The government has told Channel Nine to brush up on its legal obligations under the Foreign Influence Transparency Scheme.
After the network aired undercover footage of Steve Dickson groping a woman and making derogatory remarks at a strip club in the United States, the government wrote to the CEO to chastise him for broadcasting footage of a political leader at a strip club ahead of this year's federal election.
An assistant secretary from the Attorney-General’s Department sent Nine's CEO Hugh Marks a stern letter after the strip club story, suggesting the broadcast may have been illegal and outlining concerns that Nine had allowed a foreign actor to influence a domestic election.
It referred to the foreign influence and transparency scheme, a 2018 law that requires agents of foreign influence to register with the government.
It is a criminal offence not to register and the law has no exemptions for journalists.
Quote:It is the department’s view that, if this broadcast was done on behalf of a foreign principal (Al Jazeera) then it would be a registrable communications activity.
However, we note that Al Jazeera has subsequently issued a public statement denying its involvement in the broadcast which may indicate that the broadcast was not undertaken on Al Jazeera’s behalf.
Yesterday Marks told a parliamentary joint committee inquiring into press freedom that the letter;
Quote:Noted that while we didn't break the law, she (assistant secretary) was strongly encouraging us to undertake a self-assessment of our registration obligations.
It's quite clear we hadn't even come close to breaking any laws, so why send us the letter? This type of correspondence has a chilling effect because the maximum penalties for these offences range from six months to five years imprisonment. It's a perfect example of the tone that is being set, of a culture aimed to gag the media and provide disincentives to us uncovering wrongs which merely embarrass or offend public officials.
Now Raven can understand that the government does not want a foreign entity to influence our press, that's a no brainer. But in this case we have an Australian political leader, on camera, groping women and making derogatory comments. It's in (to quote 1930s cartoons) Technicolour. So where is the foreign influence?
The concerning thing is the government is deliberately attacking our media, the raids on ABC and Annika Smethurst shows that our government considers investigative journalism is in the same category as criminality.
How far are we, the people, going to allow this?