Defamation claims and suppression orders are crippling Australian journalism, claims MEAA
Defamation claims, court suppression orders, and national security laws are resulting in a lack of transparency, and hindering press freedom, according to a survey run by the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA).
The release of the survey results coincides with World Press Freedom Day, and mirror observations from this year’s World Press Freedom Index, which saw Australia fall in the global rankings.
MEAA’s chief executive Paul Murphy
Defamation claims and suppression orders stay until we enshrine free speech in our constitution. End of story.
Perhaps they won’t be needed when media quites trying to to be judge and jury and does investigative reporting rather than defaming the innocent.
Even if journalists were free to report on whatever they want, at the end of the day it is a business and the media will peddle what will sell. For example, a civil war has been raging in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (which, by the way, is neither democratic nor a republic) for some 20 years now and over 6 million lives have been lost. Where is this news? Yet we hear interminable stories of some footballer’s ACL injury or someone putting a little ball into a little hole for a bucket load of money.
Closer to home, when Archbishop Stylianos, the leader of the Greek Orthodox faithful in Australia for over 40 years, died recently he got scant mention in the media. Many outlets simply ignored this story. Yet George Pell has been reported on, before and after the trial, enough to fill a book.
My advice: get your own house in order.