AFP raid on journalist: Stand up to state intimidation

Nick G.                           4 June 2019

The Australian Federal Police earlier today raided the home of News Corp journalist Annika Smethurst.

Smethurst’s “crime” was to have reported on plans to allow spy organisation the Australian Signals Directorate to conduct cyber surveillance on Australian citizens. Her report also included images of documents relevant to her disclosures.

Her report was carried in the Daily Telegraph over a year ago, on April 28, 2018. The same day, the Defence Department referred the leak of the documents to the AFP.

The Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance, the union that represents journalists, described the raid as an "outrageous attack on press freedom".

"It is an outrage that more than a year after the story was reported in April, 2018, but just days after the federal election result, the Federal Police are now raiding a journalist's home in order to seize documents, computers and a mobile phone in order to track down the source," MEAA media president Marcus Strom said.

A spokesperson for Smethurst’s employer, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, said "This raid demonstrates a dangerous act of intimidation towards those committed to telling uncomfortable truths."

Perhaps for the first time in the history of our Party, we find ourselves in agreement with News Corp.

“Freedom of the press” for whom?

We have long argued, however, that under the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, the concept of “press freedom” is quite illusory.  The capitalist press is largely filled with inconsequential rubbish designed to distract people from probing the reasons for the inequality and injustice embedded in capitalist class relations.  Only a few multi-billionaires like Murdoch cam aspire to have ownership of mass media such as newspapers, radio networks and TV stations.

Nevertheless, it serves the people’s interests to have journalists courageous enough to stand up to both private and state media owners.  Social and political contradictions can sometimes be allowed to surface under the protection of the bourgeois notion of a “free press”. 

The illusory “independence” of the ABC

T

he government-owned Australian Broadcasting Corporation does not have to cull content to the commercial imperative of delivering its audience to powerful advertisers.  But its content does play a part in ensuring the level of funding that comes from the government.  When Emma Alberici ran a few stories that put the government and the multinationals it serves in a bad light, ABC Chairman Justin Milne sent an email to managing director Michelle Guthrie demanding that Alboreci be sacked. The email was sent on May 8, 2018, one day after former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull sent a list of grievances about Alberici’s reporting to the ABC. Milne may not have needed to be prompted: he was at the time the chairman of MYOB, one of the companies criticised in her corporate tax story on big corporations that paid no tax on their earnings in Australia.

The Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull also called for the sacking of ABC political editor Andrew Probyn.  Justin Milne allegedly told Ms Guthrie “you just have to shoot him’’ and said refusing the then-prime minister’s wishes would put half a billion dollars of project funding and “the future of the ABC at risk”.

Yesterday, the ABC’s Media Watch program reported that the producer of Saturday AM, Thomas Oriti, had killed a story by journalist Isobel Roe that questioned the economic viability of the Adani coal mine.  Adani had threatened litigation against the ABC through ABC News boss Gaven Morris even before having previewed the story.

Limitations of “press freedom”

Whilst the Daily Telegraph is striking an heroic pose in defending the integrity of its journalist, neither it nor any of the garbage in the Murdoch stable, or the capitalist press more widely, has taken a stand in defence of people like Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning or Julian Assange. Petty arguments about whether or not Assange is a journalist and therefore entitled to defence under the “press freedom” umbrella, are beside the point. Assange and the others broke the imperialists’ monopoly on knowledge and information.

Nor have they defended Witness K and his lawyer Bernard Collaery , both charged with leaking details of Australian espionage against the government of Timor-Leste during negotiations over oil and gas drilling proposals from prosecution and the deliberate drawing out of the case against them. 

So, while we do support News Corp and its defence of journalist Smethurst, we call for a much broader campaign against all forms of state intimidation of journalists and whistle-blowers.

Intimidation by the state reveals a steady slide towards the adoption of fascist measures against anyone who questions imperialism and its supine lackeys within parliament and the state apparatus.

The latter have all the backbone of dead jellyfish on an abandoned beach.  The people alone have the backbone to stand up against intimidation.

Role of capitalist media monopolies untouched by "reforms"

Vanguard April 2013

The media monopolies raised a great hue and cry about supposed restrictions on their freedom contained in media reform legislation proposed by Communications Minister Senator Conroy.
 

The pack was led by Murdoch’s local lap dog and News Ltd boss Kim Williams.  He accused the government of being “the first outside of wartime to attack freedom of speech”, saying that it will lead to “government-sanctioned journalism”.

 

This was all rubbish of course, so much so that some members of the pack broke loose, chased their own self-interest tails, and barked up another tree.

 

Nine Entertainment Chief Executive David Gyngell and Ten Network Chairman Lachlan Murdoch, for example, were pleased with those parts of the reform package that would advantage their companies. 

 

A 50% rebate on commercial networks’ licence fees would be made permanent, saving them about $180m this year.   Despite all the usual guff in capitalist circles about the benefits of competition policy, there would be no fourth commercial network.  The ceiling on audience reach, which prevents media takeovers that would take a network’s audience beyond 75% of the target, was to be referred to a parliamentary committee and was likely to be abolished.

