Noble Mendaxity: Assange and Wikileaks win a Walkley

Julian Assange has won the Most Outstanding Contribution to Journalism at this year’s Australian journalism Walkley awards – a win that labels him a journalist of the first rank. Assange won for his site Wikileaks which organisers said had a courageous and controversial commitment to the finest tradition of investigative journalism: “justice through transparency.” Walkley judges said Wikileaks applied new technology to “penetrate the inner workings of government". The payback was a global publishing coup and an avalanche of inconvenient truths.

Assange’s victory at a traditional media awards night may be a surprise, as is the fact is he is listed as a journalist at all. He has never worked for a newspaper, broadcaster or major media proprietor. Apart from the occasional contribution as a columnist or blog post, he is not even a curator of editorial content. Prior to Wikileaks, he was most famous as the underground computer hacker “Mendax”. Yet he deserves the award. As Glenn Greenwald says, Wikileaks produced more newsworthy scoops over the last year than every other media outlet combined.

It remains "Assange’s Wikileaks" as Greenwald called it and the man himself never stopped reminding people. Particularly his former co-conspirator Daniel Domscheit-Berg. Assange’s biggest fear was that Domscheit-Berg, who was effectively the other half of a two-man operation, would claim to be co-founder. Assange’s towering ego made him insufferably vain and uncaring but his steadfastness to a single great idea was undeniable. Wikileaks changed the relationship of whistle blowers to media forever by deliberately breaking the link between them. The reason disenchanted staff from Julius Bär bank or escapees from Scientology trusted Wikileaks, was that Wikileaks was deliberately set up so they could never track the whistle blower. This guaranteed anonymity set it apart from all classical forms of investigative journalism.

It was a shock to Assange when Bradley Manning was exposed as the Collateral Murder and Cablegate contributor. Manning was exposed not by Wikileaks, but by injudicious conversations with former hacker Adrian Lamo. Manning has always been provocative so it was inevitable he would eventually fall foul of authorities. That does not excuse his shameful treatment by the US authorities or calls from Congressman Mike Rogers (R-MI) for his execution.

It was the depth and scale of the information Manning donated to Wikileaks that astounded. A quarter of a million US diplomatic cables with a quarter of a billion words. Released from almost every embassy of the world, they were a snapshot of international relations at a point in time. They show what decision makers were really thinking and occasionally what they really did. The embarrassed Americans hit back by making it difficult for the non-profit to receive donations.

With such a large hoard of data at their disposal, it was natural Wikileaks would want to share it with trusted media brands. The New York Times, the Guardian and Der Spiegel (the latter with Domscheit-Berg connections) began to publish their own spin on selected cables. The media that missed out were jealous of the chosen few and the few did not want to share with the many. The relationship quickly soured.

Assange could never fully trust anyone nor be trusted in return. His full hacker nickname “splendide mendax” means nobly untruthful and Assange felt he could get away with anything due to his higher calling. His acceptance speech to the Walkleys (delivered by video) shows he still has plenty of stomach for the fights ahead. “An unprecedented banking blockade has shown us that Visa, Mastercard, the Bank of American and Western Union are mere instruments of Washington foreign policy,” he said. “Censorship has been privatised".

Assange is paranoid but he has offended many powerful people so he has much to be paranoid about. He has also much to be proud of. Wikileaks may collapse under its own internal contradictions but the idea a whistle blower can anonymously pass their information to a wider public is extremely powerful. Big media could have developed this technology but didn’t. Yet the open slather of Cablegate ultimately ruined Wikileaks’s ability to pass on more mundane but equally vital information about banks and private companies. Assange’s former offsider Domscheit-Berg is developing Openleaks in the same mould, but more cautiously.

In his book Inside Wikileaks, Domscheit-Berg says Assange tried to do too much, too soon. “The sources uploaded the documents, members erased the metadata, verified the submissions and provided context,” Domscheit-Berg said. “At some point it became impossible to do all these jobs adequately.” That has never stopped Assange from trying. He is now immersed in a court case which will eat up considerable energies but he will continue to be a freakish force of nature. The Walkley Trustees said Wikileaks was not without flaws. But by constructing a means to encourage whistleblowers, they said, "WikiLeaks and editor-in-chief Julian Assange took a brave, determined and independent stand for freedom of speech and transparency that has empowered people all over the world.”
Hail to the editor-in-chief.

Toohey returns Walkley in protest at permit system changes

Today’s Media section of The Australian led with the story of journalist Paul Toohey returning his Walkley award in protest at the proposed code of conduct for journalists entering and reporting on Aboriginal communities. Toohey, the newspaper’s Northern Territory reporter, said he sent back his award to the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA) which represents journalists. Toohey said the MEAA was “actively working against media freedom in favour of what it mistakenly believes are the interests of Aborigines”.

Aboriginal Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin had asked the MEAA to provide input to legal changes proposed by the new Labor government. The union response was a draft code of conduct which would require journalists to report to Aboriginal Councils and police when they enter Indigenous communities. The MEAA has called Toohey’s protest a beat up and said the new code was not “an onerous requirement”.

The story began after Howard’s Aboriginal Affairs Minister Mal Brough’s NT intervention last year when he scrapped the permit system to visit Aboriginal lands. He was supported at the time by NT journalists who believed that the system encouraged secrecy and lack of accountability. However the MEAA advocated retention of the system. The Rudd Government has now wound back some of Brough’s initiatives and brought back an amended permit system. Critically, governments and journalists would be excluded from the rule.

