{"id":17873,"date":"2014-05-05T16:38:29","date_gmt":"2014-05-05T06:38:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nofibs.com.au\/?p=17873"},"modified":"2019-04-13T23:58:05","modified_gmt":"2019-04-13T13:58:05","slug":"why-australians-should-care-about-world-press-freedom-day-by-journlaw","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/why-australians-should-care-about-world-press-freedom-day-by-journlaw\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Australians should care about World Press Freedom Day: @journlaw"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"carte2014_en\"<\/p>\n

Readers of\u00a0NoFibs<\/em>\u00a0reap the rewards of citizen journalists expressing their news and views with a high level of free expression by world standards.<\/span><\/p>\n

So why should Australians care about media freedom on World Press Freedom Day<\/a> 2014?<\/p>\n

Quite simply, because it is a \u2018fragile freedom\u2019 \u2013 continually under threat and only noticed by most people once they have lost it.<\/p>\n

Just ask any of the refugees who have fled to Australia over the past century from regimes that have robbed them of their human rights. One of their first responses is typically that they love their new home country because it is \u2018free\u2019 and they can express themselves freely here.<\/p>\n

When you look at international indices of media freedom like that of Reporters Without Borders<\/a>, Australia (ranked 28th) sits in stark contrast to the censorship and intimidation of journalists in many other countries like Vietnam (174th), China (175th) and Somalia (176th).<\/p>\n

Journalists are not usually jailed in this country (although Melbourne broadcaster and blogger Derryn Hinch<\/a> was a recent exception), and they are certainly not tortured or murdered for exercising their right to free expression here.<\/p>\n

At least in Hinch\u2019s case he was duly tried and convicted (for breach of a suppression order) in a legal system that is open, just and in accordance with the rule of law.<\/p>\n

The same cannot be said of another jailed Australian journalist, Peter Greste, who remains in jail in Egypt<\/a> after 130 days along with five of his Al Jazeera media colleagues (and 14 others) on trumped up charges of defaming the country and of consorting with the Muslim Brotherhood.<\/p>\n

While Greste\u2019s plight has been highlighted here because of his nationality, he is just one of 168 journalists jailed throughout the world this year for just doing their job. The expression \u2018shoot the messenger\u2019 takes on a chilling reality when you also consider the 25 journalists, bloggers and citizen journalists killed already<\/a> in 2014.<\/p>\n

Australia\u2019s relatively good performance in these press freedom rankings belies the fact that there are ongoing and emerging threats to free expression.<\/p>\n

The top ten places in the RSF rankings are typically occupied by Scandinavian and Western European nations like Finland, the Netherlands and Norway because free expression is valued highly there and enshrined in bills of rights and human rights conventions.<\/p>\n

Australia is rare among Western democracies in that it lacks any such constitutional protection of free speech or free media. That means that, unlike in places like New Zealand, Canada and the UK, free expression is not considered routinely when laws are proposed that impinge upon it.<\/p>\n

It is one of the reasons there are hundreds of laws at state and Commonwealth level limiting what journalists, bloggers and other citizens can say and write. They include:<\/p>\n