General Press Release No. 265 (May 2005)

World Press Freedom Day 2005

The Australian press continues to face significant challenges in its efforts to keep the Australian public informed of important matters.

As the rest of the world marks World Press Freedom Day, May 3, by drawing attention to the increasing murder, detention, torture and arrest of journalists, the Press Council believes the ever-increasing, if less overtly violent, attacks on press freedom in Australia should not go unnoticed.

The Council calls on Australian governments to recognise its Charter of a Free Press as a basis for maintaining a spirited and free press in Australia.

The Charter is based on Australia's endorsement of Article 19 of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the right to the free flow of information to enable news and opinion of public interest to be freely available to the citizens of Australia.

Yet, in the courts and the parliaments, assaults on the ability of journalists to report, and publishers to publish, information in the public interest remain constant.

Australian journalists can face criminal charges and jail terms for obtaining information. They are offered no protection as journalists. The public as a consequence can be denied significant information about the performance of their government in times when Australia's place in the world has reached significant prominence.

As the Australian Government's policies emphasise the benefits of the spread of democratic ideals in the Asia-Pacific region, and wider, the Press Council notes that there remains a number of growing threats to what most Australians would regard as essential: a free and vigorous Australian press.

While some of those 'threats' arise from a understandable desire to protect Australians from the possibility of terrorist attacks, the Press Council seeks to ensure that any actions taken by governments which restrict freedoms be limited to those absolutely necessary, and that such restrictions be for a limited duration to forestall any on-going denial of the traditional freedom of speech, and of the press.

Other contemporary threats to the freedom of the press to report on matters of public interest and concern arise from excessive secrecy and from 'spin-doctoring', which has spread from politics into all aspects of Australian life.

The Press Council believes that information on matters of public interest should be freely available unless there are very good reasons otherwise; the onus must be on those who want to suppress information to demonstrate a need so to do. If information were more freely available, there would be a lessened ability for those with questionable motives to 'spin' it for their own benefit.

In its role as the self-regulatory body of the print media, the Press Council seeks to ensure that the Australian press is responsible in the way it reports and is fair, as far as is possible, to all parties involved. It recognizes that a free press is constantly under threat, sometimes from violence or, as is more often the case in Australia, from the more stealthy approach of governments, corporations and courts. It must guard against all such threats, but it must also guard against any form of exclusivity within itself. A free press must to open to all points of view, anything less is a step in the direction of lost freedom.

The freedom of the press is the freedom of the people to be informed. Only a free, and a responsible, press can serve the needs of a democracy in keeping citizens informed on matters of public concern.

see also
Charter for a Free Press.

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