Research Seminar - Chilling Effect: The law, lawyers, journalists, and editorial processes

Chilling Effect: The law, lawyers, journalists, and editorial processes

Presented by: Dr Richard Murray

Date: Friday 27 August 2021
Time: 12–1pm
Location: Online via Zoom 

Abstract

This paper seeks to make sense of the role of the law and lawyers in editorial processes in Australia. Orthodox views within journalism studies vastly overestimate the role of journalists and journalist agency within editorial processes. This comes at the cost of accurate and informed analysis into the pressure facing journalism and where those pressures come from. Combining expert legal analysis and interviews with leading journalists, editors and media lawyers, The Chilling Effect reveals the scope of the problem, and reveals the multi-step process by which law stifles free speech in the form of public interest journalism. This new understanding of the chilling effect as a process, points to towards key reforms capable of enhancing democracy, freedom and security. Based on more than one hundred hours of interviews with leading editorial staff, legal counsel and barristers from Australian news organisations and law firms, this paper breaks down the laws that slow, and sometimes cripple, editorial processes in Australia. It also sheds light on the complex interaction between journalists, legal counsel, and the law in a deeply disrupted media environment, and what this means to the public interest, the right to know, and Australian democracy. The presenters have been able to draw on a vast network of leading figures in Australian journalism and law to offer the first authoritative analysis of the chilling effect in Australia journalism. These include media lawyers from Banki Haddock Fiora, Gilbert and Tobin, and MinterEllison as well as journalists, editorial figures and legal counsel from the ABC, SBS, News Corp, Nine Entertainment (former Fairfax), and The Guardian Australia. A book under the working title Chilling Effect: Australian journalism, lawyers and the law is due out through UNSW Press at the end 2022.

Presenter

Richard Murray is a lecturer in journalism in the School of Communication and Arts at the University of Queensland. His current research focuses on editorial processes in journalism, regional journalism in Australia, trauma and reporting sexual violence, and journalism practice.