Australian official's call to kill free speech
We read:
"Western Australia's deputy coroner says police should be given powers to suppress news reports that may compromise their investigations. But media experts have attacked the proposal as an affront to free speech that would put WA in danger of becoming a police state.
The calls for new police powers follow a year of scrutiny of Perth media, including a raid on the Sunday Times newspaper by armed police in an attempt to find the source of a story that embarrassed the previous Carpenter government. The Corruption and Crime Commission has also used its extraordinary powers to grill six journalists in private hearings in the past two years in an effort to identify their sources.
Deputy coroner Evelyn Vicker made the recommendation while handing down her findings into the death of convicted murderer Simon Rochford, who committed suicide in his Albany Prison cell just hours after seeing a television news report in May 2006 naming him as the new suspect in a high-profile murder case.
Source
The Leftist West Australian State government was particularly corrupt and greatly resented it when the media exposed that. So there really have been there attempts to muzzle the media. A new conservative administration has just taken over, however, so the threat to freedom of the press has probably now receded.
The old VOLUNTARY "D-notice" system dealt with the sort of problem described in the article above but D-notices appear to have fallen into disuse.
4 comments:
I understand your point, but let's face it, we all know the media is totally out of control. It is now openly and actively interfering with the political process, and with "great" bias. Freedom of the press is crucial, but a press that disregards truth and accuracy in it's reporting, based on it's own political agenda, is a great danger to all freedom loving people!
The old VOLUNTARY "D-notice" system dealt with the sort of problem described in the article above but D-notices appear to have fallen into disuse.
No it didn't. The D-Notice system dealt with issues of national security, not criminal investigations.
The media wishes people to believe that they have the right to break privacy issues that can and do compromise investigations in the name of "right to know." That is seldom the case. What is actually happening is that the media is peddling "look what we can tell you" without any regard to confidentiality agreements or any regard to public safety.
This article is a prime example of the media saying "look at how the government wants to censure us!" while actually saying "we have the right to publish anything we want, without responsibility, without consequences, and without following the same rules and laws that apply to the rest of you peons."
Freedom of the press is constantly and fundamentally being abused by the press to give themselves powers above and beyond that of ordinary citizens or even law enforcement.
I'm all in favour of reducing that power, especially when it interferes with the rights and lives of citizens and the execution of criminal investigations (press mosquitoes destroy evidence, plant evidence, compromise witnesses and judges, all for the sake of a juicy story, with the result that criminals walk free).
Similarly, the way the press reports on terrorism in gruesome detail strengthens terrorists worldwide, gives them a platform.
Would the press refrain from blowing every terrorist incident anywhere way out of proportion and instead keep quiet about them, terrorism would be far less of a problem as the terrorists would reap far less benefit from their acts (they'd each be a localised incident unknown elsewhere rather than being perceived as a globally orchestrated campaign against "the infidels" or whomever).
Had the press not been sacrosanct, the Princess or Wales would not have died at their hands and her driver not been blamed falsely for that death for over a decade.
Murderers would be behind bars, terrorists would not have a platform to spread their terror.
I'd say give the press the same powers and rights as every citizen, no less and certainly no more.
Why do they need the "right" to spy on people, constantly harass them, when anyone not wearing a presscard would be arrested for it?
Why can they get away with blatant political propaganda for Obama (for example) when someone handing out flyers supporting a rightwing candidate gets arrested for "breaking the peace", "spreading subversive material", or breaking campaign finance laws?
I am pretty certain that in Queensland the D-notice system included criminal matters.
But I think it was abolished when the Labor party came to power
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