 

The fly that crawled up Williams’ nose was a proposed new “Public Interest Media Advocate” to regulate standards developed by the media industry through bodies such as its Australian Press Council.

 

If this was a handcuff on the freedom of the press, then it was a handcuff made of butterflies’ wings.

 

It would not have touched the essentials of the role undertaken by the capitalist media which consists firstly, of delivering all of us as media consumers to the monopolies through exposure to advertising; and secondly, to ensure that the ruling ideas of society are the ideas of the ruling class.

 

In all the shambles of trying to get the media package passed by parliament – and failing – the “debate” was never allowed to touch on the fundamental issue that freedom of the press is a class question.  The capitalist media monopolies deny freedom to express opinions in their press to opponents of the capitalist domination of Australia.

 

In complete opposition to all that the capitalist press stands for is the Communist paper Vanguard which this year celebrates 50 years of publication.

Where the capitalist media refuses to acknowledge the workers, except in universally negative  terms, Vanguard seeks to bring their immediate and long-term interests and concerns to the fore.

 

Where the capitalist media refuses to report on this or that struggle of the people, Vanguard seeks to highlight the activities of the people for fundamental change.

 

Where the capitalist media refuses to permit discussion of certain subjects, or discussion from certain viewpoints, Vanguard seeks to break through the boundaries of bourgeois discourse and keep discussion alive with proletarian content.

 

Vanguard seeks to maintain the closest ties with the militant and advanced sections of the working class, drawing its material from their contributions, rather than from a staff of paid experts.

 

Vanguard seeks to deliver a consistent Marxist-Leninist analysis of all questions of the theory and tactics of class struggle, and to link the experiences of workers in Australia to those of our comrades around the globe.

 

To seek to do these things is not necessarily to actually do them.  This paper has many shortcomings.

 

Delivering the workers up to the big monopolies is not one of them.

Cultural imperialism and media propaganda

Vanguard February 2013
Bill F.

Cultural imperialism is the process of social influence by which a nation imposes on other countries its set of beliefs, values, knowledge and behavioural norms as well as its overall style of life. This definition certainly explains the stranglehold that the US has imposed on Australian culture.

Marxists hold that the superstructure of society, the ruling ideology, the political institutions, state apparatus and cultural way of life arise from and reflect the interests of the dominant class in society.

In feudal society, the dominant culture reflected the interests of the land-owning aristocracy. Under colonialism, the dominant culture reflected the interests of the ruling class of the occupying colonial power, such as the British colonial and neo-colonial domination of Australia right up to the Second World War.
 

Under the current rule of the monopoly capitalist class, the dominant culture reflects the interests of the most powerful and greedy section of the monopoly capitalist class which is closely allied to foreign imperialism.

The ruling class in Australia champions the interests of US imperialism in particular, using a tiny clique of local sell-outs with close connections to the largest and richest foreign corporate monopoly groups and financial institutions. The Business Council of Australia is the most prominent mouthpiece for this class rule by the dissemination of policies and attitudes that assist US imperialism to penetrate all aspects of life in Australia – economic, political, social and cultural.

As Marx and Engels observed in The German Ideology, “…the class which is the ruling material force of society is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it.”

Media monopolies

Critical to the ruling class are the owners and major shareholders of the local mass media, especially concentrated in the Murdoch, Fairfax and Packer companies with their extensive investments in many industries and links to international finance.

A major role (self-appointed) is to use their control of the mass media, i.e. radio, TV, internet, newspapers and magazines, etc, to justify and promote the ‘globalisation’ agenda of the main US and European corporate monopolies. This is done directly through editorials and feature articles and indirectly through biased reports and regurgitated handouts from various government, commercial and political lobby groups.

None of it questions the sacred idols of ‘foreign investment’ and ‘free trade’, the pillars of imperialism. None of it criticises or even questions the right of US imperialism to invade other countries and conduct illegal murder with drones. None of it criticises or questions the “conga line of suckholes” (Latham was on the money there!) knocking on the back door of the US Embassy and spilling their guts to this foreign power.  

Television News

Commercial Television News is a good example of how the outlook of the ruling class is promoted. It is watched by millions of Australians every night and is the only source of information for many people. Unfortunately, it is mainly spin and trivia, the most useful bit being the weather forecast, while commercial advertising takes up more than a third of the time-slot.

Local news content usually means of shots of politicians making brief statements or commenting on another politician’s brief statement. Often, some footballer has belted someone in a nightclub and we get to see it all again in the Sports Report.

Then there’s the ‘human interest’ story; the police reporter; the court reporter; the ambulance chaser – snippets of news to titillate, but never anything of depth. Trivia for the masses!

The international news is invariably from the USA; a statement by Obama on a conflict in the Middle East or Africa; the US point of view on the economic crisis in Spain, etc. For variety, sometimes the British BBC gets a run, but puts the same position as the US. This is then referred to as the “international community” and is heartily endorsed by our subservient politicians.

More recently, large segments of the international news have been given over to the detailed ins and outs of the US elections and the situation in Congress, featuring US politicians and commentators. No such detail is ever presented on issues in countries such as New Zealand, Japan or China, which are also important to Australia.

