Moving Towards Licensed Journalists?

With the court injunction against Rawshark, but not against news organisations who have his material I find myself increasingly disturbed by a trend in New Zealand’s courts around journalism: specifically, the degree to which it is being legally the domain of employees of large organisations. This is not a new thing; it was notable that when Nicky Hager was involved in a lawsuit over a previous book that the courts ruled he was not a journalist.

Now we see that if you work for, say, the New Zealand Herald you can receive protection when working with leaked information (that is, the courts may rule it is in the public interest), but that working with the same information independently isn’t.

This seems more than a little problematic.

Let’s start out with this specific case: one of the most salient features of Hager’s Dirty Politics is that a concerted effort by certain politicians, up to and including the Prime Minister (or his office; apparently John Key is now indistinguishable from a nice Chippendale) and their assorted allies has left the New Zealand press hopelessly compromised. As if the evidence in Dirty Politics was insufficient¹, Rawshark’s leaks have left a pretty solid trail to the idea that a significant chunk of what is supposed to be the Fourth Estate have been acting as little more than sock puppets for National Party spin doctors.

So now we have a court suggesting (but not finally ruling, I should note) that the very actions that exposed the hopelessly compromised state of the major journalistic organs in the country shouldn’t be allowed. It’s difficult to imagine how any meaningful scrutiny of the power of the state can arise if our “unwritten constitution” is to extend only to employees of APN, the Fairfax Group, and MediaWorks. Especially when many of them seem to be the problem.

When considered in the context of the earlier finding against Hager’s desire to be considered a journalist (a not unreasonable request, one might think, given that he appears to do more actual research and evidence gathering on his own that all of the Herald or Stuff can manage in a parliamentary term), the courts appear to be in the process of dismantling one of the few checks on the cabinet’s more-or-less unbridled power.

This does not feel like winning. In the short term, the exemption may let the Herald and Fairfax run some more material. In the long term will the opportunity to expose the kind of systemic corruption arise again? Indeed, without the prodding of Rawshark and Hager, would it have emerged this time?

All of this feels like a framework of decisions that entrench the country more solidly leaning towards the traditions of vastly less democratic countries where the ability to publish anything the government and its allies dislike is undermined by de facto or de jure licensing of “responsible journalists” who understand they must never actually tell the public what is going on, still less challenge the powerful.