Journalists are a curious bunch. Priding themselves as professional sceptics and reflexively cynical about those who pursue grubby advantage under the borrowed banner of universal morality, they nevertheless are incurably romantic about their own craft.

Indeed, for those of us who have sat through the debate over the recent Bolt judgement, in which Australia’s most popular and most powerful tabloid columnist was found to have breached the Racial Discrimination Act, it has been impossible to follow proceedings for all the people in the front rows suddenly standing on principle.

Even normally practical and respected media observers – like Media Watch’s Jonathan Holmes – have gone all Thomas Jefferson on us, seeing in Justice Bromberg’s eminently sensible and balanced ruling the portent of McCarthyism – as aggrieved sections of the community hide behind the courts to shut down healthy public debate on important issues and silence truth tellers.

Strangely, Holmes and other journalistic opponents of the Bolt ruling find themselves on the same side as the IPA crowd whose public urgings for the preservation of “freedom” usually bear a strong correlation to the pecuniary interests of their undeclared funders in the mining, tobacco and business lobbies.

It’s not my intention here to contribute to the fine and high-minded debate about Enlightenment principles and legal precedents, but like Mark Bahnisch I find it interesting that many of those at the front of the queue loudly proclaiming the virtues of freedom of speech (which has never been absolute in any case) are nowhere to be seen when powerful figures routinely use the courts and their own deep pockets to stifle media scrutiny.

The irony is that some of the greatest suppressors of a free media are the press barons themselves. The late Kerry Packer was an enthusiastic litigant and once went after Jonathon Holmes’ alma mater Four Corners over a 1997 investigation into casino licensing. And from my own professional experience, lawyers for Rupert Murdoch himself – the great champion of a free media – threatened his partly owned AAP in the early 1990s over a well-researched  piece by its media writer about News Corp’s near insolvency at that time.

I don’t recall journalists getting on their high horses in those cases when the Big End rode into town. And I certainly don’t recall those Fair Weather Friends of Freedom that signed the IPA petititon fighting on the barricades when such characters as Piers Akerman or Col Allan went after other media outlets seeking to scrutinise their activity. In many of these cases, litigation is entered into not to seek a judgement, but merely to gag the media in the courts until an issue dies down. (See Stephen Mayne’s great wrap-up of several notable defamation suits involving powerful figures over recent years.)

Yes, freedom of speech and a free press are critical to democracy. But I find it hard to rally around the freedom flag when so many are silent in the face of journalism that uses spin and distortion and outright lies in aid of an agenda to smear the least advantaged and most voiceless in our community; of journalism that champions freedom without reference to relative power relationships.

The fact is that journalists’ freedoms are there to underpin their first and most important responsibility – to the truth. It is the truth that they are defending. For that, they can earn the trust of their readers and develop a moral strength that acts as a bulwark against tyranny. But calls for freedom ring hollow when the truth comes second.


22 Comments

Anonymous · October 11, 2011 at 12:10 PM

nice write up.

Anonymous · October 11, 2011 at 3:46 PM

Yes, I'll call “Freedom of Speech”, when I have access to a bully pulpit like Bolts and my ravings can be inflicted on the millions, also.
Paul Walter

Jackie K · October 11, 2011 at 9:11 PM

Well said! I have long wondered why more journalists don't call the spin and obfuscation more often and think a lot of other laypeople also find this frustrating and hard to understand.

Anonymous · October 11, 2011 at 9:14 PM

“journalists' freedoms are there to underpin their first and most important responsibility – to the truth”

Yeah. This is the point that seems to be missed by those freedom fighters at the IPA. Freedom of speech is not absolute. If you make up stuff about people (“mein leibchen”) you reap the consequences. That's all that happened here.

It's amusing watching Bolt whine about the Ann Summers article in The Monthly. He doesn't seem to like it when he's accused of “choosing” to be a Conservative for his own personal gain. Ironic.

zorronsky · October 11, 2011 at 9:26 PM

Hear hear!

Andrew · October 11, 2011 at 10:33 PM

“The fact is that journalists' freedoms are there to underpin their first and most important responsibility – to the truth. It is the truth that they are defending. … But calls for freedom ring hollow when the truth comes second.”

