Knowing about refugees

BY JONATHAN STRAUSS

SYDNEY — The public's right to know about asylum seekers is being limited by the major parties' agreement on the issue, Peter McEvoy, producer and journalist for the recent ABC Four Corners program on the refugee detention centres, told the October 26 opening forum of the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism's inaugural Public Right to Know conference.

McEvoy said the government, backed by the opposition, was trying to apply media control like it did for war. Another paper presented at the conference, by Wendy Bilboe, showed that many media reports of the issue simply reproduce the government's media releases without question.

Other forum speakers included journalism academic Chris Nash, magistrate and Aboriginal rights activist Pat O'Shane, acting centre director Wendy Bacon, constitutional lawyer Patrick Keyzer, Australian National Council of Refugee Women representative Juliana Nkrumah and Woomera detainee pro bono lawyers Tirana Hassan and Jeremy Moore.

The conference heard 50 presentations on legal, economic, social and political aspects of journalists' and the public's right to know. Topics included protesters and free speech, privacy, government powers, commercial in confidence exemption and the exclusion from the establishment media of the voices of the non-English speaking communities of Western Sydney.

From Green Left Weekly, November 7, 2001.

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From GLW issue 470