Journalism in Australia is an industry with an extensive history. Reporters Without Borders placed Australia 26th on a list of 180 countries ranked by press freedom in 2020, ahead of both the United Kingdom and United States. [1] Most print media in the country is owned by either News Corp Australia or Nine Entertainment.
Most of the published material in the first twenty years of the New South Wales colony was to inform residents of the rules and laws of the time. These were printed with a portable wooden and iron printing press. Since half of the convicts of the time were not able to read, it was compulsory for these notices to be read at Sunday church services. [2]
On 22 November 1800, George Howe arrived in Australia. Nicknamed "Happy", Howe was born in the West Indies, although his father had been a native of Ireland. [3] In London, Howe had worked in the print industry for several newspapers including The Times , but was sent to New South Wales after being charged with shoplifting, a crime which was also punishable by hanging.
In 1803, Howe started production on Australia's first newspaper, the Sydney Gazette . While much of its content was government notices, there was also an abundance of news to report in the burgeoning colony. An extract from the paper about the first Koala to be captured told of the "graveness of the visage", which "would seem to indicate a more than ordinary portion of animal sagacity". [4]
One news gathering technique that Howe used for local content was to place a slip box outside of the store where the Gazette was published, to let the public suggest stories. Because of the country's geographic isolation, international news arriving via arriving ships was usually printed 10 to 14 weeks out of date.
The Sydney Gazette was the only paper published until 1824, when William Wentworth began publishing the colony's first uncensored newspaper, The Australian (no connection with the current paper of the same name, which was established by Rupert Murdoch in 1964). [5]
The Australian Journalist's Association (AJA) was formed in 1910 and registered federally in 1911. [6] In 1921, the University of Queensland became the first Australian institution to offer a diploma of journalism. [7] The AJA was amalgamated in 1992 into the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance. [8]
In 1956, Ampol Petroleum founder Sir William Gaston Walkley established Australia's most prestigious Journalism Awards, the Walkleys. [9]
On 16 October 1975, five Australian journalists, now known as the Balibo Five, reporting on the invasion of East Timor (then Portuguese Timor) by Indonesia were murdered at a house in Balibo. The journalists, from both the Nine Network and the Seven Network, were killed by Indonesian soldiers after recording footage which proved Indonesia was behind the conflict, as opposed to the claim it was an internal Timorese coup. [10]
Paul Moran, an ABC cameraman from Adelaide became the first Australian journalist to die while covering the Iraq war in March 2003. He was killed while working when a car bomb near him exploded. [11] The ABC foreign correspondent working with Moran, Eric Campbell, survived the explosion and went on to write about the incident in his book Absurdistan . [12]
Australian journalists are more vulnerable to defamation action than many of their international counterparts.[ citation needed ] Australia lacks both a bill of rights and an explicit rights to freedom of speech in the Australian constitution. [13] Writing in 2021, the BBC stated that "Australian media outlets have been overwhelmingly united in their criticism of strict local defamation laws". [14]
The 2006 Reporters Without Borders survey ranking the countries of the world in relative press freedom listed Australia as number 35 behind Ghana and Mauritius. Australia's score of nine had increased greatly since scoring a much better three in 2002. According to the Australia's Right to Know campaign, a collaborative effort between all major Australian media publishers and outlets, major causes in the decline of press freedom include anti-terrorism legislation (Australian anti-terrorism legislation, 2004 and Australian Anti-Terrorism Act 2005), sedition laws, suppression orders and Freedom of Information requests. [15] [16]
In 1992, the High Court of Australia saw the case of Australian Capital Television Pty Ltd v Commonwealth, concerning a decision the previous year which inserted Part IIID into the Broadcasting Act 1942. The resulting regulations banned political advertising during Federal, State or Local elections. There was some free time provided for political messages, but 90 percent of this was allocated to parties in the previous government. A majority decision found in favour of Australian Capital Television, ruling there was an implied right to freedom of political communication in the constitution.
The 4–3 decision of the Theophanous v Herald and Weekly Times Ltd case two years later enforced the previous ruling to the extent of validating the constitution's implied freedom of speech as a defamation defense, however this would not last. [17]
In 1997, the High Court heard the case of former New Zealand Prime Minister Lange v Australian Broadcasting Corporation on the rulings of the Theophanous and Stephens v West Australian Newspapers . "While the judges unanimously confirmed the existence of an implied constitutional freedom of political speech, they did not cite it as a defense against defamation action by politicians." [18]
Since Australian law does not currently accept the implied freedoms as a defamation defense, Australian journalists facing slander or libel must use common law defense. This involves the defendant proving that they: [18]
Many Australian universities provide journalism and communication courses. The majority of new Australian journalists have a tertiary education in the field. In 2000, seven of eight cadetships given by the Age were given to those with a journalism degree. [18] In the same year, however, the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance estimated Australian universities produced approximately 600 students graduating with either a Bachelor of Journalism or an undergraduate degree majoring in Journalism, with another (approx.) 50 graduates with a Masters qualification. The alliance estimated these graduates were competing for fewer than 150 jobs. Since that time the situation has worsened considerably, with a record 4750 journalism students enrolled in 2010 for fewer than 1000 jobs. Additionally, depending on their own personal preference, many editors prefer to employ graduates with qualifications in other fields in the belief that they (as working journalists) are better equipped to pass on journalistic skills than academics (who have left the profession). [19]
The following Australian tertiary educational institutions provide journalism courses:
The Age is a daily newspaper in Melbourne, Australia, that has been published since 1854. Owned and published by Nine Entertainment, The Age primarily serves Victoria, but copies also sell in Tasmania, the Australian Capital Territory and border regions of South Australia and southern New South Wales. It is delivered both in print and digital formats. The newspaper shares some articles with its sister newspaper the Sydney Morning Herald.
