Police intimidation
April 30, 2008, 8:34pm, 311 views
All Australians should be concerned with today’s WA police raid on the Sunday Times office in Perth.
Fraud squad police swooped on the newsroom to execute a search warrant for documents related to a February 10 article headlined “Bid to buy Labor win: Ripper wants $16m for poll”.
According to the Sunday Times website PerthNow, the Department of Premier and Cabinet confirmed it was the source of the complaint.
Sixteen police searched the newspaper’s office and interviewed its editor Sam Weir.
According to AAP, detectives confirmed that documents were seized.
The article article said $16 million of taxpayers’ money had been allocated to the Carpenter Government election campaign.
It said Treasurer Eric Ripper, as chairman of the cabinet sub-committee on communication, had “urgently” asked the expenditure review committee, which he chaired, for $5.25 million for the first half of the year and a further $10.75 million until July next year.
PerthNow quotes the WA secretary of the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance, Michael Sinclair-Jones, saying the raid was a gestapo-style attack on free speech and civil liberties.
“It’s an attempt to suppress the public’s right to know and it’s also an attempt to silence whistleblowers by publicly demonstrating that no secret is safe in a newspaper office,” he said.
Mr Sinclair-Jones said it was part of a worrying trend since the establishment of the Corruption and Crime Commission.
“This is the sixth occasion in the last 18 months where a journalist is being faced with three years’ jail and a $60,000 fine if he fails to reveal a source,” he said.
I just find it extraordinary that any government in this country would be so arrogant as to order police to uncover political documents which have found their way into the media.
We’re not talking about national security here. Somebody leaked information to the newspaper and the government is on a witch hunt.
How the police were able to get a warrant also astounds me. I’ve been sceptical about a “bill of rights” in the past, but maybe it’s necessary to enshrine such freedoms that we previously took for granted.
I’m not inclined to give the police or the government any benefit of the doubt in this matter, but if something emerges to convince me otherwise I’ll happily retract these remarks.
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Freedom of the Press
I stopped reading Sunday Times about ten years, or was it twenty, er…. Sorry…… I can’t remember, but it was a long time ago. I stopped spending my hard earned in it because it was unadulterated drivel and not worth the fifty cents or whatever it was at the time. Sure, I haven’t been back so I don’t know what it is like now. My question is. Should it be regarded as worthy of Professional status? Should it be regarded as a bastion of free speech? Would I throw myself under galloping hooves to demonstrate that I support the freedom they enjoy? Not on your blood life and I promise you, certainly not on mine.
The press get bloody precious don’t they? Just like bloody Lawyers. So damned ‘up themselves’ that they think that they are ‘well above the law’. Not in my book and I treasure freedom, but it has to be earned and it has to be respected.
My own blood boils when I hear unmitigated garbage such as this…. And I quote. “PerthNow quotes the WA secretary of the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance, Michael Sinclair-Jones, saying the raid was a GESTAPO-style attack on free speech and civil liberties.” This, ladies and gentlemen’ is crap and they, the media, then entreat me to protect their (not hard won) liberties and those of Michael Sinclair, bloody hyphenated, Jones and the people who presumably elected him, who has the temerity to refer to our Police officers acting like GESTAPO.
If this cretin represents THE MEDIA…. Get rid of him and quick. I’ve seen the footage and I see no jackboots. I see no swastikas. I see no brutality? No…. No I don’t. Do I see a Professional measured response from the guardians (the media) of freedom? No, I don’t see that either. I just see a fragile and PRECIOUS MEDIA who crave total freedom and a media that does precious little to deserve it. Don’t give it to them…. LET THEM EARN IT.
Most of the rags (newspapers) are in the hands of the mega-rich and to suggest that the media ‘IS FREE’ is a total lie and to talk of journalistic freedom is a lie, but the question is….”Who most takes away their freedom????” Not me, or you or Political leaders. Journo’s… Don’t look sideways. Look upwards. Old men and young brides. Old men and their prostitutes and their casinos and their gambling excesses. These should concern you and not young officers doing their duty.
