Australian journalists and whistle-blowers are under attack by the federal government like never before and the only thing the old media have done is the weak and pathetic “Right to Know” campaign they rolled out last Sunday night (20/10/19). It’s achieved nothing other than highlight the hypocrisy and lies of the old Australian media which has resulted in them getting a hiding on social media.
The old media started their “Right to Know” campaign against the federal government claiming they are being silenced. The old media say they aren’t being allowed to inform the public of all the facts because of threats of defamation claims and being raided by the police.
But it is the old media who are just as bad via their own lying, deceiving and self-censoring. Social media have been quick to point out the lies and many stories that the old media wouldn’t publish and in many cases still won’t publish when there is clearly a public interest to do so.
The list of stories the old media wouldn’t report, or only some will report, is a mile long and includes, but is not limited to:
- The Angus Taylor / Barnaby Joyce Watergate fraud
- The Angus Taylor Grassgate scandal
- Almost anything and everything about fraudster and sexual predator Barnaby Joyce
- Abuse of the law by Kerry Stokes and Seven West Media
- Nine Chairman Peter Costello making $millions from lobbying the federal government and his good mate Scott Morrison
- News Corp in effect being accused of treason when journalist Anthony Klan resigned in May 2019.
- SMH editor Lisa Davies publishing an article calling for the jailing of journalist Shane Dowling for reporting the truth.
I’ll stop there but feel free to add more in the comment section below. The problem has been obvious for years.
The Guardian reported on Monday (21/10/19) in relation to the Right to Know campaign:
Now Australia’s major media organisations are joining forces to demand a minimum set of changes, fighting back against more than 60 pieces of legislation introduced over the past two decades that effectively criminalise journalism and penalise whistleblowing.
We have six core demands:
- The right to challenge the government’s application for warrants against journalists and media organisations, before they are issued.
- Exemptions for journalists from laws that would put them in jail for doing their jobs, including the security laws enacted over the last seven years.
- Adequate legislated protections for public sector whistleblowers.
- A new regime to limit which documents can be stamped secret.
- Reform of the freedom of information regime.
- Reform to laws that make Australia the defamation capital of the world. (Click here to read more)
The old media are doing too little too late. I’ve been in a legal war with Kerry Stokes and the courts who have been trying to silence me for the last few years and the old media have done bugger all to back me up and now the government is going after the old media so I have no sympathy for them. But in saying that the battle line against the government has to be drawn and we all have to join the battle otherwise the situation will only get worse.
The old Australian media should have taken decisive and prolonged action back on the 4th of June 2019 when the AFP raided the ABC which ignited the current campaign. I wrote an article at the time titled “Australian media cry wolf as the Federal Police raid the ABC and a News Corp journalist’s home.” That’s all the media seem to be doing, crying wolf all the time.
What if the media in Canberra refused to do interviews with any of the government MP’s and Senators until they introduced laws that protected journalists and whistleblowers. In the short-term the government might hold the line but in the medium to long-term the government would buckle.
The hypocrisy of the old media running the “Right to Know” campaign is scandalous given one of the biggest abusers of silencing journalists and jailing journalists is Kerry Stokes and Seven West Media which he controls. I’ve lost count how many non-publication, suppression orders Kerry Stokes and his companies have taken out against me and he has done the same against others. Stokes and his companies have threatened defamation proceedings literally against dozens, if not hundreds, of Australian journalists. And then, of course, Stokes and Chief Justice Tom Bathurst had me jailed twice and Stokes is trying to do so again.
While it is hard to get enthusiastic to support the old media something has to be done and we’re doing our bit at this website reporting the truth, and when attacked for doing so, we’re holding the line and not buckling.
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Categories: ABC, Channel 10, Channel 7, Channel 9
I find it ironic that the Australian media is campaigning on “your right to know” when for more than 40 years they have been ignoring the truth of the murder of Sydney journalist Juanita Nielsen. And that’s not the only example I know of. Then they ask, referring to the Government’s attempt at Press control: “What are they trying to hide?” Pot and kettle spring to mind.
As a veteran journalist, I’d fight for Press freedom: the alternative is dictatorial censorship, but for political reasons the Sydney Press has for many years been selective in exposing scandal and corruption, just as much of the UK media, with the BBC leading the pack, is currently doing apropos Brexit. As I have learned, many right thinking journalists are aware of this but are powerless to be even-handed in their reportage. They have to grin and bear the double standards.
On the other hand, the official censorship under consideration in Australia is nothing less than media control disguised, which serves only to exacerbate the problem. It is the slippery slope to dictatorship, where the newspaper claim of “all the news that’s fit to print” is translated into “print all the news that fits.”
