventional explosives.”
Nuclear terrorist hazards also apply to nuclear waste transportation. In 2006, a reporter succeeded in planting a fake bomb on a train carrying nuclear waste in north-west London.
A NSW Parliamentary Inquiry found there “is no doubt that the transportation of radioactive waste increases the risk of accident or incident – including some form of terrorist intervention”.
Premier Steven Marshall did himself proud by standing up against the dangerous plan to turn SA into the world’s nuclear waste dump. Will the Premier now stand up to Canberra and oppose the plan to turn SA into the nation’s nuclear waste dump?
Jim Green, Friends of the Earth https://www.facebook.com/groups/1021186047913052/
Noel Wauchope, 19 Feb 19 Today’s Adelaide Advertiser makes it clear. Adam Creighton , Economics Editor at The Australian, is quoted approvingly, as he calls for Australia’s laws against nuclear power to be removed – “for the public good”
According to Mr Creighton – nuclear power is ” ‘the best, most reliable, emissions-free form of power’”
News Corp attacks scientists assessing Adani coalmine – and ignores science, Guardian, Sarah Bekessy Hugh Possingham, James Watson, Georgia Garrard and Alex Kusmanoff, 16 Feb 19 Damaging the credibility of scientists when we need their fearless advice more than ever is socially irresponsible and morally reprehensible.
What Mediawatch did not report is the pointed attacks on the scientists engaged to critically assess the likely impact of the mine. The following sentence in the Courier Mail on 27 January is just one example: “If you were in the bunny hugging business and were hiring you’d look at Prof Wintle’s resume and say “impeccable”.In the past month, there have been numerous News Corp articles published about the review under way regarding the impacts of the Adani coalmine on the critically endangered southern black-throated finch. Most have attacked the scientists behind the review or quoted statements undermining the scientist’s integrity. We could find none that have critically discussed the science, apart from one article that cites an anonymous ecologist who claims that the mine is the only way to conserve the species. No evidence is provided to support this claim.
The attacks have consisted of unsubstantiated efforts to smear people instead of addressing the substantive issues. Wintle’s comical tweet of school children protesting (“I’ll stop farting if you stop burning coal”) is the only evidence provided that he is indeed a “self-proclaimed anti-coal activist”, as claimed in the Queensland Times on 21 January and again on Friday mentioned in the Australian. Yet, apparently“questions still loom as to whether Professor Wintle, an open anti-coal activist, would be able to carry out the review with impartiality”.In addition to seeking to degrade political debate and balanced decision making on important topics, this kind of journalism also seeks to damage the credibility of science and scientists in the eyes of the general public. This is arguably socially irresponsible and morally reprehensible, but importantly may also discourage scientists from engaging in policy and planning processes where their expertise is essential………https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/feb/16/news-corp-attacks-scientists-assessing-adani-coalmine-and-ignores-science
Australian independent media on the rise, Michael West , Feb 1, 2019The coming of the Internet was the media world’s first real game-changer. Profits enjoyed from the 1970s to 2000s were gone and anyone could start an online news site for little cost. Independent digital media sites not only flourished but did something novel: they engaged with their readers — especially via social media. Today, these sites attract three to four times more visitors via social media than mainstream media. Kim Wingerei reports.
MUCH HAS been said about the power that Rupert Murdoch wields in our concentrated media landscape. But it is a landscape that continues to change and although Murdoch’s News Corp Australia remains a dominant force together with the remnants of Fairfax, his influence is on the wane. Local independent media – somewhat inadvertently supported by the global social media behemoths – is where not just growth but influence is increasingly found……….
Newspapers once ruled the world of news and was the focal point for informed public debate. Radio came along and got a place at the same table, albeit never as glamorous and rewarding for its proprietors. TV had much more of an impact as a provider of entertainment — immersing itself into the living rooms of the world.
Both radio and TV heralded the end of the newspaper, predictions that never quite came through. People still liked to read the paper and the daily broadsheet carried a gravitas that radio and TV could never match — except maybe for Walter Cronkite.