However the government did want to see a code introduced to govern journalist conduct. The MEAA outlined their idea of a code of conduct in a letter to the government released on 7 March, which said the proposed changes would allow journalists access to Aboriginal community subject to “certain conditions”. It proposed journalists carry proof of their occupation, report to the police and the council on arrival in the community, respect sacred sites, respect privacy, and attend a seminar on cultural sensitivities.

Toohey objected to two of these conditions. He said reporting intentions to the police and council could be counter-productive if the journalist was there to investigate the authorities. Toohey asked “would the MEAA suggest to correspondents in China that they should first consult authorities before seeking out Tibetan dissidents?” He was also scathing of the requirement to attend a cultural seminar which he called “meaningless bleeding-heart bullshit that won't teach anyone how to talk with a fellow human”. Toohey believes it should be sufficient for journalists to follow the 12 point MEAA Code of Ethics when visiting Aboriginal communities.

Writing for Crikey, Margaret Simons believes Toohey is overreacting. She says the code has not yet been approved and in any case would be voluntary. She also says the majority of the code is not objectionable. The only point in the code Simons didn’t like was also picked up by Toohey. This is the need to report to police and council and informing them what they are doing in the community. Defending the move, Fairfax NT reporter Lindsay Murdoch (who drafted the recommendations) says the reference to the police is negotiable but argued that informing the council of a journalist’s presence is current practice.

Meanwhile Simons called Toohey’s protest “premature and melodramatic”. Toohey won his award for magazine feature writing in 2002 for an article called “Highly Inflammable” in the Weekend Australian Magazine about the scourge of petrol sniffing in Aboriginal communities. In his article, Toohey explored the links between petrol sniffing and consequences such as aggression, violence (including murder), theft and property damage. These in turn bring most sniffers in front of the justice system.

In 2001, Toohey told ABC’s Media Report that working in Darwin has given him a different sense of news. He said that a lot of that news came from the 35 per cent of the Territory’s population which was Aboriginal. He said he was conscious of being a white reporter working in black communities. “In a lot of these communities, people would never have seen The Australian for instance,” he said. “Sometimes you feel a little guilty about using the information they've provided you, guilty in the sense that they don't know what they're up for here, but you try and explain that”.

Walkley Talkie

“Nothing gets journalists going like a story about journalists”. So writes Margaret Simons in today’s edition of Crikey. Simons was describing the aftermath of last night’s Australian journalism awards night’s biggest sensation, the onstage stoush between Crikey’s founder Stephen Mayne and the News Ltd journalist Glenn Milne. Mayne was presenting an award at the ceremony in Melbourne when a clearly drunken Milne rushed up onto the stage and pushed him off the platform.

The incident was captured on the SBS TV coverage of the night. Milne accused Mayne of being a disgrace to journalism and making things up. He was quickly restrained by the stage manager but broke free again to continue the tirade. Mayne fled the stage a second time as the irate Milne made his case. He was eventually overpowered by security and escorted off the premises. When Mayne finally had the stage to himself, he made an announcement “on behalf of Rupert Murdoch” describing Milne as “the former Sunday Telegraph political correspondent”.

There has been no love lost between Milne and Mayne since Mayne criticised Milne’s reporting of NSW politician John Brogden’s suicide attempt in 2005. Milne hinted that Brogden had called Helena Carr, wife of the former Labor Premier Bob Carr a "mail-order bride", and also sexually harassed two female journalists at a function a month earlier. Mayne argued the public interest was "not particularly strong", and not powerful enough to warrant reporting Brogden's off-the-record remarks.

Nevertheless Mayne’s prediction about the sacking of Milne is unlikely to come true. Crikey’s Jane Nethercote asked Sunday Telegraph editor Neil Breen if Milne’s employment might be threatened as a result. Absolutely not, said Breen. However he "will not be patted on the back for what he did last night". Instead, he will be "disciplined internally.” Milne himself apologised today saying “I lamentably mixed alcohol and migraine medication with shocking consequences”. These “shocking consequences” dominated the rest of the proceedings. It totally overshadowed the rest of the awards including the most coveted prize, the Gold Walkley. That award was won by the Four Corners team of Liz Jackson, Peter Cronau and Lin Buckfield for their investigative report on the arming of a civilian militia in East Timor.

This was the most important of 34 awards across all media categories including new Walkleys for sport reporting and sport feature writing. The veteran Canberra press gallery leader, Michelle Grattan won the Walkley for journalism leadership. She is the political editor for The Age newspaper and is also a political commentator on ABC Radio National. She was praised by journalists and politicians alike for the accuracy of her journalism although Labor leader Kim Beazley also called her a “serial pest”.

This is the 51th anniversary of the award ceremony. The Walkleys were established in 1956, with five categories, by Ampol Petroleum founder Sir William Gaston Walkley. The New Zealand born Walkley appreciated the media's support for his oil exploration efforts. Walkley was a dreamer who envisaged an Australian continent holding 150 million people, especially if the government built highways for settlement and defence, and diverted coastal rivers inland. He became interested in soccer when he realised that so many people from overseas were making their homes in Australia. He was instrumental in Australia joining FIFA in 1963 and he was anointed president of the Oceania region two years later.

Walkley quickly understood the value of publicity. He courted the media and flew journalists around the nation to business and sporting occasions. He great goodwill and confidences with the media. In 1956 he endowed awards that recognised emerging talent in the Australian media. After he died, the awards were bequeathed to the Australian Journalists' Association which is now part of the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA). Each October the finalists are named and the awards are presented a month later. The full list of this year’s award winners can be found here.