The Brussels-based International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has condemned the censoring of the Solomon Islands Broadcasting Corporation (SIBC) as an “assault on press freedom” and an “unacceptable development” amid mounting concern over China’s influence on the media and security.

“The censoring of the Solomon Island’s national broadcaster is an assault on press freedom and an unacceptable development for journalists, the public, and the democratic political process,” the IFJ said in a statement.

“The IFJ calls for the immediate reinstatement of independent broadcasting arrangements in the Solomon Islands.”

The government of the Solomon Islands on August 1 ordered the national radio and television broadcaster SIBC to censor its programmes of anti-government voices.

The Prime Minister and Cabinet Office of the Solomon Islands mandated the SIBC to censor its programmes of perspectives critical of the incumbent government.

According to SIBC staff, the acting chairman of the board, William Parairato, outlined the new guidelines on July 29.

Both news and paid programmes are to be vetted in line with government regulations, as the government attempts to crack down on “disunity”.

SIBC now beholden
Special Secretary to the Prime Minister Albert Kabui indicated that the SIBC would now be beholden to a government-appointed board of directors, who would be appointed solely from the Prime Ministerial office.

The SIBC, which has moved from a state-owned enterprise to receiving all funding from the ruling government, had previously allowed paid programmes to broadcast criticism of the government.

The broadcaster also provided full live coverage of Australian Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong’s visit to Honiara in June, with coverage funded by the Australian High Commission.

Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavere has been unavailable for comment, as reported by several news organisations.

In recent months the Solomon Islands has further developed existing links to China, which the Australian Broadcaster Corporation argues is indicative of “authoritarian and anti-journalist” developments in Solomon Islands’ leadership.

The IFJ raised concerns surrounding press freedoms in the Solomon Islands during Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s visit to the Pacific in May.

Wang Yi’s press tour of the Solomon Islands featured heavily restricted press conferences, with local journalists collectively confined to one question for the nation’s Foreign Minister.

Sourced from an IFJ dispatch.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

ANALYSIS: By Graeme Dobell

Australia’s polity grapples with the need to remake and rebuild our media voice in the South Pacific.

Domestic political battles and budget cuts have degraded the central role Australia played in islands journalism in the 20th century. Australia’s media voice in the South Pacific is at its weakest since Robert Menzies launched the shortwave radio service in 1939.

Now we must reimagine that role and empower that voice for the 21st century — a new model of talking with, not to, the South Pacific.

The policy failure that has so weakened our voice in the past decade had one deeply familiar element — recurring Oz amnesia about our interests, influence and values in the islands.

See the amnesia lament offered by a Canberra wise owl, Nick Warner, in his Financial Review op-ed about “Australia’s long Pacific stupor’”: “For two generations, since the end of World War II, Australia has squandered the chance to build deep and enduring relations with our neighbours in the South Pacific. And now it’s almost too late.”

This is a candid view from the heart of the Canberra system. You don’t get much more plugged in and powerful than Warner, who served as our top diplomat in Papua New Guinea, led the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands, and then headed the Department of Defence, the Australian Secret Intelligence Service and the Office of National Assessments.

‘Stupor’ history framing
Warner’s “stupor” history frames his diagnosis of how China could clinch a security treaty with Solomon Islands:

“China is now seemingly entrenched in Solomons and will also be looking for other opportunities for a base elsewhere in the Pacific. But, for better or worse, Pacific politics seldom provide certainty. It’s not too late for Australia to shore up its place in the South Pacific and to protect its strategic interests.”

The need to “shore up our place” that Warner points to brings us back to a specific example of the stupor/amnesia — the degrading of our media voice in the islands and the role of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

In the South Pacific, Radio Australia and the international television service, ABC Australia, still do great work. But they have only a third of the budget they enjoyed a decade ago. Underline that stupor/amnesia fact: spending on the ABC as our Indo-Pacific media voice has been cut by two- thirds.

In 2014, the Abbott government hacked into the ABC by killing funding for international television, a sad, bad and dumb decision that also decimated Radio Australia.

Political payback in Canberra produced a gang-that-couldn’t-shoot-straight tragedy in the South Pacific. The Abbott aim was to scratch the anti-Aunty itch, but he badly wounded a major instrument of Australian foreign policy. The damage was compounded when the ABC turned off shortwave in 2017; here again was a domestic focus that damaged our regional interests.

For an account of all this, see ASPI’s “Hard news and free media as the sharp edge of Australia’s soft power“.

Aunty as the villain
In this long-running melodrama with elements of dark comedy, a valiant ABC is also a victim — with foes instead seeing Aunty as villain. What a long run the drama has had: three generations of Murdochs have warred with Aunty, starting in the 1930s with Keith Murdoch’s bitter fight against the creation of an independent ABC news service.

A re-run of the domestic battle devaluing our international voice happened with Labor’s election campaign launch last month of its Indo-Pacific broadcasting strategy, promising the ABC an extra $8 million a year for international programmes, plus a review of whether shortwave should be restored.

Labor’s idea is a good first step to restart Australia’s conversation with the islands, Jemima Garrett writes, but it “seems to be simply pushing out more ‘Australian content’ and crowding the regional airwaves with ‘Australian voices’. This is ‘soft power’ in a crude form – a one-way monologue when what is needed is a dialogue — a 21st century conversation in which Australia and Australians talk ‘with’ and not ‘to’ our Pacific neighbours.”