The Internet changed everything. Not straight away and not in the ways originally foreseen, but it removed forever the traditional gatekeepers of information. Some would say replacing them by Google, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and the plethora of lesser social media and search engine platforms.
The Internet was the catalyst for change and social media was the real game changer for traditional media companies.
When all we had was broadcast media (papers, magazines, radio and TV) the only alternative was people conversing and arguing — around the fireplace and the dinner table, at the pub, community halls or on a soapbox in the public square. Social media has taken those conversations beyond its physical limitations to the world square — for better or for worse.
But unlike the established trust of local communities, unregulated and borderless communication is a place of fear and distrust. Social media – despite its proliferation – has a Net Trust Score (NTS) of minus 42 per cent in the recent Roy Morgan Media Net Trust Survey (the number of respondents that trust less than those that don’t). Television (-16 per cent) and Newspapers (-13 per cent) fare much better but still significantly less than the Internet (-7 per cent), Magazines (-4 per cent) and Radio (-2 per cent).
The only major media brands in Australia with a positive NTS score are the ABC, SBS and (by a whisker) Fairfax — a brand that won’t be around for the next survey………..
as the recent Senate hearing into the ABC showed, politicians are also not shying away from trying to influence the national broadcaster in much the same way as media proprietors do — through appointments, intimidation, hiring and firing. The day the ABC is not feared by the government is the day the ABC stops doing its job.
Albeit somewhat cowed at the moment, the ABC remains a stalwart of independent media. And with its high trust rating, it would also benefit from being much more active on social media than it is.
Despite the low trust in social media, it is an important driver of traffic for the fast growing independent media sector. There is a reason some senators went out of their way to attack the #auspol Twitter community recently — and it was not to protect democracy as it pretended.
“Everyone” is on social media and according to a recent Roy Morgan poll (May 2018) and 78 per cent of Australians aged 14+ also access online news-sites.
News.com.au is the largest (5.8 million monthly readers), followed closely by The Sydney Morning Herald (5.3) and the ABC (5.0). Of the top 20 news-sites in Australia, News Corp’s sites represent 31.9 per cent and Nine/Fairfax 28.7 per cent. Counting Kerry Stokes’ modest 4.5 per cent (Yahoo!7 and The West Australian), it leaves the independents with just under 35 per cent of the top 20.
After the ABC, the Daily Mail comes in at 3.9 million readers of other outlet’s stories; and of the other independents, The Guardian (3.0) are just ahead of the BBC (2.9) – a surprising inclusion on the list – I am guessing driven by Anglo-Saxon baby-boomers and their parents. The online reading habits of Gen Z ensures that Buzzfeed (2.2) and Huffington Post (1.2) are included in the top 20.
Second bottom of the top 20 is The New Daily just shy of one million readers and, although not included in the Roy Morgan surveys (yet), there is also a plethora of online sites that provide news coverage and extensive political and current affairs commentary and analysis.
These sites are not only all independent but according to the online visitor statistics as provided by SimilarWeb (an online web measurement service) they are also growing at a rapid rate, whereas “traditional” media growth online is mostly offset by the steady decline in print readership.
And while Murdoch may lament the increasing dominance that Google, Facebook and Twitter have over the worlds’ virtual eyeballs, search and social media is an important source of web traffic and the latter, in particular, for the independent media which relies on social media for much of its visitor numbers.
Based on SimilarWeb’s data, News.com.au gets 5.5 per cent of its visitor traffic from social media, in contrast to The Guardian’s 12.2 per cent and Independent Australia’s almost 20 per cent. Overall, independent media gets three to four times more of its visitors referred by social media (mainly Facebook, Twitter and Reddit) than the mainstream news media sites do.
This is significant as social media is also the platform where the conversations are happening — as exemplified by the #auspol hashtag on Twitter. Contrary to the belief by some ill-informed politicians, these are vibrant conversations between engaged people, the bots are few and far between and easily spotted (when you know how, which Senator Fierravanti-Wells’ staff clearly did not).