It would seem to me that censorship and corruption are siblings, conceived by those with secrets to keep. It’s a continuous quid pro quo. That it should suddenly become a major topic in Sydney, of all places, is beyond parody. There, it has been an open secret for generations that corruption is a major industry, one which oils all the important wheels in society, particularly organised crime and politics.
Only courageous reporters attempt to expose this and they have limited success. But I knew one who went too far and paid with her life. Despite my continuing efforts over the years, the true story of Juanita Nielsen’s murder has never seen the light of day. My erstwhile colleagues in the media remain ambivalent; the Sydney Press collectively doesn’t want to know. Only one outlet answered my appeal and that came to nothing.
Plainly, press freedom doesn’t apply in this case. Some big names were implicated in the conspiracy and I can prove that the cops were involved in the cover-up, so perhaps the story is simply too big, the political implications too far reaching. So much for the freedom of the press, eh?
No surprise there ,all normal as usual…we need to end Federalism.
“Helloworld” travel and connection with Mathias Cormann and Joe Hockey. Awarding $50 billion contract for as yet to be designed French submarines- more to this than meets the eye!
Recently I spent a month in Kenya and some time while sitting on the beach in Mombasa to read the local papers. These papers are full of stories about the corrupt antics of the Kenyan politicians and government officials, something one never reads about in Australia. Press freedom is alive and well in Africa and dead and buried in the penal colony of Australia.
The press in Australia will not report on the fact that the Victorian Government, will not release the report written by the Victorian Ombudsman on the failings of investigations on lawyers way back in 2009 by The Victorian Legal Services Commission. The report recommended 29 improvements to the process but you cannot get your hands on the report.
This is despite the fact that the Productivity during its access to justice review tried to get its hands on the report and just recently it has been requested as part of the defense case in a criminal matter and has been refused as it would be against the public interest to release it. All ticked off by the magistrate, the court and the DPP.
I agree with KCA and the other comments to date. The main street media had my box of evidence of collusion, corruption and criminal cover-ups on their desks at head offices in Sydney & Melbourne in 2011. We will get back to you after a quick look through it!. My evidence went right to the P.M.& C. and the opposition of the day and even when they changed around the cover-up was kept in place and the press gallery in Canberra did not even bother to reply or want to view the evidence offered. It is just a stage show by all to hoodwink the gullible public again. I am still fighting to get my evidence out there but it appears it is too damaging all round for anyone to take it on. Keep up the work.
The tyranny, which has been with us for a long time now, is starting to reveal itself to more and more people.
The forging of a STATUTORY DECLARATION is perjury, my reward for the exposure was to be defamed by a lacy journalist by the name of Mark Oberhart, he printed a story in the Brisbane Courier Mail using my exact name MICHAEL WILLIAM LOCKHART, as a catholic priest that was jailed for sex offenses, I have no criminal history of any kind, he refused to retract and the Courier Mail ignored me! There are too many “little mates” in our courts and the media!
TURN OFF TOMATOES
Malpas Dam, between Armidale and Guyra in northern NSW, was built after the 1965 drought to provide drinking water to the city of Armidale allowing for population growth to about 60,000 persons. So, Armidale has been drought free since Malpas Dam was completed about 1972.
The Guyra Tomato Farm is an intensive horticultural glasshouse operation producing tomatoes for local and export markets. All the rainwater falling on the very large glasshouses is collected and stored for use in the enterprise. Even so, some treated water was provided from the Guyra Reservoir, the drinking water supply for Guyra ratepayers. There are no other water storage dams in the complex.
The Costas Group that owns the Guyra Tomato Farm was valued in an Initial Public Offering about 5 years ago at about $750 MILLION and about 50% was purchased by a Canadian Investment corporation.
The Gladly-back-flip-I-can NSW Liarbral nat$ misgovernment recently (2019) funded a pipeline for about $13 MILLION from Malpas Dam to the Tomato Farm with a spur pipeline to the Guyra town reservoir as a sop to local residents, then funded the trucking of about 240,000 LITRES PER DAY of treated town water from Armidale to the Tomato Farm, about 40 km distant, while construction and testing was completed.
The Tomato Farm is presently buying water from Armidale Regional Council (ARC) at a rate discounted from the residential cost paid by ARC ratepayers, and at about double the daily volume supplied to Guyra residents.
This largesse has effectively made Malpas Dam the major water storage for the Guyra Tomato Farm, and now connected directly by pipeline to the Tomato Farm.