Preferring hard power to soft power, Prime Minister Scott Morrison called Labor’s policy “farcical”, saying that in the South Pacific, “I sent in the AFP [Australian Federal Police]. The Labor Party wants to send in the ABC, when it comes to their Pacific solution.”

Australia, of course, needs it all—the AFP and the Australian Defence Force, but also the ABC.

In this argument, I declare my love of Aunty. I worked as a journalist for Radio Australia and the ABC (1975–2008) and had the huge privilege of spending much time as a correspondent in Southeast Asia and the South Pacific.

I did break the habit of a lifetime by putting the boot into Aunty when it switched off shortwave. The ABC had damaged its international role, set by parliamentary charter, in favour of its domestic responsibilities.

Soft-power thinking
Labor’s soft-power thinking is work in the minor key compared to the recent effort of parliament’s Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade.

In the final sitting week before the start of the election campaign, the committee issued its report “Strengthening Australia’s relationships in the Pacific”. The media recommendations were the most ambitious to come out of Canberra in many a day:

“The Committee notes the media environment within the Pacific is becoming more contested, and recognises Australia has a national interest in maintaining a visible and active media and broadcasting presence there. The Committee recommends the Australian Government considers steps necessary to expand Australia’s media footprint in the Pacific, including through:

– expanding the provision of Australian public and commercial television and digital content across the Pacific, noting existing efforts by the PacificAus TV initiative and Pacific Australia;

– reinvigorating Radio Australia, which is well regarded in the region, to boost its digital appeal; and

– consider[ing] governance arrangements for an Australian International Media Corporation to formulate and oversee the strategic direction of Australia’s international media presence in the Pacific.’

I own up to the idea for the creation of an Australian international media corporation, contained in my submission [No 21] to the inquiry. The committee’s findings and the idea of a new international body, to build on the ABC foundations, will be the next column in these musings on the Oz media voice in the South Pacific.

This article was first published in The Strategist journal of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI). Graeme Dobell is ASPI’s journalist fellow and this is republished with the author’s permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

OPEN LETTER: By Keith Jackson

I joined the Australian Journalists Association (now the MEAA – Media Alliance) in, I think, 1971, when I still lived and worked in Papua New Guinea.

When I formally retired from paid work a few years back, I was given honorary membership but, to bolster the journalism profession and its union, I recently asked to return as a paying member – which was accepted.

Given that I still scribble the PNG Attitude blog, book reviews for The Australian, a column in Noosa Style and other bits and pieces, that seemed appropriate.

READ MORE: Journalists call for legislation to protect press freedom and the public’s right to know

It may seem implausible, but freedom of the press is under attack in our country. The actions of federal authorities have been nibbling at that freedom for some time, and most recently the federal police took a large bite at it.

I’m concerned. That’s why I’m sharing this letter:

A GRAVE THREAT TO MEDIA FREEDOM

Dear Llew O’Brien, MP,
cc Prime Minister Scott Morrison,
Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese

I support in full the following letter from the MEAA calling upon the Australian Parliament to act to guarantee the freedom of the press in Australia.

Recent events have shown that this implied right of Australians is under threat. Legislative and constitutional changes are required:

The Australian Federal Police raids on the home of News Corp Australia journalist Annika Smethurst and on the offices of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) represent a grave threat to press freedom in Australia.

We welcome the Prime Minister’s stated commitment to freedom of the press and openness to discuss the concerns that have been raised.

A healthy democracy cannot function without its media being free to bring to light uncomfortable truths, to scrutinise the powerful and inform our communities. Investigative journalism cannot survive without the courage of whistleblowers, motivated by concern for their fellow citizens, who seek to bring to light instances of wrongdoing, illegal activities, fraud, corruption and threats to public health and safety.

These are issues of public interest, of the public’s right to know. Whistleblowers and the journalists who work with them are entitled to protection, not prosecution. Truth-telling is being punished.

The raids, a raft of recent national security laws, and the prosecutions of whistleblowers Richard Boyle, David McBride and Witness K all demonstrate the public’s right to know is being harmed. Truth-telling is being punished.

It is also clear from the global response to the recent raids that Australia’s proud reputation around the world as a free and open society is under threat.

We urge Parliament to legislate changes to the law to recognise and enshrine a positive public interest protection for whistleblowers and for journalists. Without these protections Australians will be denied important information it is their right as citizens to have.

We urge you to take prompt action to protect our democracy for all Australians.

Yours sincerely,
Keith Jackson AM

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Press freedom groups are sounding the alarm over a pair of police raids on journalists in Australia. Video: Democracy Now!

By Democracy Now!

Press freedom groups are sounding the alarm over a pair of police raids on journalists. Last week, Australian Federal Police swept into the headquarters of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in Sydney, reviewing thousands of documents for information about a 2017 report The Afghan Files that found Australian special forces soldiers may have committed war crimes in Afghanistan.

The raid came on Wednesday, one day after police in Melbourne raided the home of Annika Smethurst, a reporter with the Herald Sun newspaper.

Democracy Now! speaks to Australian journalism professor Joseph Fernandez – correspondent of Reporters Without Borders and Pacific Journalism Review – and Peter Greste, founding director of the Brisbane-based Alliance for Journalists’ Freedom.

Greste was imprisoned for 400 days in 2013 to 2014 while covering the political crisis in Egypt.