In reality, if we look beyond the entertainment dominated mainstream media, the Australian media landscape is increasingly diverse. Murdoch and Nine Entertainment may well have the numbers of overall visitors for now but for debate and influencing voters, there are many more options.
As an example, Murdoch’s flagship purveyor of politicised opinion – The Australian – has close to a million fewer readers online than The Guardian and less than half of the ABC. Based on online visitor stats, the top five politically-focused independent media outlets combined (of those NOT in the top 20) has about the same readership as The Australian online.
The ABC and The Guardian are the leaders of a diverse pack of fast growing online media sites that challenge the status quo — including this publication. They play an increasingly important role in keeping our politicians honest. Politicians for their part need to stand up to the vested interest of the media proprietors or suffer the consequences.
It is all well and good to lament the power of the media. Strong politicians must withstand it through transparency and focus on policies instead of politics and not succumb to their fear of missing out.
Kim Mavromatis Fight To Stop Nuclear Waste In The Flinders 10 Dec 18Ranges SELECTED FOR DOCULAB 2018 – We are really excited to be one of 6 teams selected to participate in the South Australian Film Corporation and Screen Australia Doculab Initiative.
OUR PROJECT : “Unwilling Nation” – a film about the 40 year fight to stop Nuclear Waste getting dumped in South Australia.
PROJECT KEY CREATIVES (Participating in the Doculab) :
Kim Mavromatis and Quenten Agius (Producers).
Robyn Ravenna (Writer / Researcher).
Supporting the development of a range of documentary and factual projects in South Australia, Doculab is an intensive three day lab for factual screen-makers.
Courtney Gibson (SAFC Chief Executive ) said “Doculab is about putting weight behind SA documentary projects and teams, bringing them together as a community to provide latest market intelligence and develop their projects to optimal creative strength before they’re out to market, and we’re so pleased to be partnering with Screen Australia to make this happen”.
Sally Caplan (Head of Content at Screen Australia) said “The calibre of content emerging from SA is both locally and internationally recognised and it’s important to continue nurturing its vibrant screen community. The Doculab initiative is committed to developing the skills and knowledge of diverse documentary filmmakers. We firmly believe that incubating people and projects through mentorships, funding and fostering pitching skills to penetrate specific markets is essential. We’re excited to see new South Australian projects develop from this initiative that we hope provide longevity for the industry.”
Paul Waldon Fight To Stop Nuclear Waste Dump In Flinders Ranges SA, 19 Nov 18
News of fires in the radioactive contaminated red forest of Chernobyl get a mention. News of fires on the radioactive ground of California get a mention. Yet this year the media has suppressed the news of two separate fires on land contaminated with radioactive materials released from Lucas Heights. Is this the typical case of when they can’t control nuclear they try to control the media.? https://www.facebook.com/groups/344452605899556/
The nuclear fuel chain emits carbon all the way through, and I find it extraordinary that journalists mindlessly parrot these lies from the nuclear lobby. Makes you wonder – do the mainstream journalists actually compose the stuff that they write, about nuclear power, or do they just copy the handouts from the industry?
Quite simply, nuclear industry leaders want to get financial help – subsidies, tax credits, from governments that have been duped into believing that nuclear power is “low” or even “zero” carbon.
The also want the “respectability”, public approval, that comes from being seen as combatting climate change. (even though most were previously in the denying climate change camp).
Anyway – it’s common sense to see that nuclear power is quite a strong emitter of greenhouse gases. Any thinking non-expert can see that. However, experts see it too. Only one step in that uranium-nuclear chain is low emission – though all nuclear lobbyists claim that this step is “no emission” – the reactor’s operation.
The 60 Minutes Fukushima nuclear infomercial, Independent AustraliaNoel Wauchope 23 October 2018 A FEW YEARS AGO, Channel 9’s 60 Minutesdid an excellent investigation of the Fukushima nuclear accident.
