Documents reveal national security people involved in this week’s Media Roundtable in Parliament House along with Big Media types from Murdoch, Nine and Seven. Michael West reports on the government, media and Rex Patrick’s mysterious FOIs.
The government’s Media Roundtable is on this week. At first glance, as a small independent media operator, we assumed this must be a love-fest for the government’s media mates.
The love flows both ways. Governments rely on Big Media for their messaging and promotion and Big Media relies on governments for corporate favours. Crudely put, they are gold-diggers in a marriage of convenience with their government spouse.
Indeed, the attendees on the list – the usual suspects such as the Murdoch press, Nine Entertainment and Kerry Stokes’ Seven – were all either recipients of government subsidies, or lobby groups and industry associations funded by this same corporate media.
It was billed in the press release from the Attorney-General’s Department as an event for press freedom: “The roundtable will bring together media organisations for a general discussion about press freedom issues in Australia and options for reform”.
Yet it appears the subject of this secret love-fest – it is to be held under Chatham House Rules – is about national security. National security is often the enemy of freedom of speech, perhaps only second to Australia’s defamation lawyers.
The response to a Freedom of Information request filed by former Senator Rex Patrick on January 23 found that the contacts for the Roundtable were Elizabeth Brayshaw, Assistant Secretary, National Security Information Branch, and two others whose names had been redacted from the FOI: a “Senior Adviser, Office of the Attorney-General” and a “Director, Information Protection Section”.
As the Roundtable is only scheduled to run from 3pm to 4.30pm on Monday in Parliament House Canberra, this has more the hallmarks of a summons to Canberra for media to be told what they can’t publish than what they can.
Options for reform
As for the “options for reform” element, they could start with the Freedom of Information regime which, as Rex Patrick has exposed on many occasions, is broken. This very FOI request was redacted and marred by refusals based on public interest grounds. And Patrick was advised, if he was not satisfied, to pursue the matter in the AAT or via the Information Commissioner.
Nobody has waited longer and fought harder for FOIs than Rex Patrick who has waited variously months and years to get responses under Australia’s transparency regime. This to the point where the story or social interest issue is no longer relevant: a government has changed, a Queen has died.
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Source: Rex Patrick FOI response A-G Dept
Ironies abound in this Roundtable caper. We have a government which professes to be about transparency having a secret meeting with Big Media types about freedom of the press while refusing to respond adequately to transparency requests.
Stakeholders mate, what else
The language of the FOIs is instructive in that it seems to be referring to the media attendees as “government stakeholders”.
“Given the stakeholders have in interest in that information, I consider that would impact the department’s relationship with those stakeholders if the information was released.”
Information is being refused to the public, which funds the government (and its media operators also via subsidies) on grounds that it might hurt the government’s relations with its media mates.
It is possible, lest there be quibbling, that one of the Roundtable attendees has not been subsidised by either the Digital Media Bargaining Code (Google, Facebook payments), JobKeeper, cash hand-outs, special tax exempt status or some other government program, but probably not.
Scoops for comment
There has been a sea-change in the politics and mainstream media landscape since the election last May. The major media houses, News, Nine and Seven favour the Coalition and have been willing to give more coverage to the views of the Coalition in opposition than Labor had been awarded during the Morrison government.
That said, Labor and the Coalition are on the same page when it comes to media policy (excepting restoring ABC funding which Labor has favoured). They both voted for the Bargaining Code, which involves secret payments by the digital platforms Google and Facebook to the same corporate operators on the Roundtable list.
This has the opposite effect of reform, merely propping up old, inefficient business structures at the expense of media innovators and public interest journalism.
Even though the mainstream media did the Albanese no favours before the election, Labor is doing exactly what the Morrison government did in terms of making daily “drops” to select journalists at select big media outlets – “scoops for comment” if you like.
The way it works is that the government’s PR people, press secretaries, touch base with a handful of mainstream media types every day and tell them what’s coming. The ABC too.
They write it up, post the stories around midnight, and the TV and radio breakfast shows pick it up in the morning and repeat the messages.
Morrison had refined this art, and that won him an election and kept him in office. The difference now is that this government is more truthful in its drops; there’s more competence – and more integrity, as the Robodebt Royal Commission evidence has shown with Alan Tudge’s office even leaking private information to discredit Robodebt victims.
As for media reform of any substance; there is nothing on the table to address defamation reform or the inefficiency and secrecy of the Bargaining Code, or the News and Nine duopoly, or government transparency. A 90 minute Roundtable with vested interests who benefit from all this is hardly going to fix it either.
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Michael West established Michael West Media in 2016 to focus on journalism of high public interest, particularly the rising power of corporations over democracy. West was formerly a journalist and editor with Fairfax newspapers, a columnist for News Corp and even, once, a stockbroker.