READ MORE: Asia Pacific Report stories on the police ABC raids

Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now! I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Press freedom groups in Australia are sounding the alarm over a pair of police raids on journalists. On Wednesday last week, Australian Federal Police swept into the headquarters of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in Sydney, reviewing thousands of documents for information about a 2017 report that found Australian special forces may have committed war crimes in Afghanistan.

ABC investigations executive editor John Lyons spoke on his own network just minutes after police served a warrant naming a news director and the two reporters who broke the story.

JOHN LYONS: They have downloaded 9,214 documents. I counted them. And they are now going through them. They’ve set up a huge screen, and they’re going through, email by email. It’s quite extraordinary.

And I feel—as a journalist, I feel it’s a real violation, because these are emails between this particular journalist and his boss, her boss, its drafts, its scripts of stories.

I’ve never seen an assault on the media as savage as this one we’re seeing today at the ABC. … And the chilling message is not so much for the journalists, but it’s also for the public.

AMY GOODMAN: Wednesday’s raid on the ABC came one day after police in Melbourne raided the home of Annika Smethurst, a reporter with the Herald Sun newspaper. Police served a warrant related to Smethurst’s reporting on a secret effort by an Australian intelligence service to expand its surveillance capabilities, including against Australian nationals.

Australia’s acting Federal Police Commissioner Neil Gaughan defended the raids, saying journalists could face prison time for holding classified information.

COMMISSIONER NEIL GAUGHAN: No sector of the community should be immune for this type of activity or evidence collection, more broadly. This includes law enforcement itself, the media or, indeed, even politicians.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, for more, we’re joined by two guests in Australia. With us from Brisbane is Peter Greste. He is the UNESCO chair in journalism and communications at University of Queensland. He is founding director of Alliance for Journalists’ Freedom.

He was imprisoned for over a year, for 400 days, in 2013 to 2014, while covering the political crisis in Egypt.

And joining us from Perth, Australia, Professor Joseph Fernandez is with us, a media law academic at Curtin University, Australia’s correspondent for Reporters Without Borders.

We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Joseph Fernandez, let’s begin with you. Lay out exactly what happened and when it took place, all the details as you know them, both the raiding of ABC and the journalist’s home.

JOSEPH FERNANDEZ: Thank you for having me on your show. The two raids happened within 48 hours of each other. It began with a raid on Annika Smethurst’s home. You have introduced her.

At her home, the Australian Federal Police spent seven-and-a-half hours going through every nook and cranny of her belongings, including the rubbish bin outside the house. And they sought to access her email messages, phone messages and anything they could lay their hands on, including what she might have kept away in her undies drawer.

Annika obviously was very traumatised by this, but she has held her head up high, in the knowledge that the story about which she was being investigated was really something very arguably and very strongly in the public interest or of legitimate public concern.

The second raid, the following day …

AMY GOODMAN: And that story was?

JOSEPH FERNANDEZ: Sorry. Can you say that again, please?

AMY GOODMAN: And that story was, Joseph?

JOSEPH FERNANDEZ: The story was that there was a discussion, a discussion about a plan to expand state surveillance, that would have possibly included surveillance of ordinary citizens. And this was quite an unprecedented idea.

And the objective of such a plan was obviously going to be justified on the premise of protecting national security.

The second raid happened at the headquarters of the national broadcaster ABC, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, in Sydney. And police officers entered the premises armed with a warrant with an exhaustive inventory of things that they were looking for.

And as you have noted, they scoured hundreds and thousands of documents and materials, and left with a small collection of materials in a sealed package, with the agreement not to use them until a possible challenge is considered in the days ahead.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Joseph Fernandez, these raids coming within a day of each other, was there any coordination, or were these related in any way?

JOSEPH FERNANDEZ: That’s an interesting question. One of the first questions that sprung into people’s minds was whether they were related, whether this was instigated by the government. The prime minister quickly moved to distance himself and his government from the raids, claiming that the two agencies and the police were acting entirely of their own accord.

And the police themselves are on record as saying that the two events are unrelated. And so, it’s left to be seen, you know, whether new light will be shed on the real circumstances that led to these raids. It’s quite hard to accept, without inquiry as to whether there was absolutely no notice given, whether informally or formally, to the bosses in government.

AMY GOODMAN: And for people to understand, I mean, the ABC is the leading broadcaster throughout Australia. I wanted to bring Peter Greste into this conversation. We had you here in our studio after you were imprisoned for well over for year by Egypt with your two Al Jazeera colleagues.

You were working with Al Jazeera at the time. You certainly knew what it meant to be arrested, to not have rights, not to be even told at the beginning why the Egyptian authorities were holding you. Now you see the situation in Australia.

And I was wondering if you can talk about the laws around press freedom, if you have them in Australia. Amazingly, in this warrant, the warrant gave the police wide-ranging authority to view, seize, edit and destroy virtually any document it saw fit.

PETER GRESTE: Yeah, that’s right. Look, there are a whole host of questions in there, Amy, but let me deal with the very beginning of it, and that’s the way I felt when I heard about the news, because it did—I mean, even now I can feel my skin pricking up, thinking about the raids and what that would have felt like, because I know exactly what it was like to have agents burst into your room looking for evidence, and all of the confusion that surrounds that, the outrage that surrounds that.

But I never really honestly expected to see it take place here in Australia. And it seems to me that even though I’m not suggesting Australia is about to become an authoritarian state like Egypt anytime soon, I think that we are being pushed in the same direction by the same kind of imperatives around national security, the prioritising of national security over the human rights and democratic rights of citizens, largely because it’s much easier to make the political case for national security legislation, particularly when you see attacks in the streets and the consequences of that, but much harder to make the more abstract case for human rights and citizens’ rights, freedom of speech, freedom of the press and so on, until you see what that means in practical terms.