This Fukushima investigation was compered by Liz Hayes. I recall that, at the time, the program was a much more thorough, serious and well-resourced presentation than anything put forward by even the ABC or SBS.
The main message of this program is a call to scrap Australia’s legislation against establishing the nuclear industry. The argument given is that we need nuclear power because it is supposedly cheap and dependable. We also need it because it is supposedly essential to combat climate change.
This time, the reporter is not Liz Hayes. It’s Tom Steinfort, who is described as a “seasoned Channel 9 star”. Does a seasoned Channel 9 star just accept without question the claims made in this episode?
Among claims made:
that the evacuation of the Fukushima prefecture was unnecessary — which implies that the Japanese Government and scientists acted stupidly;
that there were no deaths and will not be any deaths resulting from the radiation from the meltdown, a point on which many experts disagree;
If Mr Steinfort really is a star reporter, I would expect him to have done his homework before swallowing these claims hook line and sinker. ………
So, what do we make of this latest offering about Fukushima, from 60 Minutes? It must have taken a lot of money and a lot of negotiation to get a 60 Minutes camera team inside the Fukushima nuclear station. I assume that the negotiations were largely arranged by Ben Heard, who has influential nuclear contacts overseas — particularly in Russia and South Africa, where he has been a prominent nuclear spokesperson. In Russia, Heard launched Rosatom National Geographic — a nuclear soft sell environmental program.
I think that we can be sure of one thing. As Japan plans for the 2020 Olympics – some sections of which are to take place in Fukushima Prefecture – the Japanese Government is not likely to permit a team with any anti-nuclear perspective access to the crippled nuclear power plant.
The 60 Minutes media team would have had to have the Japanese authorities on side. I would bet, some companies keen to set up the nuclear industry in Australia would also be on side and keen to assist.
There have been rumblings, too, of yet another resurgence for nuclear energy in Australia, with Prime Minister Scott Morrison declaring that he is ‘open to the idea of nuclear power’ and that ‘the source of Australia’s energy doesn’t bother him and he isn’t interested in an ideological debate’.
“I listened with great interest to Ben Heard’s narrative regarding conditions in living areas adjacent to the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant. The following academic paper which adds to the knowledge available to Australians and the world population regarding the Japanese nuclear event: “Exposure and current health issues in Minamisoma” by M. Tsubokura Minamisoma Municipal General Hospital, 2-54-6 Takamicho, Haramachi-ku, Minamisoma, Fukushima Prefecture, Japan; e-mail: tsubokura-tky@umin.ac.jp Full paper here:http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0146645316666708
The whole paper needs to be read. The learned author of the paper says, among other things, that : “In September 2011, whole-body counters were installed in the (Minamisoma )hospital and have since been used for screening. In total, some 100,000 people have been screened. For approximately 99% of all children, including elementary and middle school students, in the city, internal exposure levels were below the minimum level for detection (Tsubokura et al., 2015a)…..”
However, the author also states that “More than 5 years since the disaster, internal exposure levels on the order of several thousand or several tens of thousands of becquerels are still being detected in those who regularly consume wild boar, wild birds, wild vegetables, or mushrooms that are highly contaminated, with a frequency of about several persons per 10,000 people (Tsubokura et al., 2014). However, internal exposure levels are not likely to increase for those who consume foods distributed through regular channels.” end partial quotes.
I topped my class in Agricultural Science and was trained by the Australian Army as a Radiological Safety NCO during the Cold War. The matters are complex and the exclusion zones in Japan are valid in my opinion from what I have read from the literature.
I have a question for the 60 minutes team, Ben Heard and viewers: Given the fact of bio-accumulation as proven by the dosimetry of those scanned Japanese people who hunt and collect their own food, including those who eat food obtained not from “official” supply chains, would you be happy to give up hunting, fresh water fishing (many papers on that one) and collecting edible plants and mushrooms as one’s ancestors have done since the dawn of time? Or is this a small matter in the context of the current 10 year window nuclear power has before it is rendered totally redundant in the Australian context. There is no need to panic. It’s all very interesting. Paul Langley.”