That is the issue distilled down to its essence. The right comes with responsibilities. No one should expect a free pass when the right is abused to spread lies, misinformation and spin.

Anonymous · October 11, 2011 at 10:43 PM

Hear hear!

Anonymous · October 11, 2011 at 11:48 PM

What a load of crap. Journalists speak out about Bolt all the time, he's an industry joke – it's just the idiots who read the Herald Sun can't get enough of him, so it's a commercial imperative that he be kept on. It makes him somewhat influential, so programs like Insiders, shackled with the ABC rules of balance, take him on. Bolt should be (and is) challenged in any and all public forums where he spews his idiocy. There's a huge difference between 'speaking out', though, and using the coercive force of law to regulate what can and can't be said in public debate.

The judgement might have included the fact that Bolt was recklessly factually incorrect, but while that would be key to a defamation proceeding, the RDA proceedings turned on whether or not his language was likely to offend.

The urge to silence those who disagree with you is simply too strong to allow this sort of legislation to exist safely.

wideeyed · October 12, 2011 at 12:14 AM

@ anonymous
I should be allowed to ring in bomb threats against public buildings to the media/police… well I thought they could be true at the time… Oh there's laws against offensive (not to mention disruptive) behaviour?!… Damm… I should be entitled to say what ever idiocy I want to… especially on the front pages of a high circulation viewspaper.

Mr D · October 12, 2011 at 1:08 AM

Anonymous, you say journalists speak out about Bolt all the time? Who edits him? Who publishes him? Who are his gatekeepers?

Last time I checked, editors were journalists. They're not doing their job.

Jane Bovary · October 12, 2011 at 2:00 AM

“But calls for freedom ring hollow when the truth comes second.”

I now what you mean but there's still something at stake here. There are defamation laws to deal with misrepresentations of the facts about a person or persons but beyond facts, there are opinions and opinions should be allowed to flow freely, however odious they are.

Jonathon Holmes points out that the judge concluded that owing to its errors, Bolt's piece did not constitute 'fair comment”… but he (the judge) went on to say, that even if it had passed as fair comment “I would not have been satisfied that it was said or done by Mr Bolt reasonably and in good faith.”

So who decides what is said or done “in good faith”? Judges? As much as I loathe Andrew Bolt and everything he stands for, I have to agree with the “call for freedom” crowd..

Mr D · October 12, 2011 at 2:15 AM

Jane, fair point, but I draw you back to the question of what recourse is there for the public to be defended against irresponsible journalism when the media runs comment based on falsehood? To quote the judgement in this case:

“There will of course be cases in which despite all reasonable care the journalist gets the facts wrong, but a member of the public is at least entitled to expect that a journalist will take reasonable care to get his facts right before he launches an attack upon him in a daily newspaper.

“If on inquiry it is found that the facts are not true and that reasonable care has not been taken to establish them courts should be very slow to hold that the newspaper is protected by statutory qualified privilege. The public deserve to be protected against irresponsible journalism. The defence of comment provides such protection by insisting upon the newspaper establishing the substantial truth of the facts upon which it comments.”

Michael Gawenda made the very good point a couple of weeks ago that the Bolt piece should never have been published in the first place. And he observed that journalists all the time made decisions about the framing and content of what is published. But ultimately they lose the protection of law when they deliberately mislead the public:

GAWENDA: “There's a lot of nonsense talked about free speech, especially by people who are in a position — and who do so daily if not hourly — to make decisions on what is acceptable speech and what isn't in the public sphere. Editors, news directors, executive producers of current affairs and news programs…decide the limits of free speech all the time and they do so, not merely on the basis of what is legally safe.

“Commentary doesn't have to be 'balanced' or even 'fair' but it has to be factually accurate. Commentary, even for a polemicist like Bolt, can't be a piece of fiction.”

Gawenda says the Bolt piece should never have ended up going before judge. But that is because it should never have been published in the first place.

My argument is we are having this debate because of the failure of journalism, not because of the failure of the notion of a free press.

