Does Australia have a free press?

In my earlier post on growth and sustainability I argued that our press must give as much attention to scientific information about the state of the world as it now gives to financial information about the state of the market. It is hard to see how that will happen unless we have a free press. That leaves us with a problem.

Freedom of the press is an issue that has been unusually prominent in Australia in recent months – taking ‘the press’ to encompass all public media. But most of the discussion has focused on the wrong questions and has failed to notice that whether Australia has a free press is a question that can be answered empirically; and regrettably the facts demonstrate that, taken as a whole, we do not have a free press. Continue reading Does Australia have a free press? →