And that’s what we saw last week with these two raids. I think it’s very, very concerning to me, and I’m deeply worried.

Now, as you mentioned, we don’t have in Australia any explicit protection for press freedom written into the law, nothing about freedom of speech. Australia has no bill of rights. All we have is an implied right of political communications, that the High Court decided that was there as a function of our democracy.

They said that we live in a representative democracy, and you can’t have an effective representative democracy without political communication, therefore, that right is somehow inferred in the Constitution.

But without anything like the First Amendment in the United States here in Australia, without any explicit protection for press freedom, what we’re seeing is a lot of scope for our legislators to draft laws that really intrude on press freedom in all sorts of deeply troubling ways that make it much harder for journalists to protect their sources, make it much harder even for journalists to contact sources within government.

And so, what we’re seeing is a vast web of interconnected national security laws that, in all sorts of ways, make these kinds of raids that we saw last week possible.

I’m not so critical of the Federal Police for carrying out the raids. I accept that they were probably doing their jobs. And as we’ve been hearing, there may well have been some kind of political involvement in there.

But let’s take what the Federal Police have been saying at face value, that there was nothing political. If there was nothing political, if they were simply fulfilling their duties under the law, then, clearly, the law needs to change. And that’s what we need to start talking about.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Peter Greste, we have about a minute left, but I wanted to ask you, in terms of—who determines the violations of state secrets? Is there one centralised agency, or can various federal agencies decide to conduct these kinds of raids in Australia?

PETER GRESTE: No. Look, it’s quite difficult to know quite how the laws come into effect or come into force. I mean, let’s take a look at the data retention laws, the metadata. In any number of more than 20 agencies, government agencies can look into any Australian’s metadata without a warrant.

Now, they need to apply for a special journalist warrant if they want to investigate journalists’ metadata in a search for sources, but, otherwise, there is no—there is no warrant system. They can look anywhere, anywhere that they want.

And I think that’s the kind of scope that we’re talking about. That’s overreach. You talk to any lawyer, any civil rights activist, anyone who knows about the way the law operates, and they’ll acknowledge that that’s overreach. And we need to really start a vigorous conversation within this country about the limits of state power and the kind of ways that we need to encourage and support press freedom, and also the protection of whistleblowers, because, ultimately, these raids were in the hunt for the sources of these stories, for the journalists’ sources, for the whistleblowers that felt that these stories needed to be told.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, we have to wrap up right now, but we want to continue the vigorous discussion, and we’re going to bring folks Part 2 at democracynow.org under web exclusives.

Peter Greste, we want to thank you, UNESCO chair in journalism and communications, University of Queensland, founding director of the Alliance for Journalists’ Freedom, imprisoned for more than 400 days.

Also, Joseph Fernandez, a media law academic at Curtin University, Australia’s correspondent for Reporters Without Borders. Stay with us. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

ANALYSIS: By Mary-Louise O’Callaghan

It is both apt and overdue that veteran ABC correspondent Sean Dorney was last night awarded the Outstanding Contribution to Journalism at the 2018 Walkley ceremonies.

Judged by the trustees of the Walkley Foundation, this award not only recognises Dorney’s extraordinary body of work built over four decades chronicling life and politics in the Pacific, especially Papua New Guinea, but pays homage to one of the last of a near extinct breed of old-time expat Pacific correspondents who lived and breathed their rounds as long-term residents of the communities upon which they were reporting.

Australian newsrooms, instead of panting and pontificating about the growing influence of China, might be better served by tapping into Pacific conversations.

READ MORE: Podcast by Bond academic, student wins Walkley Award for journalism excellence

Mary-Louise O’Callaghan … “not uncommon in the two decades either side of the turn of the century for Pacific correspondents to report on unfolding events such as the Bougainville secession crisis or expose corrupt or inept governance.” Image: The Interpreter

Sprung from the bad-old and arrogant days of colonial dispatches referencing “restless natives” and “strange customs” when first nation’s peoples served merely as the backdrop for the white man’s conquering and efforts to “civilise”, it can be argued that for a time these rusted-on corros (who not infrequently through their marriages, gained the privilege of the unique insight of living life within a Pacific family), served as useful intermediary interlocutors in the transitional societies of post-independent Pacific states.

As nations such as PNG, Fiji, Solomon Islands, and Vanuatu fought to different degrees to shake off their colonial framing and fashion a culture of accountability of their own, correspondents like myself and Dorney strove to facilitate and amplify indigenous views of events in these nations. This was both in our reporting for Australian audiences, or, in Dorney’s case, for the entire region. His reports were broadcast back into the countries he covered by Radio Australia, the ABC’s once wonderful but now defunct shortwave radio service.

-Partners-

Reporting crises
With the additional resources afforded our first-world news bureaus, it was not uncommon in the two decades either side of the turn of the century for Pacific correspondents to report on unfolding events such as the Bougainville secession crisis or expose corrupt or inept governance that indigenous journalists literally couldn’t afford to do.

As late as 2003, my “scoop” as The Australian’s South Pacific correspondent on the Howard government’s decision to dispatch a 2000-strong Australian-led Pacific intervention force to restore the rule of law in Solomon Islands after several years of unrest, was lifted by the national newspaper, The Solomon Star to run as their frontpage splash.

