We should defend Press Freedom – just as the Australian Press should have defended the freedoms of others as they were undermined.

Lanz Priestley
Nov 8 · 2 min read

Last night I attended the Sydney Aaron Schwartz Day gig, a well presented affair hosted by Digital Rights Watch at the local Thoughtworks premises.

A star studded lineup of speakers presented well on digital privacy rights, digital surveillance and Media and Arts Alliance head Marcus Strom urged everyone to defend Press freedoms, on the surface an uncontroversial call.

Like everything we should treat such speeches as an indicator and look a little closer under the hood.

Where, as Geoff Minns correctly asked, were the press as bipartisan governments used hyperbole to attack the rights and freedoms of bikers?

A quick search of the terms “anti bikie law” “VLAD law” and “Criminal Organisation Control Act” reveals that the vast majority of articles regurgitate the ramblings of various Police ministers, Premiers and Prime Ministers mostly without rebuttal, or heavily slanted in support of these ostensibly targeted discriminatory laws.

Mr Stroms speech had ended and the MC was continuing her role when Mr Strom belatedly returned with forced afterthought to mention that two of his members, including one Julian Assange, were currently incarcerated as a result of their journalistic roles.

While I of course stand with the notion of a free press, I’m dismayed that the Union representing journalists and more predictably the mainstream media have been either silent or approving regurgitators of the government line – until it happened to them.

I call for everyone to stand for Press Freedom but while doing so to demand a freer Press – A Press Free of the dictates of respective conservative owners and subservient editors and a press that stands up for others as one by one we and our rights are picked off by the corporate serving government duopoly

    Lanz Priestley

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