Of course Channel 9 Sydney will not be reading the above letter from a viewer during the 60 Minutes feedback segment anytime this side of the next ice age.
Steve Dale Nuclear Fuel Cycle Watch South Australia That poor guy [ 60 Minutes reporter Tom Steinfort]- he has to learn that people can seem very nice and sincere but still be feeding you a load of crap.
Just watched a “60 minutes extra video” where he has an extended interview with Geraldine Thomas. He talks about his Geiger counter on the plane (a Safecast unit that Ben Heard is seen holding in the actual 60 minutes report) and says –
“…the Geiger counter is hovering around 3.5 to 3.6 micro Sieverts – that is about “50 times” the normal exposure you would get in Melbourne or Sydney…”
3.5 is 35 times the average background value 0.1 micro Sieverts. The nuclear propagandists exaggerate the effects of airflight non-contaminating radiation because it suits their agenda. Such dishonesty, such desperation..
It really seems like the nuclear propagandists have thrown everything at this poor unwitting journalist to get this segment – I wonder who actually paid for the airflights (which from the video looked like first/business class)
Oh – and from the display on the Geiger Counter we can say the date of the flight was 23rd of September – and I know Heard was also in Fukushima back in April, so this makes 3+ trips to Fukushima power station.
Andrea Carson Incoming Associate Professor at LaTrobe University. Former Lecturer, Political Science, School of Social and Political Sciences; Honorary Research Fellow, Centre for Advancing Journalism, University of Melbourne
If you value the media’s watchdog role in democracy, then the opening words in the deal enabling Channel Nine to acquire Fairfax Media, the biggest single shake-up of the Australian media in more than 30 years, ring alarm bells.
The opening gambit is an appeal to advertisers, not readers. It promises to enhance “brand” and “scale” and to deliver “data solutions” combined with “premium content”. Exciting stuff for a media business in the digital age. But for a news organisation what is missing are key words like “news”, “journalism” and “public interest”.
Those behind the deal, its political architects who scrapped the cross-media ownership laws last year, and its corporate men, Fairfax’s and Nine’s CEOs, proffer a commercial rather than public interest argument for the merger. They contend that for two legacy media companies to survive into the 21st century, this acquisition is vital.
Perhaps so. But Australia’s democratic health relies on more than a A$4 billion media merger that delivers video streaming services like Stan, a lucrative real estate advertising website like Domain, and a high-rating television program like Love Island.
The news media isn’t just any business. It does more than entertain us and sell us things. Through its journalism, it provides important public interest functions.
Ideally, news should accurately inform Australians. A healthy democracy is predicated on the widest possible participation of an informed citizenry. According to liberal democratic theorists, the news media facilitate informed participation by offering a diverse range of views so that we can make considered choices, especially during election campaigns when we decide who will govern us.
Journalists have other roles too, providing a check on the power of governments and the excesses of the market, to expose abuses that hurt ordinary Australians.
This watchdog role is why I am concerned about Nine merging with Fairfax. To be clear, until last week, I was cautiously optimistic about the future of investigative journalism in Australia.
Newspapers like The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the Newcastle Herald and the Financial Review have a strong record of using their commercial activities to subsidise expensive investigative journalism to strengthen democratic accountability by exposing wrongdoing. Channel Nine does not.
Since the formation of The Age’s Insight team in 1967, Fairfax investigations have had many important public outcomes after exposing transgressions including: judicial inquiries, criminal charges, high-profile political and bureaucratic sackings, and law reforms. Recent examples include the dogged work of Fairfax and ABC journalists to expose systemic child sex abuse in the Catholic Church and elsewhere, leading to a royal commission and National Redress Scheme for victims. Another was the exposure of dodgy lending practices that cost thousands of Australians their life savings and homes, which also triggered a royal commission.