The only difference being that, unlike The Solomon Star’s newsroom, I worked for a media outlet that could bear the exorbitant cost of international phone calls; I had the means to contact Solomon Island government officials to confirm the story after their meetings in Canberra.

Much has been written in the past decade or so warning about the dangers of the disappearing resident Pacific correspondent, as first Australian Associated Press, then Fairfax closed their bureaus in Suva, Port Moresby, and Honiara, and in many cases wound down the network of stringers who reported for them elsewhere in the region.

The ABC is now the only Australian media outlet still maintaining a permanent presence in the South Pacific region with its bureau in Port Moresby.

But as we are all learning, with disruption comes new opportunities and with digital disruption, in particular, has come new ways of gathering, reporting, and disseminating news.

Hear from the people
Here’s the rub: should we really be lamenting the passing of the old-fashioned foreign correspondent, particularly in our own region?

Or is this a chance to embrace the opportunity to hear from the people of the Pacific in their own voices with analysis from their perspectives and news priorities that reflect Pacific agendas?

There is today a prolific cohort of indigenous journos, bloggers, and social commentators already daily reporting, dissecting, and disseminating their nations and region’s affairs with the insight only an indigenous member of an indigenous society can have.

Australian and New Zealand newsrooms, instead of panting and pontificating about the growing influence of China, might be better served tapping into these conversations.

If we joined them, we might even learn a thing or two about the nations and the region within which we live.

Mary-Louise O’Callaghan lived and reported on the Pacific as a foreign correspondent with Australian metropolitan daily newspapers for more than two decades. In 1997 she won the Gold Walkley for Excellence in Journalism for her investigative reporting exposing the Papua New Guinean government’s ill-conceived decision to hire foreign mercenaries to end a war for secession on the island of Bougainville. Her book Enemies Within, Australia, PNG and the Sandline Mercenary Affair, was published the following year. She is now working for World Vision Australia where she leads the Public Affairs team. This article is republished from the Lowy Institute’s Interpreter with permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

ANALYSIS: By Peter Manning

Michelle Guthrie has been badly treated – not by being sacked, but by being hired in the first place. As a former head of ABC TV News and Current Affairs, I met Guthrie several times at functions in the ABC, and once at a social dinner party.

We discussed the state of ABC News and other editorial matters. She was well aware she was on a steep learning curve.

Dubbed early in the gossip mill as Rupert Murdoch’s and Malcolm Turnbull’s candidate for the job, I found her intentions good and her background at Google a major plus for leading the ABC in a digital era.

READ MORE: Michelle Guthrie’s stint at ABC helm had a key weakness: she failed to back the journalists

If there were worries, they were two: her lack of political smarts in the complicated and potentially volcanic relationship with the federal government; and her lack of experience in journalism, radio or television production, and the myriad other forms of content creation that ABC employees specialise in.

Her first federal Budget saw a $20 million a year “Enhanced Newsgathering Programme” from the previous year cut by a third to $13.5m. I wrote in The Conversation in May 2016:

-Partners-

If she was Malcolm Turnbull’s preferred candidate…it hasn’t helped her in the Budget…Her failure to hold the line on ABC funding will not go down well.

Job cuts followed.

It is one of the top KPI’s for a managing director of the ABC: hold and build the budget.

‘Give her a go’
I think it’s true to say that most ABC staff hoped this was a minor blip and would be corrected in coming years. There was a determination to embrace the old Aussie “give her a go” mindset, and staff were willing to listen to what Guthrie proposed as her signature policies.

But what they heard in a series of staff meetings was nothing new: that the new digital era required changes in demographics, skills and programming; that the organisation needed to be downsized; that new executive reporting lines would be created and simplified; and that the ABC had to ignore its very young and very old rusted-on viewers and concentrate on the 15-30 and 30-50 year-olds, who had left it in droves.

They had heard all this from the previous managing director, Mark Scott, for many years. In fact, the drive to enter the digital world had begun under the leadership of Brian Johns in the early 1990s. He appointed me to head up a multimedia unit in 1994. The task: put the ABC on the internet.

Quickly, the ABC’s new home site – www.abc.net.au – became the top media site in Australia and remains one of the top sites today. But it was Scott who made digitisation his defining contribution.

For all the talk of “content”, it became clear that comparisons between Guthrie and Scott inside the ABC found her wanting. Scott, the former editorial director of Fairfax’s newspaper and magazine division, might have lacked radio and television skills, but he knew a good story when he heard one. He made a good fist of claiming the title of editor-in-chief.

Guthrie, a lawyer by trade, spoke about content and platforms, but was all at sea about how to bring these two concepts together. It was a major hole in her armoury. (Even in News Limited, many admire Rupert Murdoch’s intimate knowledge of the trade of journalism. It runs in the family. It used to be the same with the Packer empire at Channel Nine until Jamie Packer fell in love with casinos and gambling as sources of wealth. The Fairfax barons also enjoyed newspaper production.)

Very soon Guthrie lost the staff she was leading. In a time of constant change, morale fell and the honeymoon ended. The rolling series of federal Budget cuts under the Abbott and then Turnbull governments ensured series after series of expensive payouts to highly-skilled programme-makers who were supposedly there to produce the “content” for the new platforms Guthrie envisaged.