Journalistic standards are not yet at rock-bottom, but hell, give them time.
Open your mind….. “Last week’s meeting of the apathy meeting has just been cancelled….”
Bill S.
That’s quite a rant Bill.
Observations:
1) You haven’t read the Sunday Times for 10 years.
2) You haven’t read the article which is the focus of the search warrant.
3) You denigrate the state secretary of the journalist’s union, partly for having a hyphen in his name (never took you for a union basher).
Comments:
1) I wonder if you’d have been so strident if John Howard had sent the Federal Police into the ABC on a similar mission.
2) The Sunday Times is a competitor of my employer. I’ve got no motivation to defend them except worker solidarity and my concern as a citizen.
I won’t reply to your opinions. You’re entitled to hold them, of course. But I’d like to quote the editor of the Sunday Times, Sam Weir:
“The story that today’s police raid related to was a legitimate and important report that showed Treasurer Eric Ripper had asked Cabinet for $16 million in extra funding to be used in Labor Party advertising in the lead-up to the next state election.
“The West Australian public should be very concerned that our state’s already stretched police resources appear to be being wasted on investigations designed to intimidate journalists from The Sunday Times and their sources from pursuing politically-sensitive stories.
“The Sunday Times will not be discouraged from uncovering stories that are in the public interest, no matter what discomfort they may cause the government, and will defend its journalists from attack as they go about their lawful business.”
Michael,
I question your objectivity. RANT is a word often used in relation to a different point of view. In my simple way I try not to be boring. I try, despite my own limitations and the limitations of the sites that I use, to be graphic and I try to invite comment and a different point of view. I try to tap the knee,…. To see if the foot responds…
I ask you to re-focus on the main points of my argument.
I have written many times that people of all persuasions and particularly the medial, not to denigrate the police force…. But it goes on unabated. GESTAPO??????????? Give me a break.
2) You say that I haven’t read the article which is the focus of the search warrant.
Michael. There are 24 hours in the day. I work for 12 or so of them: eat for a couple, sleep for eight, watch TV for about 2, write to friends for 2 and write on Blogs for 1. Where am I up to????????
3) Is that is your only defence of a prat that uses GESTAPO in relation to our officers? That I attacked his hyphenated name. If he needs COUNSELLING TO GET OVER MY BARB put him in contact with me and I am sure that I can help him.
The basic thrust of my comment was. IS ALL MEDIA ‘PRECIOUS’ and is all media PROTECTED?
I like the Kalg Miner. I like THE AGE, I like the West, but shit is shit and I will continue to call it as I see it.
If crap media, like the Sunday Times drives me away, then others may assume that I have the time to constantly check back in case they improve…….. As for me? I simply have too much too do and at 65 years, too little time.
Regards
Bill
Michael
I have just SKIMMED… Are newspapers dying?
It is late and I am tired, but I think it (the article) reinforces what i am saying about journalsim and the print media.
G’night
Bill
I leave my objectivity at the office Bill, and come here to rant.
Today’s developments include my mate Carps distancing himself from the whole fiasco and:
Murdoch University journalism lecturer Chris Smyth said: “Western Australia is starting to excel in the repression of reporters going about their duties trying to reveal information to the public.”
Speaking on behalf of media coalition Australia’s Right to Know, News Limited chairman and chief executive John Hartigan described the raid as a “farcical and transparent attempt by a police force to punish journalists and whistleblowers if a government suffers political embarrassment”.
A former editor of Malaysia’s Daily Express, journalism lecturer Joseph Fernandez, said it was a disturbing development.
“I come from an environment where this sort of treatment of the media is par for the course,” Mr Fernandez said. “The tragedy in this is that whatever the impact is on free speech, it is largely unidentifiable.”
As far as I understand, the newspaper and the journalist can’t be prosecuted for anything. It is not an offence to publish confidential government information, only to leak it.
So the police investigation is to identify the whistleblower.
This comment piece in The Australian by Tony Barrass is worth a read.