The problem with Nine’s proposed takeover of Fairfax (if it goes ahead) is that it is unlikely to be “business as usual” for investigative journalism in the new Nine entity. First, there is a cultural misalignment and, with Nine in charge, theirs is likely to dominate.
With notable exceptions such as some 60 Minutes reporting, Nine is better known for its foot-in-the-door muckraking and chequebook journalism than its investigative journalism. In comparison, seven decades of award-winning investigative journalism data reveal Fairfax mastheads have produced more Walkley award-winning watchdog reporting than any other commercial outlet.
Second, even as the financial fortunes of Fairfax have waned in the digital age, it has maintained its award-winning investigative journalism through clever adaptations including cross-media collaborations, mainly with the ABC. This has worked well for both outlets, sharing costs and increasing a story’s reach and impact across print, radio, online and television.
How will this partnership be regarded when Fairfax is Nine’s newlywed? Will the ABC be able to go it alone with the same degree of investigative reporting in light of its successive federal government budget cuts?
Third, my latest research (see graph, on original) ) has shown that in Australia, as in Britain and the United States, investigative stories and their targets have changed this decade to accommodate newsroom cost-cutting.
Investigations are more likely to focus on stories that are cheaper and easier to pursue. This means some areas such as local politics and industrial relations have fallen off the investigative journalist’s radar. Here and abroad, this reflects cost-cutting and a loss of specialist reporters.
Echoing this, The Boston Globe’s Spotlight editor, Walter Robinson, warned:
There are so many important junctures in life where there is no journalistic surveillance going on. There are too many journalistic communities in the United States now where the newspaper doesn’t have the reporter to cover the city council, the school committee, the mayor’s office … we have about half the number of reporters that we had in the late 1990s. You can’t possibly contend that you are doing the same level or depth of reporting. Too much stuff is just slipping through too many cracks.
Of concern, Australian award-winning investigations already cover a smaller breadth of topics compared to larger international media markets. The merger of Fairfax mastheads with Channel Nine further consolidates Australia’s newsrooms. If investigative journalism continues, story targets are likely to be narrow.
Finally, investigative journalism is expensive. It requires time, resources and, because it challenges power, an institutional commitment to fight hefty lawsuits. Fairfax has a history of defending its investigative reporters in the courts, at great expense.
Will Nine show the same commitment to defending its newly adopted watchdog reporters using earnings from its focus on “brand”, “scale” and “data solutions”? For the sake of democratic accountability, I hope so.
Addressing a room full of federal and circuit judges at the Ninth Circuit’s annual judicial conference, David McCraw, the deputy general counsel for The New York Times, explained that regardless of how one feels about Assange and traditional news outlets receiving the same kind of deference over publishing leaked materials, his prosecution would be a gut punch to free speech.
“I think the prosecution of him would be a very, very bad precedent for publishers,” McCraw said. “From that incident, from everything I know, he’s sort of in a classic publisher’s position and I think the law would have a very hard time drawing a distinction between The New York Times and WikiLeaks.”
McCraw went on to clarify that while Assange employs certain methods that he finds discomfiting and irresponsible, such as dumping unredacted documents revealing the personal information of ordinary people, Assange should be afforded the same protections as a traditional journalist.
“Do I wish journalism was practiced in a certain way, like it is with The New York Times, The Washington Post, or The Wall Street Journal? Of course. But I also think new ways of publishing have their value. Our colleagues who are not only challenging us financially but journalistically have raised an awareness that there are different ways to report,” McCraw said.
“But if someone is in the business of publishing information, I think that whatever privilege happens to apply – whatever extension of the law that would apply – should be there. Because the question isn’t whether he’s a journalist. It’s in that instance was he committing an act of journalism.”
Assange has long considered himself a journalist operating no differently than other news outlets. This has complicated matters, because if Assange can be prosecuted for publishing leaked information, why not prosecute news organizations like The New York Times?
