It seems the Federal Government may have the power to censor Australian newspapers, radio stations, blog sites and television if it accepts recommendations by the report of the Print Media Inquiry which recommended the setting up of a News Media Council.
The inquiry was set up by the Federal Government to pursue Rupert Murdoch’s News Limited (accused of phone hacking in Britain). Sound strange? Not so strange when one considers the obsession of our Green Labor and Independent MPs with the Australian “hate media” — namely, Rupert Murdoch’s News Limited group — for the “hate media” finding unacceptable the actions and behaviour of the present Federal Government. To put it plainly, the Inquiry was not set up to examine phone hacking by Australian journalists: it was purposely done to stop criticism of the Federal Government by Murdoch’s “The Australian” and the “Daily Telegraph” newspapers. Green Labor and the Independents will try to get rid of the “hate media” by resorting to the force of law to impose government-sponsored censorship of the press. The Inquiry Report even recommends regional media services be investigated by the Federal Government “as a matter of urgency’ (“The Australian”, 3-4 March, p.8).
Government censorship of the press has the strong smell of dictatorship about it. As Australians, we have never voted for a dictatorship; we must abide by that. Let us recall what Thomas Jefferson said on the necessity of a free press (1787): “were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.” In this way, Jefferson understood the very basis of a free society to be freedom of speech accompanied by freedom of the press. If we wish to continue to live in a democracy, we must contest the present Federal Government’s desire to restrict freedom of the press in any way.
Dr Paul Fidlon,
Armidale
