Shooting the Messenger ─ Criminalising Journalism

Since 9/11 the western democracies have moved swiftly to reduce freedom of expression – and particularly curtail the activities of the media. Governments as different as the United States, the UK, France and Australia at first tried persuasion to silence media critiques. When that failed they introduced tough legislation to intimidate the legitimate activities of a probing press, in such great need after the Iraq War proved that executive government could not be trusted.

Often cloaked in talk about defending national security and fighting the war on terror, Western governments criminalized legitimate journalistic work, ramping up their attacks on journalists’ sources, and the whistleblowers who are so essential in keeping governments honest. Nothing stood in the way for a full scale attack on journalists – dismantling basic democratic and rule of law principles the West supposedly upholds.

Andrew Fowler is an award-winning investigative journalist and a former reporter with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s [ABC] Foreign Correspondent and its premier investigative TV documentary program Four Corners. Andrew began his journalism career in the early 1970s covering the IRA bombing campaign for the London Evening News. He first interviewed Julian Assange for Foreign Correspondent in early 2010 and went on to write the bestselling book, The Most Dangerous Man in the World [Melbourne University Press, 2011] which has been translated and published in countries as diverse as China, South Korea, USA, Russia, Indonesia, Romania and Taiwan.