Earlier this month, a grand jury returned an indictment against twelve Russian military spies for hacking into the servers and emails of the Democratic National Committee and state election officials, stealing documents and staging the release of those documents to interfere with the 2016 presidential election. While the indictment did not name Assange and WikiLeaks specifically, it has been widely suggested that WikiLeaks received the materials and could very well be the group referred to in the indictment as “Organization Number 1.”
Barry Pollack, who represents Assange in an ongoing criminal investigation in the Eastern District of Virginia, weighed in on the indictment Tuesday.
“If you read the indictment that just came out on Russians and you look at what Organization Number 1, which is clearly WikiLeaks, is alleged to have done in that indictment, it is doing exactly what The New York Times and The Washington Post do every day of the week,” Pollack said. “He [Assange] is communicating with a source, the source provides him with information, he publishes that information.
“There are no questions about the truthfulness or accuracy or authenticity of that information. And then he encourages the source to give him more information. He says ‘don’t give it to my competitors, give it to me. This story will have more impact if I publish it.’”
Pollack and McCraw spoke as part of a panel titled “The Law of Leaks,” a session on how the United States has ramped up efforts to prosecute people who have leaked state secrets. Thirteen people have been prosecuted under the first law against leaking state secrets, the Espionage Act of 1917, most under the Obama administration.
President Donald Trump has waged an unprecedented war against the media, taking to Twitter last year to call the media “the enemy of the American people.” Yet no publisher has ever been indicted over leaks, and both McCraw and Pollack expressed doubts about whether it will happen any time soon.
“Unlike firing off a tweet, bringing a prosecution requires a career professional prosecutor to sign off on the prosecution, so there also is a tremendous check there that doesn’t exist in some of the rhetoric we hear,” Pollack said.
“Prosecutions of journalists would be difficult,” McCraw said. “I think they’d be unpopular, I think they’d be wrong, and I think they’d be unsuccessful. I see this PR campaign against the press as almost an alternative to legal measures.”
A modern tragedy: Nine-Fairfax merger a disaster for quality media, The Conversation, Denis Muller, Senior Research Fellow in the Centre for Advancing Journalism, University of Melbourne,
It means the death of Fairfax and is the most consequential change in Australian media ownership in 31 years.
It also means that three of Australia’s best and biggest newspapers – The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Australian Financial Review – are now subsumed into a media conglomerate whose editorial culture is characterised by mediocre journalism.
Nine’s news bulletins consist largely of police stories with a tincture of politics, and highlights of colourful or violent events overseas.Its current affairs program, A Current Affair, is a formulaic procession of stories about consumer rorts and personal tragedies.
So there is a huge question mark over the future editorial quality of the newspapers.
A particularly pressing question is: what will happen to The Age’s investigative unit?
It is led by two of the best investigative reporters Australia has produced, Nick McKenzie and Richard Baker.
In addition to breaking an extraordinary range of major stories on subjects like organised crime and scandals in the banking industry, they have developed a highly successful collaboration with the ABC’s Four Corners team.
It seems very unlikely Nine would allow this collaboration to continue, since it involves a rival television channel.
There is also a question about editorial independence.
Fairfax has a charter of editorial independence, which all owners since 1990 have signed up to. Will Nine sign up to it? Will the charter have any meaning when the newspapers are owned by a company whose chairman, Peter Costello, was treasurer in the Liberal-National Coalition government of former Prime Minister John Howard?
The answers to these questions will not be known for some time. They will depend largely on who is given editorial control of the combined operation. Since the Nine CEO, Hugh Marks, is to be CEO of the combined operation, it seems more likely than not that it will be a Nine executive who calls the editorial shots, too.
The takeover also means a further loss of diversity in an already highly concentrated media-ownership landscape. The big players are now down to four: News Corp, Nine, Seven West Media and the ABC.
And it is almost certain to mean the loss of yet more journalists’ jobs.
Since 2012, more than 3,000 jobs have been lost across Australian journalism. Yet, if the takeover is really going to represent “compelling value” for shareholders, as Fairfax chairman Nick Falloon says, then newsroom “synergies” – to borrow the corporate jargon – are likely to be essential.
