Treating journalism as a crime
Federal police raids on media remind us of the fragility of everyone’s right to privacy and freedom, writes Claire Konkes
OFTEN the justification for draconian security laws is that they will not affect you if you have nothing to hide.
Tell that to News Corp journalist Annika Smethurst who endured a seven-hour raid on her house this week because she reported on government plans to spy on Australian citizens.
Our cyber intelligence agency, the Australian Signals Directorate, is not allowed to spy on us, although ASIO can investigate citizens with a warrant.
But Smethurst and her colleagues last year revealed plans to give the ASD powers to secretly access citizen’s emails, bank records and text messages.
Their plans were not a national secret — as Labor’s Mark Dreyfus pointed out this week, the matter would have had to come before the Australian Parliament anyway.
Smethurst’s reports then were not about revealing secrets, but exposing the extent to which the government wants to spy on its own people.
You may have nothing to fear from national security laws if you have done nothing wrong, but there is something to fear when journalists are intimidated and harassed, even threatened with jail, for doing their job.
So, what is wrong with the Australian Federal Police raiding a journalist’s home?
When police walk into your bedroom and rifle through
your clothing and other personal belongings, you are being forcibly reminded of the fragility of the right to privacy and freedom.
Not just the privacy and freedom of journalists, but everyone’s right to privacy and freedom.
A day after Smethurst’s home was searched, the AFP raided the ABC’s Sydney headquarters and spent eight hours reading emails and looking for notes, drafts and raw footage related to a series of 2017 stories, known as the Afghan Files, about unlawful killings and misconduct by Australian special forces in Afghanistan.
Yes, the stories were based on secret Defence documents leaked to the ABC, but the reporting was clearly in the public interest.
What does it say about the health of Australia’s democracy when public interest journalism is treated as a crime? Or when our police are used to control the flow of political information?
The philosopher Hannah Arendt, writing about the rise of totalitarianism in Europe nearly a century ago, warned against leaders with an “extreme contempt for facts”.
Punishing journalists for reporting shows a contempt for truth and transparency. Every Australian has the right and responsibility to know what that government is doing in our name and what freedoms we are losing. The attack on journalists for public interest reporting is an attack on us, the public.
The dust has barely settled after the election, so these events reek of political timing, yet Prime Minister Scott Morrison says this is a matter for the AFP and that he remains at arm’s length from the investigation. What tosh! Leaked government material regularly surfaces in the media without prompting a police investigation (especially when it serves the government’s interests) and it is the government that decides which leaks are referred to the police.
Some might also say that our radically changing media and communication environment demands different approaches to how we treat leaks, but remember: these AFP investigations targeted respected journalists and news organisations, working within a professional code of ethics.
When sweeping antiespionage laws were passed last year, the government promised there were exemptions in place to protect journalists, and the identities of their sources, from being targeted.
This week shows the
fragility of that promise.
What we have seen is not a debate between lawyers or the heaviness of a subpoena, but a very public display of how dangerous the business of transparency can be. As well as being part of a police investigation, it will also serve to chill the willingness of some to pursue government secrets, even when in the public interest. Many journalists will hesitate, as will their editors and their legal advisers, before accepting leaked material.
Whistleblowers too have been shown their information is no longer safe because one email, one scrawled phone number unearthed in a police raid may expose them.
The AFP was busy this week. Federal police also contacted Sydney’s 2GB asking how journalist Ben Fordham obtained information about the six Sri Lankan boats carrying asylum seekers.
Fordham told reporters that “the chances of me revealing my sources is zero. Not today, not tomorrow, next week or next month. There is not a hope in hell of that happening”.
The AFP might have to wait until hell freezes over before a journalist reveals their sources — but they can raid the homes and workplaces to seize that material. Journalists are feeling the chill right across Australia. And that’s not good for any of us.
Smethurst’s reports then were not about revealing secrets, but exposing the extent to which the government wants to spy on its own people.