Although Australia is considered to have, in general, both freedom of speech and a free and independent media, certain subject-matter is subject to various forms of government censorship. These include matters of national security, judicial non-publication or suppression orders, defamation law, the federal Racial Discrimination Act 1975 (Cth), film and literature classification, and advertising restrictions.
Laurie Oakes is an Australian former journalist. He worked in the Canberra Press Gallery from 1969 to 2017, covering the Parliament of Australia and federal elections for print, radio, and television.
Michelle Grattan is an Australian journalist who was the first woman to become editor of an Australian metropolitan daily newspaper. Specialising in political journalism, she has written for and edited many significant Australian newspapers. She is currently the chief political correspondent with The Conversation, Australia's largest independent news website.
Roger East was an Australian journalist who was murdered by the Indonesian military during its invasion of East Timor in 1975.
Caroline Overington is an Australian journalist and author. Overington has written 13 books. She has twice won the Walkley Award for investigative journalism, as well as winning the Sir Keith Murdoch prize for journalism (2007), the Blake Dawson Waldron Prize (2008) and the Davitt Award for Crime Writing (2015).
Waleed Aly is an Australian television presenter, journalist, academic, and lawyer.
Tracey Leigh Spicer is an Australian newsreader, Walkley Award-winning journalist and social justice advocate. She is known for her association with Network Ten as a newsreader in the 1990s and 2000s when she co-hosted Ten Eyewitness News in Brisbane, Queensland. She later went on to work with Sky News Australia as a reporter and presenter from 2007 to 2015. In May 2017 Spicer released her autobiography, The Good Girl Stripped Bare. She was appointed as a Member of the Order of Australia "For significant service to the broadcast media as a journalist and television presenter, and as an ambassador for social welfare and charitable groups".
Professor Wendy Bacon is an Australian academic, investigative journalist, and political activist who was head of the Journalism Program at the University of Technology, Sydney. She was awarded Australian journalism's highest prize, a Walkley Award in 1984 for her articles about police corruption in New South Wales.
Rebecca Louise Wilson was an Australian sports journalist, radio and television broadcaster and personality, known for the comic television talk sports show The Fat, in which she appeared regularly with host Tony Squires. She was a panellist on numerous television programs including Beauty and the Beast, Sunrise and The Footy Show. She worked in both the newspaper and television industries for over 20 years and won a Kennedy Award in 2013.
Hedley Thomas is an Australian investigative journalist and author, who has won seven Walkley Awards, two of which are Gold Walkleys.
Peter Greste is a dual citizen Latvian Australian academic, memoirist and writer. Formerly a journalist and foreign correspondent, he worked for Reuters, CNN, the BBC and Al Jazeera English; predominantly in the Middle East, Latin America and Africa.
Mark Willacy is an Australian investigative journalist for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). He along with ABC Investigations-Four Corners Team won the 2020 Gold Walkley for their special report on Killing Field, which covered alleged Australian war crimes. He has been awarded six other minor Walkley awards and two Queensland Clarion Awards for Queensland Journalist of the Year. Willacy is currently based in Brisbane, and was previously a correspondent in the Middle East and North Asia. He is the author of three books.
Nick McKenzie is an Australian investigative journalist. He has won 14 Walkley Awards, been twice named the Graham Perkin Australian Journalist of the Year and also received the Kennedy Award for Journalist of the Year in 2020 and 2022. He is the president of the Melbourne Press Club.
Kathryn Anne McClymont is a journalist who writes for The Sydney Morning Herald. Notable for exposing corruption in politics, trade unions, sport, and horse racing, she has received death threats because of her exposés. She has won many awards for her reporting, including the 2002 Gold Walkley Award for her work on the Canterbury Bulldogs salary cap breaches. She is best known for her series of articles and book about New South Wales Labor Party politician Eddie Obeid.
Annika Smethurst is an Australian journalist. She is the state political editor for The Age newspaper in Melbourne.
Michael Gordon was an Australian journalist. Gordon was the son of the newspaper journalist and editor Harry Gordon.
Jo Chandler is an Australian journalist, science writer and educator. Her journalism has covered a wide range of subject areas, including science, the environment, women's and children's issues, and included assignments in Africa, the Australian outback, Antarctica, Afghanistan and Papua New Guinea. She is currently a lecturer at the University of Melbourne's Centre for Advancing Journalism and Honorary Fellow Deakin University in Victoria, Australia.
Louise Milligan is an Australian investigative reporter for the ABC TV 7.30 and Four Corners programs. As of March 2021, she is the author of two award-winning non-fiction books.
Andrew John Fowler is an Australian TV reporter, author, and journalist. Born in the United Kingdom, he worked as a journalist in London before migrating to Australia. He specialises in human rights and national security issues.
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