As for reporting the struggles of the working class, the struggles of the people, forget that! When was the last time a strike by workers or a community struggle, was actively supported? It has never happened.

Even when there are huge demonstrations in opposition to government policy, interviews with organisers and supporters are inevitably cut short and often the focus was on trivial matters such as blocking the streets!

Not to let the ABC and SBS off the hook – they do the same, but are more sophisticated. For example, the ABC’s Q and A program brings up some of the real issues, but confines them to scoring points for either Labor or Liberal.

Bread and circuses

Beyond this core of calculated propaganda and manipulated information is the broader, more general ideology of capitalism, promoting individual selfishness, consumerism and divisive racism. As Australia has become more and more a satellite of the US economic and political empire, the moral values and ideals of Australian capitalist society have shifted from British parliamentary democracy to the more aggressive pro-imperialist stance demanded by the US.

The invasion of investment capital by American corporations and the increasing influence of the US in Australian political and military circles have been accompanied by a pervasive promotion of the culture, trappings and diversions of American middle class society.

Television, movies and popular music are three powerful vehicles for US cultural imperialism. A glance at the TV guide reveals that the majority of the programmes will be US news, sit-coms and soap operas. These imported programmes promote the lifestyles of the US and swamp Australia’s cultural heritage and destroy its cultural identity. In Australia, American movies fill our cinemas and American popular music blares out from TV and radio stations twenty four hours a day.

The “stars” and “heroes” are often self-righteous, aggressive individuals who display neither humility nor humanity. The seemingly harmless and often brainless “sit-com” shows depict the life of the affluent American upper middle class. Their houses are full of consumer gadgets; they wear snappy clothes and hardly seem to work at all.

When they do appear, the workers are shown as bit players; servants, uniforms in the background etc., “nobodies” who provide an audience to cheer on the super-heroes. Either that, or as violent, ignorant thugs who have to be controlled or eliminated by the more enlightened middle class. Class divisions are reduced to “winners” and “losers”. There is no place for collective struggle, for cooperative action, for the idea that ordinary people might have courage and wisdom too.

The advertising and fashion industries are geared around this rampant individualism. They use all sorts of clever gimmicks to make working people aspire to the wealth and comfort depicted on American TV. American language and expressions are copied, complete with accents. American sporting events and personalities are heavily featured and the artificial hype is copied by sporting bodies in Australia. There is even a shameless attempt to promote Thanksgiving and Halloween! This cultural conditioning seeks to chain people to the system of imperialist-capitalism.

 

A national identity

In spite of this onslaught, there is resistance by wide sections of the people who really enjoy Australian art, literature, film, drama, poetry, music.

Our aim is to expel US imperialism from Australia and build a truly democratic Australia, an Australia with its own culture, an Australia where we can sing our own songs and watch our own stories.

We all need to produce and promote an Australian culture that has an anti-imperialist, working class and multicultural content, rather than being narrowly nationalistic; content produced by artists and performers who are closely connected with the Australian people and can express the peoples’ opposition to US imperialism.

Any attempts to break through the thought control of the media monopolies should be welcomed and defended from attacks.

Corruption and commercial espionage

Vanguard May 2012 p. 7

Jim H.

(Above: Can't see, can't hear, can't speak)

Last year, after the News of the World scandal erupted, media baron Rupert Murdoch declared that phone hacking did not happen in his Australian businesses.

The News of the World revelations resulted in closure of the paper and enormous damage to News Corporation’s reputation. Recent revelations about pay TV corruption may actually destroy the Murdoch

Empire.

Recently, the Australian FinancialReview (AFR), published by Fairfax Media, revealed the results of a four-year investigation into News Corporation’s subsidiary News Datacom Systems (NDS), established in Israel in 1988.

It was run by Reuver Hasak, former director of Shin Bet, the Israeli domestic security service.

Within NDS there is a secretive unit known as Operational Security, made up of former police and intelligence personnel. Operational Security was formed to prevent fraud within News Corporation’s ranks, to identify anyone making pirate smart cards and to take legal action against them.

NDS carried out a labyrinthine series of global double deals, to severely damage News Corporation’s rivals in the battle for pay TV control.

The Australian Financial Review claims that it now has access to a large cache of NDS documents that were in the possession of former London Metropolitan Police commander Ray Adams.

The Australian Financial Review claims that “NDS encouraged and facilitated piracy by hackers not only

Murdoch is a friend of Gina Rinehart. It is likely that Rinehart’s move into Fairfax is at least partly motivated by a wish to gain influence over and silence an important Murdock rival in Australia.

It is inconceivable that Murdoch and his people have not been up to the same tricks in Australia. It should be blown out into the open. It is important to demand that the Australian government take action.

It must never be forgotten that Murdoch style underhanded tactics are part and parcel of the normal operations of capitalism.

The more examples that are brought out to the light of day, the clearer will be seen the true nature of this rotten system.

of its competitors but also of companies such as Foxtel, to whom NDS provided TV smartcards. The [email] documents show NDS sabotaged business rivals, fabricated legal actions and obtained telephone records illegally.”