Plea for identities
Many meetings were called to save various sections of the ABC and keep their identities. I attended one, a group of former general managers of ABC Radio National appealing to chairman Justin Milne and Guthrie to not incorporate the station and its staff into various “content streams”, thereby ensuring the end of what was called (the old) “appointment radio”.

The meeting was run by Milne, politely listening to each person and then assuring them it would all be alright. Guthrie was left to comment at the end:

Changes will need to go through me. Trust me, I’m a fan of RN.

The changes proceeded apace.

The casualisation of the new working arrangements has now left many staff not just demoralised but angry. Working crews have left on big packages only to return as freelancers on insecure tenure.

The anger has manifested itself in the “Proud to be Public” campaign by the formerly dominant union at the ABC, the Community and Public Sector Union. This group is more militant than the old Friends of the ABC lobby group, which is full of Liberal voters who care passionately about cuts to the ABC.

And finally, the anger of staff is shown in another new group, Alumni Ltd. – former ABC staff willing to join the struggle to save the ABC from Liberals who want to destroy it.

Wrong timing
In my view, Guthrie came at the wrong moment to be the “change agent” for the ABC. Mark Scott had already been that figure, and had all the necessary qualities to connect with staff and carry them through the digital revolution.

Guthrie’s performances in Canberra (especially before Senate Estimates) were too amateur and insecure. Her own credibility as a content-maker was not up to scratch in a highly critical creative environment like the ABC.

Finally, her seeming inability to bring her senior managers and staff with her proved crucial – especially in an environment where a hostile government half-captured by the ideological right, not to mention News Limited, was snapping at her heels on a constant basis.

The choice of Guthrie was wrong from the start. It did no service to her, nor to the ABC. The then board did her no service in throwing her in the deep end of the ABC at a time of great change.

Dr Peter Manning is adjunct professor of journalism, University of Technology Sydney. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Pacific Media Watch Newsdesk

The next managing director of the ABC must be prepared to fight for better funding and independence, and to champion public broadcasting in a hostile political environment, says the union representing the ABC’s editorial staff.

The Media, Entertainment & Arts Alliance says the sacking of Michelle Guthrie follows a tumultuous period for the ABC.

MEAA members hope that new leadership, temporarily under David Anderson, could be a circuit breaker for the organisation, says the MEAA.

READ MORE: ‘I am devastated,’ says sacked boss as she considers legal options

The director of MEAA Media, Katelin McInerney, said Guthrie’s two-and-a-half years as managing director would unfortunately be remembered for historically low levels of funding culminating in the loss of $84 million in this year’s budget, hundreds of redundancies, unprecedented political attacks on the ABC’s independence and low staff morale.

“It is no secret the ABC is caught in the pincers – between the need to invest in an ever-changing media landscape, and a decline in real funding to historically low levels,” McInerney said.

-Partners-

“The next managing director of the ABC will face real challenges, including how to restore the trust and confidence of staff by ending the ‘Hunger Games’ processes, casualisation, and outsourcing which in four years have seen more than 1000 experienced workers leave the organisation,” she said.

“They must have a clear vision for the ABC and be able to articulate the direction they want to take the organisation.

“They must be a vocal public advocate for the ABC, who is prepared to tackle head-on the historically low levels of ABC funding with meaningful engagement with the Federal Government.

“They must be 100% committed to public broadcasting and to fend off any attempts to privatise the ABC either directly or by stealth.

“They must be a champion for quality Australian content and specialist content and a staunch defender of the ABC’s independence and of its editorial staff. This includes refocusing daily journalism away from lifestyle content and ‘clickbait’ and back towards news and current affairs.

“Importantly, the ABC board must also be prepared to back the staff of the ABC and the integrity of the ABC as a respected publicly-owned institution in the face of unrelenting political attacks.

“MEAA will shortly be writing to the incoming MD to seek positive engagement and consultation on the above issues, and hope to involve our members with an improved dialogue with management on the challenges the ABC faces.

“We feel it is time for a new vision and new direction for the ABC to emerge, allowing journalists and content makers to get on with the job of serving audiences with the content they trust.”

The ABC MEAA House Committee asked that external critics of the organisation pause to give the new leadership some time and space, to allow this dialogue to happen in good faith, the MEAA statement said.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Pacific Media Centre Newsdesk

Vanuatu has appealed to Australia to restore short-wave radio services to the Pacific region, after they were switched off by the ABC in 2017, reports Radio Australia.

Prime Minister Charlot Salwai said other forms of communication usually failed during natural disasters.

He added his voice on the final day yesterday for submissions to an Australian government review of broadcasting to the region, Linda Mottram reported on a segment of the PM programme.

LISTEN: Linda Mottram’s current affairs report on ABC PM

As if to make the point, his statement came as a major operation is underway to evacuate more than 8000 residents from the island of Ambae, which has been made uninhabitable by an erupting volcano.

Featured:
Nikita Taiwia, Vanuatu coordinator, Red Cross
Dan McGarry, media director, Vanuatu Daily Post newspaper

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

By RNZ Pacific

China has taken over many of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s former shortwave radio frequencies into the Pacific.

In response to budget cuts, the ABC last year ceased shortwave broadcasting in the Asia-Pacific region ahead of a switch to FM transmission.

Many remote communities in Pacific island countries rely on shortwave radio.

READ MORE: New Zealand’s Pacific reset: Strategic anxieties about rising China

Australia-based technology observer Peter Marks told Radio ABC’s Tech Head programme that since that withdrawal, the space was swiftly being filled.