Meanwhile Armidale ratepayers are on Level 5 water restrictions to protect the profits for foreign shareholders.
TURNING OFF TOMATOES
A FORCE MAJEURE decision from the NSW Supreme Court would allow ARC to escape without penalty any contractual obligations to supply water to the Tomato Farm for the duration of the present drought.
Malpas Dam was built specifically to supply residential drinking water to Armidale city and allow for population growth to 60,000 persons from the present 24,000 that has been stagnant since about 1975.
The problem is the political aspirations of Federal, NSW and local government nat$ politicians.
Historically, nat$ supporters in successive Armidale councils have ‘discouraged’ any industrial or manufacturing activities setting up in Armidale because such workers generally vote for Labor and that would threaten the political sinecure presently enjoyed by nat$ candidates.
The NSW Minister for Agriculture and the Federal representative of the nat$ and BIG MONEY in New England take every opportunity to feature in publicity about water storage and supply projects in northern NSW.
Now, some ARC councillors seem to have aspirations for future higher political office and the unelected political hacks who control pre-selection in the nat$ may expect future financial support from beneficiaries of the ‘theft’ of Armidale drinking water from Malpas Dam at a discount rate to achieve those aspirations ….. to the detriment of local Australian voters.
Vote nat$ get screwed.
Yes! I’m from New England, what is worse about Costas Guyra Tomato Farm is they give Preference to Employ Foreigners over Locals, my Brother applied 2x with over Qualifications, but I suspect there is a Goverment Funded Kickback Scheme to bring FIFO Fijians & other Islanders to work there, Probably Wage Subsidies & or Tax Incentives! The Tomato Farm was Built with the Promise of Employment to Locals, but Now Guyra is approx 50% Non Native Islanders here, & who can blame them they get good pay, Subsidized by your Taxes, & with the goverment funded water pipe line It’s a Racket!!! Anything Project that’s Public/Private Partnership Funded is Crooked! No different to Mafia! It’s got to Stop!
Every Australian citizen has to know of the situation and there should be a never-ending campaign instigated and presented daily to the Australian public by every possible method, and the Australian media should be the promoters of solving the corruption problem.
The South Australian media keeps silent on matters of serious crimes – and ALWAYS tows the line of the South Australian Police (SAPOL) media mouthpieces, never questioning their agenda or motive. It’s criminal. And it’s so easy to get away with in the backwater of Adelaide with only one paper – the Crapvertiser, er sorry, Advertiser! Multiple witnesses have come forward naming several person of interest in many cold cAase child abductions and murders – including offering the whereabouts of the remains of the missing Beaumont children (Stansbury), and Louise Bell (Edwardstown.) But SAPOL don’t want those crimes solved until all the major players are dead and buried. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9W0aLPw1ZBk
I have just watched Mark Zuckerberg (ABC NEWS) admit that FACEBOOK does not fact check ads. I have endured harassment from a real estate agent in Toowoomba, who I refused to reengage after he failed, my repeated requests to remove his false advertisement has been refused, the excuse FACEBOOK gave was that it is ads that allows me to be on FACEBOOK for free. What they are claiming is I am “lucky” and I should not complain about an agent who is being dishonest and now can say what he likes about my property, given his belligerents his comments are not likely to be complementary, I have emailed Mia Garlic, the head of FACEBOOK in Australia but she has ignored me, At the suggestion of the ACCC, I intend to make a formal complaint to police, so if I “disappear” from FACEBOOK you will know why!
Two words: JULIAN ASSANGE
The Julia Gillard AWU fraud & cover-up. The media just simply refused to tell the truth that Julia Gillard was directly involved in the fraud. That as well they refused to say that Julia Gillard was under investigation by the Victorian Police when she was still the Prime Minister. Plus as well the media believing Gillard’s side of the story instead of listening to the facts. Another one is the many grubby stories & facts about former Labor leader Bill Shorten that the media refused to talk about, despite the evidence against Shorten being 10 miles long. The Australian media are as equally as bad as the Australian politicians. There’s no accountability in much of the Australian media anymore, especially the Political media.
Totally agree. Tried to get them to report on an influential law firm for robbing a deceased estate, one of the partners was president of the Law Institute of Victoria, the firm is the leader in aged care advice and standards to government, even went to every media outlet in Melbourne with a copy of my book and a big fresh cheesecake as a bribe. Did not get one bite, they are all muzzled and are intimidated by their legal departments run by that guy named Sue. Problem is that all those journalists who would report have been executed and are no longer permitted to participate. I call it the transformation of fascism to legalism.