Thursday, November 11, 2010

Too much Bourne Ultimatum - a Jiffy Van driver's delight

Former WA State Security Investigation Group Head, now Police Commissioner for the Northern Territory, John McRoberts, seems to have brought to his position some of the same skills that characterize the secretive unit of the WA Police.


Anyone privy to the national media union news knows that NT News really has enough problems at the moment, but when a raid was conducted on a prominent Darwin elected officer, and NT News reporter Justin O'Brien picked up the phone, things heated up.


Staffing must be at a premium there because normally, the subject of a story wouldn't have to write about himself in the third person - a smart spot among the comments.


The Police Commissioner alleged that when his officers covertly obtained Mr O'Brien's private phone records it was to uncover who among police staff had loose lips. However, that wouldn't be too much of a comfort to the other five million interviewees (some of whom could well have been confidential whistleblowers) that the journalist may have had listed on the subsequently not-so-private-anymore phone bill.


If the Police Commissioner had requested the information straight from Mr O'Brien, he would have been told that the release of that information would be in breach of the AJA code that some journalists work under and some newsrooms abide by.


However, not all reporters, news presenters or journalists are Australian Journalists Association members. This means that while it may present an ethical dilemma, there are still some journos who could provide that information, although Mr O'Brien's membership status isn't mentioned in the media coverage. Breaching the confidence of a source can draw other punitive measures for non-members.  At present, journalists don't have to be trained, qualified, registered AJA or Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance(union) members, in order to work in the largely unregulated media industry.


Police said Justin O'Brien wasn't charged with anything and they did not detail if the consternation they've caused allowed them to identify the alleged police leaker. The police strangely didn't mention to the media how many times O'Brien called 1900 numbers or which was his favourite Pizza Deliverer, either.


Several people have come out swinging against Commissioner McRoberts (Ken Parish's at Troppo) not so much on the individual reporter's behalf but more so for the need to protect the role of journalists and their trusted working relationship with their sources. O'Brien's sources, family and friends all have a right to their privacy, which was overlooked in the efforts to allegedly identify who had spilt the beans about a raid on the home of the Lord Mayor of Darwin.


It is inconceivable that if the shoe was on the other foot, journalists would obtain a list of a police officer's sources. The consideration for one's workplace and workplace practices - the professional respect needs to be mutual.


One of the problems with the image of journalism as a profession, is that news is gathered anywhere and everywhere, and crosses into people's private lives - hopefully without too much fuss or intrusion. But that awkwardness and the commercial aspect of the contemporary media stop old-fashioned formalities being considered by police. Police methods of obtaining information, and intelligence gathering, similarly, have drastically changed since days where unspoken court reporting rules were dictated by an old school code of honour, among all sides.


Is it really reasonable for media industry professionals to anticipate that police officers (or the like) with intelligence gathering resources available, won't use them on a daily basis against journalists, who have access to wide information networks?


If a journalist has information police want, is there any part of law that differentiates them from officers' criminal targets? The short answer is, no, and it doesn't matter who you are or where you come from.



More worrying still, is that under terror laws, coercive police corruption watchdog powers and proposed anti-association laws, some public servants now have legislative support to freely access journalists' confidential data, while at the same time dictating your freedom of movement, freedom of expression and freedom of association.

With the Fourth Estate tradition as a journalism performance goalpost, covert(or overt) surveillance by any agency, police or otherwise, impinges on the media's (presumed) feedom to pursue the truth in a robust fashion and has a "chilling effect" on transparency via the media.

Journalists develop working relationships with sources, but also regularly gather new sources - and occasionally these will arrive via cold calls, such as the one NT police allege O'Brien received and these can potentially place a media professional at considerable risk due to such laws.


The story by O'Brien is good but in itself doesn't particularly stand out - certainly not as much as this one 

News about raids happens all the time and the symbiotic relationship between police, and some reporters, can see them even attending raids with the police. In the past in big-small-town Perth, where the Commissioner hails from, raids have been televised on tabloid current affairs tv shows. So there seems to be a lack of continuity between their decisions about confidentiality - perhaps it might be more important for more important people?