“Since Radio Australia has dropped off shortwave, many of the exact frequencies we used to use have been now taken over by Chinese stations targetting the Asia-Pacific region,” he explained.

-Partners-

“Now, shortwave bounces off the upper atmosphere, so a single shortwave transmitter can be heard over thousands of kilometres. It works particularly well over the many islands throughout the Pacific region.”

Snapped up
The revelation that the frequencies have been snapped up comes at a time of heightened speculation in Australian media and commentaries about the motives behind China’s growing influence in the Pacific.

“There’s obviously a bit of interest there… the fact that China has been ramping up while we’ve been pulling back,” Marks said.

“I should say that Radio New Zealand International (now known as RNZ Pacific) does a terrific job in the Pacific. They’re up there every day and they’re managing to run it. It just seems odd that Australia wouldn’t be doing it.

The withdrawal of ABC’s shortwave presence in the Pacific is part of an ongoing Australian government review of the country’s media services in the wider region.

The Pacific Media Centre has a content sharing arrangement with RNZ Pacific.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

By Dr Johan Lidberg in Melbourne

Australia is a world leader in passing the most amendments to existing and new anti-terror and security laws in the liberal democratic world. Since September 11, 2001, it has passed 54 laws.

The latest suggested addition is the Turnbull government’s crackdown on foreign interference. The bill has been heavily criticised by Australian Lawyers for Human Rights, Human Rights Watch, and major media organisations for being too heavy-handed and far-reaching in the limits it would place on freedom of expression and several other civil liberties.

The government’s own intelligence watchdog, the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security, argues the bill is so widely worded that its own staff could break the law for handling documents they need to access to do their job.

READ MORE: New foreign interference laws will compound risks to whistleblowers and journalists

A case in point is whether the ABC’s publication of confidential and secret cabinet documents would be in breach of the proposed bill. Two filing cabinets full of thousands of confidential cabinet documents were given to the ABC by a source who, astonishingly, had bought them for small change at an op-shop in Canberra.

The ABC made an assessment and chose to publish a very limited number of the documents it deemed in the public interest. The ABC has so far clearly acted responsibly, and no documents that could harm Australia’s national security were in the first publication.

-Partners-

Some of the published documents are embarrassing for both the current and former Coalition and Labor governments, but that should not stop publication – rather, the opposite.

What the bill would mean
The foreign interference bill, in its current form, suggests it should be criminal for anyone to “receive” and “handle” certain national security information. It would seem that by just receiving the filing cabinets and assessing what to publish, the ABC staff would be in breach of the provisions suggested in the bill.

Furthermore, this makes an already heavy-handed whistleblower regime from an international perspective even more draconian. It is sure to lose Australia several places on the Press Freedom Index if implemented as suggested.

The bill is an overreach in many respects. But one of the worst aspects, from a transparency and accountability point of view, is that it seeks to extend the draconian Section 70 of the Commonwealth Crimes Act.

Section 70 makes it a crime, punishable by a maximum of two years in prison, for public servants to communicate or supply information to anyone outside government without permission. The ABC’s publication of the cabinet files clearly illustrates that media organisations with ethical and thorough editorial polices are perfectly capable of assessing what to publish.

The bigger picture is that the current bill is part of a pattern that started after the terrorist attacks in the US on September 11, 2001.

In our forthcoming book, In The Name of Security – Secrecy, Surveillance and Journalism, my colleagues and I assess how the anti-terror laws and mass surveillance technologies in the Five Eyes countries has impacted on in-depth public interest journalism. We also compare the Five Eyes with several BRICS countries and the situation in the European Union.

Fear-driven security
Our main conclusions are that the current fear-driven security environment has made it much harder for investigative journalists to hold governments and security agencies to account. This is partly due to anti-terror and security laws making it harder for whistleblowers to act.

Add to this the truly awesome powers of mass surveillance making it increasingly difficult for investigative journalists to grant anonymity to sources that require it for their own safety, and you end up with a very complex journalist-source situation.

Another important factor in Australia and the UK is that all national security agencies are exempt from Freedom of Information laws. This makes it virtually impossible to independently acquire information from the security branch of government.

The balance between national security and transparency is complex. As citizens, we want to feel safe and know what is being done to keep us safe. In our book, we have labelled this the “trust us” dilemma, meaning governments argue they can’t disclose what they are doing security-wise, lest the “bad guys” find out.

That leaves us needing to trust the government’s security actions and policies. But the problem is, how can we as citizens decide if we trust the government if we don’t have the information on which to base this decision?

There is no easy answer to this question. Political philosopher Giorgio Agamben takes our reasoning one step further when he argues that the liberal democratic world has been in a “state of exception” since September 11. This has granted powers to security agencies that are creeping increasingly closer to those of the totalitarian regimes in Europe in the 1930s.

‘Other’ enemy
Agamben traces various states of exception all the way back to Roman times. The pattern is similar through history: governments point to an “other” – often a hard-to-define enemy – as a reason for increased powers to the security apparatus. They are convinced they are doing the right thing.

The problem is that if we don’t roll back the strengthened security laws in times of lower threat, we start from a high level next time we enter a “state of exception”. This in turn can lead to a never-ending war on real or perceived threats where our cherished democratic civil liberties become part of the collateral damage.

If we allow the “state of exception” to become permanent, we risk allowing the terrorists to win.