Mr D · October 12, 2011 at 2:15 AM

Jane, fair point, but I draw you back to the question of what recourse is there for the public to be defended against irresponsible journalism when the media runs comment based on falsehood? To quote the judgement in this case:

“There will of course be cases in which despite all reasonable care the journalist gets the facts wrong, but a member of the public is at least entitled to expect that a journalist will take reasonable care to get his facts right before he launches an attack upon him in a daily newspaper.

“If on inquiry it is found that the facts are not true and that reasonable care has not been taken to establish them courts should be very slow to hold that the newspaper is protected by statutory qualified privilege. The public deserve to be protected against irresponsible journalism. The defence of comment provides such protection by insisting upon the newspaper establishing the substantial truth of the facts upon which it comments.”

Michael Gawenda made the very good point a couple of weeks ago that the Bolt piece should never have been published in the first place. And he observed that journalists all the time made decisions about the framing and content of what is published. But ultimately they lose the protection of law when they deliberately mislead the public:

GAWENDA: “There's a lot of nonsense talked about free speech, especially by people who are in a position — and who do so daily if not hourly — to make decisions on what is acceptable speech and what isn't in the public sphere. Editors, news directors, executive producers of current affairs and news programs…decide the limits of free speech all the time and they do so, not merely on the basis of what is legally safe.

“Commentary doesn't have to be 'balanced' or even 'fair' but it has to be factually accurate. Commentary, even for a polemicist like Bolt, can't be a piece of fiction.”

Gawenda says the Bolt piece should never have ended up going before judge. But that is because it should never have been published in the first place.

My argument is we are having this debate because of the failure of journalism, not because of the failure of the notion of a free press.

Doug Evans · October 12, 2011 at 6:18 AM

Absolutely agree with this post. I have been surprised at the number of media commentators who I would previously have regarded as sober, sensible and thoughtful who, while distancing themselves from Bolts rantings, baulked at what they perceived as the inherent limitations on future action contained in the very carefully worded judgement. I definitely expected better of both Jonathon Holmes and Michael Gawenda.

Fiona · October 12, 2011 at 9:26 AM

Mr Denmore: “My argument is we are having this debate because of the failure of journalism, not because of the failure of the notion of a free press.”

Precisely.

Anonymous · October 12, 2011 at 1:05 PM

nicely written. selective umbrage is noticed by many,maybe not all, but many… I love that we have an increasingly commented upon media, led by @jonaholmes and mediawatch, but you Mr Denmore too, and #hamster – we have a healthy democracy despite all the rancourous bullshit

Felix Threepaper · October 13, 2011 at 1:15 AM

Nailed it, Mr D.

These champions of free speech actually seem to mean “privileged speech”.

Rhiannon · October 13, 2011 at 1:55 AM

Excellent post, Mr. Denmore, congratulations.

James In Footscray · October 13, 2011 at 10:09 AM

“Freedom” in inverted commas is a cheap gag. Freedom of speech is a real issue in much of the world – as you know, journalists and artists and activists get locked up and tortured. So where's the dividing line? When would freedom of speech be under threat in Australia? You have to have a position, and be able to show why the Bolt decision is not restricting freedom of speech, or your flippancy is grotesque.

Anonymous · October 13, 2011 at 2:41 PM

Mr Denmore, your post makes an excellent point, if I may say, about the limitations of freedom of speech when those freedoms are exercised so unequally in our society. It does seem ridiculous that many are wringing their hands, worried about the slippery slope of the Bolt judgment when, in the end, the judge ruled that one very powerful figure wilfully abused a group of people on the basis of their race through deception.

But couldn't it follow that such wilful, unapologetic attacks are less about a failure of the trade of journalism – your follow-up comments make it seem as if some editor forgot to cross a T – as a straight motivated abuse of power?

As it has been said before, Bolt is less a journalist than a propagandist, and he has no interest in journalistic conventions.

Anonymous · October 16, 2011 at 12:46 AM

Wonderful insights – thank you.

Anonymous · October 21, 2011 at 10:13 AM

Here here!

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