Dr Johan Lidberg is an associate professor in the School of Media, Film and Journalism, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia. This article was first published by The Conversation on a Creative Commons licence and is republished with the author’s permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

By Dr Alexandra Wake in Melbourne

As a magnitude 7.8 earthquake struck off the coast of Kirakira in the Solomon Islands early today, triggering a tsunami warning across the Pacific, many residents of the country would have turned to shortwave radio for more information.

The tsunami warning has since been called off, though assessments of damage from the quake are not yet complete.

Sadly, this vital communication service is under threat in this already under-resourced region.

For almost 80 years, Australia has provided such shortwave services, including vital emergency service information, to Asia and the Pacific.

But government funding cuts saw Asian services turned off in January 2015. And now the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) has decided to cut the remaining services to residents of remote parts of the Pacific, Papua New Guinea and parts of northern Australia by ceasing its shortwave radio services to the Pacific from the end of January 2017.

The ABC has argued the shortwave transmissions, which can travel thousands of kilometres and be picked up by low-cost transmitters run on batteries or solar power, are outdated. Michael Mason, ABC’s Director of Radio said:

While shortwave technology has served audiences well for many decades, it is now nearly a century old and serves a very limited audience. The ABC is seeking efficiencies and will instead service this audience through modern technology.

The problem is, of course, that in remote places in the Pacific, particularly in Melanesian nations such as Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu and the Solomon Islands, there is no access to an FM signal, limited internet and, where internet is available, it is expensive.

Advances in technology such as low-earth orbit satellites, which provide high speed global internet services, show promise. But, as yet, the receiving technology is expensive and the receivers aren’t available in rural and remote area.

How shortwave evades censors
The ABC has said it will replace international shortwave services with digital services including a web stream, in-country FM transmitters, an Australia Plus expats app and partner websites and apps such as TuneIn radio and vTurner.

There was no mention of the use of updates to shortwave technologies, such as Digital Radio Mondiale, which is being used by Radio New Zealand, or using shortwave for digital data transmission, which cannot be censored or jammed.

The move away from shortwave to FM transmissions and digital and mobile services has been accelerated despite the fact that FM frequencies can easily be shut down by disaffected political leaders, as happened in Fiji in 2009 on the order of then self-appointed – but since elected in 2014 – Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama.

It was a matter of national pride at the time for the ABC to be providing independent information for Fijians via shortwave, with then managing director of the corporation, Mark Scott, highlighting a text message sent from inside Fiji to the ABC, which read: “We are trying to listen to you online but are having difficulty. Please keep broadcasting. You are all we have”.

Shortwave radio has played a valuable role in getting information to communities in the middle of civil disturbance, such as in East Timor in the lead up to independence.

In Burma, it was internal leaders who sought the shortwave services. In 2009, Burmese pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi called on Australia to provide shortwave broadcasts. At the time the ABC’s director of international, Murray Green, said the move reflected the ABC’s ongoing commitment to serving people in those parts of Asia and the Pacific who live without press freedom. Even before this announcement was made, the price of shortwave radios was increased in Burma’s Sittwe market.

Keeping people safe from disaster
It isn’t just a matter of providing information to censored countries. Shortwave also provides a reliable source of information, particularly during natural disasters.

Shortwave provides vital warnings of tsunamis to outlying island nations. It was a lasting communication method after the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami, and was vital in the response to 2015’s Cyclone Pam, which devastated Vanuatu.

Shortwave transmissions go over mountains and seas, have a longer range, and don’t fall over and twist in storms like FM radio towers.

Shortwave is seen as a vital part of keeping communities safe. As an ABC correspondent wrote on their Facebook page, and as technology reporter Peter Marks mentioned on air, after Cyclone Pam:

We expected the worst. Death, injury, hunger. But when we arrived, the Dillons Bay village chief … told me they knew the cyclone was approaching, so they sheltered in the two solid buildings in the village. Most houses were flattened but not a single injury. I asked him how he knew the cyclone was approaching. He said, ‘ABC Radio’.

New Zealand and the UK take on China
The cuts to the shortwave services at the ABC are just the latest in a long line of budget savings to its international services.

While other cuts to the broadcaster garnered many headlines, the ABC has cut the shortwave, and also quietly closed its Vietnamese, Khmer and Burmese language services on 2 December  2016. The French-language service to the French Pacific is due to end in February 2017.

Thankfully for Pacific nations, while Australia is dialling back its shortwave services, New Zealand’s RNZ International is maintaining Pacific-wide shortwave transmission. The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) has also announced a major boost to its international broadcasts, including producing shortwave radio programmes for North Korea. The BBC is fearful of the rise of state-backed broadcasters such as China’s CCTV, Qatar’s Al Jazeera, and Russia’s RT.

The Pacific appears to be a specific concern for China, with Australia’s Lowy Institute tracking the extent of China’s aid programme in the Pacific at more than 200 projects worth $US1.4 billion since 2006 and the state-owned Xinhua News Agency actively covering the Asia Pacific.

In light of this, the BBC clearly recognises a need to boost its international broadcasting, using shortwave to beat censors in autocratic regimes.

It is a great shame for the Pacific that Australia no longer agrees.

Dr Alexandra Wake, a senior lecturer in journalism at RMIT, is an academic who maintains a career as a freelance journalist. Her last assignment for ABC Radio Australia was more than two years ago. This article was first published by The Conversation today and is republished under a Creative Commons licence.

Magnitude 7.8 wake strikes Solomon Islands – tsunami warning eases